In the USA the Federal School Lunch program has built out a parallel fiber network equal to or superior to telco fiber in many urban locations, under the E-Rate program. TheE-Rate backbone fiber is leased typically on a 10-20 year IRU basis. Sunesys is a provider of dark fiber, and their web site interfaces with Google Maps to provide detailed fiber maps where they have deployed fiber (I do not work for Sunesys, or any other dark fiber company). My own experience with dark fiber using off the shelf long reach sfps (GiGE, CWDM wavelengths with passive mux technology, h, connecting Ethernet switches from various vendors) is that dark fiber networks are extremely stable,and require little maintenance once operational. An experienced network engineer will have no trouble deploying such a network. David On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 10:31 AM, Stefan <netfortius@gmail.com> wrote:
Looking at dark fiber leasing as an alternative for existing ISP-acquired MPLS, MetroE, P2P, etc. services. I would appreciate some pointers (links) into specific technologies used with dark fiber, as direct consumer (not ISP). I am not looking for the theory behind (C)DWDM, but rather real life implementations and experience with folks operating such.
Highly appreciated would also be extra info on what the learning curve required for traditional network engineering crew to operate devices terminating into such, and maybe even work (installation and operation) needed to maintain plants with this infrastructure.
TIA, ***Stefan