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

Mon Nov 10 03:25:46 UTC 2014

I would suggest that you do some rapid field deployment education in regards to fiber networks.

You might consider joining  WISPA and or FISPA (two industry associations), where you have folks building out fiber networks, who are very willing to share their experience and tell you what is working and what is not working.

Working with Dark fiber can be as simple as you like, or as complicated as you want it to be. However this is one area that it is not un-common to make things appear a lot more expensive and complicated then what they have to be...

Depending on what you are inheriting, and what you have to be responsible for, I would suggest that you spend some time on the web, local library, and some of the OSP related publications to get a good understanding of what is done and why....before just falling for industry jargon.

I should be fun... :)

Faisal Imtiaz
Snappy Internet & Telecom

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Lorell Hathcock" <lorell at hathcock.org>
> To: nanog at nanog.org
> Sent: Sunday, November 9, 2014 9:18:15 PM
> Subject: I am about to inherit 26 miles of dark fiber. What do I do with it?
> 
> All:
> 
> A job opportunity just came my way to work with 26 miles of dark fiber in and
> around a city in Texas.
> 
> The intent is for me to deliver internet and private network services to
> business customers in this area.
> 
> I relish the thought of starting from scratch to build a network right from
> the start instead of inheriting and fixing someone else's mess.
> 
> That being said, what suggestions does the group have for building a new
> network using existing dark fiber?
> 
> MPLS backbone?  Like all businesses these days, I will likely have to build
> the lit backbone as I add customers. So how would you recommend scaling the
> network?
> 
> I have six strands of SMF that connect within municipal facilities. Each new
> customer will be a new build out from the nearest point. Because of having
> only six strands, I don't anticipate selling dark fiber. I believe I need to
> conserve fibers so that it would be lit services that I offer to customers.
> 
> I would like to offer speeds up to 10 GB.
> 
> Thoughts are appreciated!
> 
> Sincerely,
> 
> Lorell Hathcock