----- Original Message -----
From: "William Herrin" <bill@herrin.us>
I can think of issues that arise when the municipality provides layer 2 services.
1. Enthusiasm (hence funding) for public works projects waxes and wanes. Generally it waxes long enough to get some portion of the original works project built, then it wanes until the project is in major disrepair, then it waxes again long enough to more or less fix it up.
Acting as a layer-2 service provider will tend to exacerbate this effect. Let's all build gig-e to the homes! Great. And in 10 years when gige is passe there won't be any money for the 10 gig upgrade but the municipality will still have 20 years to go on the 30 year bond they floated to pay for the gige deployment. And no money for the equipment that corrects the IPv6 glitchiness or supports the brand new LocalVideoProtocol which would allow ultra high def super interactive television or whatever the rage is 10 year out.
You have forgotten here, Bill (I am feeling charitable, so I will not add ... no, I said I wouldn't add it) "MRC". Unlike some things for which bonds would be floated, this sort of service *would be being charged to someone, every month*. Sure, you won't get 100% take, but we factor that in. And, the number of times it's been said notwithstanding, I think a resaonably defensible case can be made that consumer services are pretty close to as good as they need to be at this point; for the *average* consumer, you're pretty hard pressed to run out of space on GigE downhill; uphill even moreso. Sure, there are edge cases, but we call them that for a reason.
Single mode fiber's usefulness doesn't expire within any funding horizon applicable to a municipality. Gige service and any other lit service you can come up with today does.
Stipulated.
2. It is in government's nature to expand. New big city service not arriving fast enough? We'll do it ourselves! Dear county commissioners, it'll only take a little bit of money (to do it badly), come on approve it, let's do it. You know you want it.
Was there an argument there?
I can also see how some longer-distance links, imagine a link from home to office across 30-40 miles, might be cheaper to deliver as 100M VLAN than raw dark fiber and having to buy long reach optics.
Long-reach optics are relatively cheap, or at least they can be if you optimize for expense. The better example is when you want ISP #1, phone company #2, TV service #3, data warehouse service #4, etc. With a lit service, you only have to buy the last-mile component once.
That sounds like an argument in *favor* of the Muni providing backstop service at L2, rather than the position against I thought you took.
I can never see a case where letting them play at Layer 3 or above helps.
Layers 2 and 3 are fuzzy these days. I think that's a bad place to draw a line.
Rather draw the line between providing a local interconnect versus providing services and out-system communications.
Ah. Then we *are* singing the same song, or most of it.
With a multi-service provider network there are, IMO, major advantages to implementing it with private-IP IPv4 instead of a layer 2 solution. No complicated vlans, PPoE or gpon channels. Just normal IP routing and normal access control filters available in even the cheap equipment. Then run your various virtual wire technologies (e.g. VPNs) over the IP network. Everybody is a peer on the network, so the infrastructure provider doesn't need to know anything about customer-service provider relationships and doesn't need to implement any special configurations in their network to serve them.
Hmmm. This isn't the view I'd been getting from you on this, I don't believe. Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra@baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates http://www.bcp38.info 2000 Land Rover DII St Petersburg FL USA BCP38: Ask For It By Name! +1 727 647 1274