Jay, On Fri, Mar 25, 2011 at 9:46 PM, Jay Ashworth <jra@baylink.com> wrote:
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From: "Leo Bicknell" <bicknell@ufp.org>
Having looked around the world I personally believe most communities would be best served if the government provided layer-1 distribution, possibly with some layer 2 switching, but then allowed any commercial entity to come in and offer layer 3 services. +5
I've seen several cases of these types of networks rolling out the MPLS cloud, oversubscribing ad infinitum, with lots of active network equipment, which all in all in the end doesn't add *anything* more to the end-user than hundredths or thousandths or even less of their end-to-end link capacity, between them and the service-offering ISPs. I'm very wary of doing more L2 than essentially required, and believe it is much more sane to invest a bit extra in the L1, and skip investments at this level in L2 entirely. Handing of L1 to providers works perfectly fine, and adds no over-subscription. The only issue with what I describe above is that it complicates the multiple-vendors-over-the-same-pipe a little bit. Voice and video works pretty fine over IP, though, last I checked. With a few new L1 network devices, the above should become even more feasible. Convincing people they can build a network infrastructure without switches is nearly fated for complete doom, though... (Perhaps giving them some LED panels with high-power fans will satisfy their need for blinkenlights?) Regards, Martin