Inevitable death, was Re: Verizon Public Policy on Netflix

Thu Jul 17 12:19:09 UTC 2014

On Jul 15, 2014, at 9:48 PM, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:

>> On Jul 15, 2014, at 5:02 PM, Brett Glass <nanog at brettglass.com> wrote:
>> 
>> At 05:10 PM 7/15/2014, George Herbert wrote:
>> 
>>> Layer3 runs right through Laramie. With a redundant run slightly south.  What conversations have you had with them?...
>> 
>> At first, Level3 completely refused us. Then, they quoted us a rate several times higher than either of our existing upstreams for bandwidth. Even at that price, they refused to let us link to them via wireless (requiring us to either buy easements or buy land adjacent to their building, which sits on rented land).
> 
> Local fiber provider?  How does everyone else tie in to Layer3 in Laramie?
> 
> And, find a Layer3 reseller who can handle the cost problem.  There are a bunch.  I can recommend one privately if you can't find one.
> 
> Buying retail markups from the vendor who wants to sell wholesale only does not scale.

The problem is partly a technological one.  If you have a fiber span from east<-> west it doesn't make sense to OEO when you can just plop in a bidi amplifier.  That OEO cost isn't "very high", but hitting every city like that becomes expensive quickly.  This is why your 10G from EQUINIX-SJ to EQUNIX-ASH costs the same as the 10G loop from the DC to your local office.  The cost is the OEO ends.  If you're not in a fiber rich environment you are screwed.  I have at&t fiber less than 1200 feet from me but they do not offer any non-dialtone services in my area.  I'm all-poles to the end of the new comcast segment as well but due to a mid-part that doesn't have the density required to meet their metrics there continue to be only fixed wireless choices here.

Others have suggested the UBNT gear.  I'm using it myself, but I'll say.. it still leaves a lot to be desired.  It's mostly meant for use in less developed countries.  Their latest 5Ghz access gear often takes 6-12 months to get FCC certified to operate in the full 5ghz band.  With the recent opening all the way down to 5.1 this spring with the FCC that certification process restarted.  They are great for hopping short distances at high speeds in the US, but are very susceptible to interference.  (The NanoBeam, now PowerBeam is a bit better).

my backhaul is 3 miles and works well for my use case.  Cheaper than the T1 before and higher speeds.  There's a lot of people in wispa around the edges you can find doing things, and many others doing it that aren't in wispa.  Most are small businesses (Some are larger) and suffer from poor business choices, but the biggest problem I see is lack of ability to get high speed access as Brett is commenting.  Prices may be low at the major DCs but out in these areas expect $10/Mb or more, sometimes not including loop.

- Jared