----- Original Message -----
From: "Scott Helms" <khelms@zcorum.com>
However, for any given ring, you are locked into a single technology and you have to put active electronics out in the field.
Correct, but you can have many layer 2 rings riding your physical ring. In a normal install you're going to have over a hundred fibers in your physical ring, I'd personally build it with over two hundred, but that's just me.
And I would personally not design something where the physical layout locks you into a specific *category* of technology (active equipment in the field), but that's just me. :-)
Here's the Graybar catalog with a good breakdown of the kinds of fiber you can choose from, though you have to have a rep to get pricing:
Nice reference, added to my list; thanks.
You can't, given a ring architecture, provide dark fiber leases.
That's incorrect, you simply don't have as many available but in a current "normal" build you could easily provide 100+ dark fiber leases that extend from your MDF (still don't like using this term here) all the way down to the home or business.
And, conversely, I could, actually, *build a ring atop home run*; it would just be a folded ring, where the active gear is at the end of each run.
I realize it is your argument that one doesn't need to do so, there's no market for it, etc. However, I don't agree with you.
No, my argument is that the demand for dark fiber is very low and so building your network so you can provide every single connection as dark fiber is wasteful.
Doing things which are not quite cost effective *yet* is pretty much the *hallmark* of government, is it not? Hybrid car tax breaks, Solar PV install tax breaks... these things are all subsidies to the consumer cost of a technology, so as to increase its uptake and push it onto the consumer-cost S-curve; this is a government practice with at least a century long history. It's pretty much what I'm trying to accomplish here. And thanks for teasing that thought out of my head, so I can make sure it's in my internal sales pitch. :-)
First, exactly how many and what Layer 2 technologies BESIDES Ethernet do you think you have a market for?
GPON/DOCSIS/RFoG? That's one people are deploying today. Over the 50 year proposed lifetime of the plant? WTF knows. That's exactly the point. To paraphrase Tom Peters, you don't look like a trailbreaker by *emulating what other trailbreakers have done*. I'm not *trying* to do the last thing. I'm trying to do the next thing. Or maybe the one after that.
First, there are very few businesses in the size town we've been discussing that even have this scenario as a wish list item.
"...now."
Second, how many businesses that need/want remote connectivity for their workers at home AREN'T running Ethernet on their corporate LAN and at the employees' home?
Course they are.
Another thing to remember is that many businesses run VPNs because of the encryption and controls it provides, not because they can't get or afford direct connectivity. You have a vanishingly small set of potential customers IMO.
Perhaps. But the *current* potential customer base does not merit locking in a limited design in a 50-year plant build.
Admittedly, this only works for the employees that live within range, but it's an example of the kinds of services that nobody even imagines today because we can't get good L1 services cheap yet.
This is the key point. IF someone was able to put together a nationwide or even regional offering to allow inexpensive Layer 1 connectivity things would be different.
How, Scott, would you expect that sort of thing might happen? By people taking the first step? Yeah; thought so. My county doesn't have the same first-trencher advantage my city does... but it does have the advantage that *it is nearly 100% built out as well*; we are, I believe, the densest county *in the United States*; maybe Manhattan beats us. Maybe DC; maybe Suffolk County in Mass. So it's not at all impossible that we might be the first domino to fall; there are a lot of barrier island communities near me that would be similarly easy to fiber, since they're so one-dimensional. (Geographically; I'm sure their residents are quite nice. :-)
However, that's not going to happen AND we already have good cheap solutions to deal with that. Most commonly VPLS over GRE or VPN whose only real cost beyond the basic home Internet connection, is a ~$350 CPE that supports the protocol.
You're paying $350 for VPN routers? Could I be one of your vendors?
So, if you're running a company with regional or nationwide offices and home workers would you be attracted to a more limited method of connection that is only available in certain areas as opposed to the solution that works everywhere? Which is easier for your IT staff to support?
Accurate, but not germane. They're not my target market. Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra@baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates http://baylink.pitas.com 2000 Land Rover DII St Petersburg FL USA #natog +1 727 647 1274