Muni Fiber and Politics

William Herrin bill at herrin.us
Mon Jul 21 20:35:22 UTC 2014


On Mon, Jul 21, 2014 at 2:58 PM, Mikael Abrahamsson <swmike at swm.pp.se> wrote:
> On Mon, 21 Jul 2014, William Herrin wrote:
>> The only exception I see to this would be if localities were constrained
>> to providing point to point and point to multipoint communications
>> infrastructure within the locality on a reasonable and non-discriminatory
>> basis. The competition that would foster on the services side might outweigh
>> the damage on the infrastructure side. Like public roads facilitate
>> efficient transportation and freight despite the cost and potholes, though
>> that's an imperfect simile.
>
> While I might not agree with the parts of your email you cut out, I would
> definitely like to chime in on this part. Muni fiber should be exactly that,
> muni *fiber*. Point to point fiber optic single mode fiber cabling,
> aggregating thousands of households per location, preferrably tens of
> thousands.

Howdy,

I hold out hope it could also be done with a local lit multipoint
service. Here's your RFC 6598 address, here's the RFC 6598 addresses
of these 20 service providers, pay whichever one you want for general
purpose Internet connectivity, video over IP or whatever the heck it
is they sell and they'll provide the VPN client you need.

But either way, constrain the locality to providing local point to
point and point to multipoint connectivity. Don't allow it to provide
general services over the link unless you intend to keep all
commercial service providers out.


> It's hard to go wrong in this area, it either works or it doesn't, and in
> these aggregation nodes people can compete with several different
> technologies, they can use PON, they can use active ethernet, they can
> provide corporate 10GE connections if they need to, they can run
> hybrid/fiber coax, they can run point-to-point 1GE for residential. Anything
> is possible and the infrastructure is likely to be as viable in 30 years as
> it is day 1 after installation.

You're not wrong. And a locality providing dark fiber as at least one
of the buyable services is doing things right.

Regards,
Bill Herrin



-- 
William Herrin ................ herrin at dirtside.com  bill at herrin.us
Owner, Dirtside Systems ......... Web: <http://www.dirtside.com/>
Can I solve your unusual networking challenges?



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