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

Mon Nov 10 14:11:40 UTC 2014

+1 to what Faisal said.

And before you take possession I recommend you do a thorough fibre test.  Check for all aspects of the fibre--signal deterioration and etc.  "Shoot the fibre" and map it out, it's strengths and weaknesses, so you know what you are dealing with.

--Patrick Darden

-----Original Message-----
From: NANOG [mailto:nanog-bounces at nanog.org] On Behalf Of Faisal Imtiaz
Sent: Sunday, November 09, 2014 9:26 PM
To: Lorell Hathcock
Cc: nanog at nanog.org
Subject: [EXTERNAL]Re: I am about to inherit 26 miles of dark fiber. What do I do with it?

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