I am about to inherit 26 miles of dark fiber. What do I do with it?

Mon Nov 10 03:06:53 UTC 2014

Hi,

26 miles is not a long distance when working with fiber. I would have just
one active POPs (or two for redundancy). Use DWDM to expand your 6 strands
into as many links as you need. You could also use GPON with splitters,
although that will only deliver 1 Gbps (on a shared 2.4 Gbps) at this time.

DWDM allows you to sell "colored links" to customers, that they can do
anything with.

MPLS might be overdoing it or not, depending on your background and
experience. Using VLANs or layer 3 routing might get you the same thing. I
would say the proposed network is small enough that you could get away with
just about anything. Just remember that you need to protect your network
from customers. Eg. you are using STP and the customer enables STP, you
could very well end up with a disaster if not careful. Many network
protocols have zero security and many switch configurations are vulnerable
to simple mistakes by default.

Regards,

Baldur