Rollup: Small City Municipal Broadband
Ok, here's a rough plan assembled from everyone's helpful contributions and arguing all week, based on the City with which, if I'm lucky, I might get a job Sometime Soon. :-) (I'm sure some of you can speculate which city it might be, but Please Don't.) It's about 3 square miles, and has about 8000 passings, the majority of which are single or double family residential; a sprinkling of multi-tenant, about a dozen city facilities, and a bunch of retail multi-unit business. Oh, and a college campus, commuter. My goal is to fiber the entire city, with a 3-pr tail on each single-family residence (or unit of a duplex/triplex), and N*1.5 on multi-tenant business buildings, and probably about N*1.1 or so on large multi-unit residences. Empty lots, if we have any, will also get a 3-pr tail, in a box. My plan is for the city to contract out the design and build of the physical plant, with each individual pair home-run to a Master Distributing Frame in a city building. Since the diameter of the city is so small, this can be a single building, and it need not be centrally located -- since we are a coastal city, I want it at the other end. :-) I propose to offer to clients, generally ISP, but also property owner/ renters, L1 connectivity, either between two buildings, or to a properly equipped ISP, and also to equip for and offer L2 aggregated connectivity to ISPs, where the city, instead of the ISP, will provide the necessary CPE termination gear (ONT). The entire L0 fiber build, and all L2 aggregation equipment (except potential GPON splitters mentioned next) will be the property of the City. Assuming that the optical math pans out, we will hang GPON splitter frames in the MDT, and cross connect subscriber ports to the front of them, and the back of them to Provider equipment in an associated colo, in rooms or cages; we'll also probably do this for our L2 subscribers, using our own GPON splitters. Those will then be groomed into Ethernet handoffs for whatever providers want to take it that way, at a higher MRC. Splitters installed for Providers who take L1 handoffs will be their property, though installed in our MDF room. We will do all M-A-C work on the MDF, into which Provider employees will generally not be admitted, at least unescorted, on a daily basis, except in "emergencies", for which an extra NRC will be levied. The cost we will charge the Providers, per subscriber, will be a fixed MRC, similar to a 'tariffed' rate, which is published, and all Providers pay the same rate, which is subject by contract to occasional adjustment in either direction, and which is set to recover our costs to provide the service, based on take rates and depreciation periods which I have not yet determined. I'm assuming I can get 30 year depreciation out of the fiber plant with no problems, probably 40... maybe 50 if it's built to high enough standards -- I do not expect passive glass fiber to become obsolete in 50 years. Active equipment, a much shorter period, of course, probably between 4 and 7 years, depending on how far up the S-curve of terminal equipment design it proves that we've already traveled. At the moment, my comparison device is the Calix E7-20, with either 24-port AE or the GPON cards; either 836GE interior ONTs, or their equivalent exterior ones (since the power module has to be inside anyway, I'm not sure you gain that much by putting the ONT outside, but...) My motivation for not doing L3 is that it is said to greatly improve the chances for competition at the ISP level, a fact not yet in evidence. My motivation for not doing GPON in the field is that it's thoroughly impractical to do that in an environment where an unknown number of multiple providers will be competing for the subscribers, and anyway it breaks point to point, which the city will need for itself, and which I want to offer to residents as well. My motivation for doing L2 is that it takes a lost of the front-end cost burden off of potential smaller 'boutique' ISPs specializing in various disciplines (very low cost/lifeline service, very high speed, 'has a big local usenet spool', or what have you); such providers will have to pay (and recover) a higher per-subscriber MRC, in exchange for not having to themselves provision and install GPON splitters and something like a Calix E7 -- such hardware will be installed by the City, and cost-shared; if/when such a provider gets big enough, they can install their own, and we'll cut them over. I propose to take the project to the council for funding and approval having in my pocket a letter of intent from a local 2nd tier ISP of long standing to become our launch provider, with no incentives over the published rates except the guarantee of additional subscribers. My underlying motivation, which is intended to answer any tradeoff queries which I haven't explicitly addresses before this point, is to increase the City's position as being "full service" (as small as it is, it does it's own fire, police, garbage and water already), and improve it's chances of selection by people who are deciding where to move. The City already has a relatively good image, within its target market, but as time marches ever forwards, the maximum available broadband in its footprint will become less and less acceptable, and I expect that there are a significant number of people around the country for whom "I can get Gigabit in my house? Bidirectional? I'm moving" is a valid viewpoint. I know already that "what kind of broadband can I get" is a top-5, and sometimes top-3 selection issue for people contemplating a move. Things, therefore, which improve the city's image with potential immigrants, be they residents or small businesses, are a Good Thing, whether because those people actually want or need those services, or whether it's merely because they like to bask in the reflected glow there of. These things will likely reduce the city's vacancy rate, and thus increase property tax revenue and hence the city's budget, in addition to slowly improving the city's socioeconomic demographics, which will itself likely have a salutary effect on the small businesses already here, and in the decision processes of people thinking to move one here or start one. That's my thinking so far. Now comes the hard part: assembling enough other budgetary numbers to determine how much it will cost, how much we'll have to charge, and whether people will *pay* that much. I don't have any illusions that the wholesale charges will be a revenue stream for the City, and I won't let the council get any such ideas either; the benefits to the city (aside from dark fiber to all our own buildings) are a bit deeper than that, and will require sufficient time to come to fruition. I wrote this as a summary for all the helpful NANOGers who chimed in this week, and as a clarification for those who weren't quite sure where *I* was trying to go -- all muni builds are sui generis, and this one moreso than most. If any of you see anything we've already said, but I left out, please let me know... And have a Whacky Weekend. If any of you pass through the west coast enroute to ORL, let me know. :-) 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
Why on earth would you do this with PON instead of active Ethernet? What GPON vendor have you found where their technical staff will tell you this is a good architecture for their PON offering? On Sat, Feb 2, 2013 at 1:40 PM, Jay Ashworth <jra@baylink.com> wrote:
Ok, here's a rough plan assembled from everyone's helpful contributions and arguing all week, based on the City with which, if I'm lucky, I might get a job Sometime Soon. :-) (I'm sure some of you can speculate which city it might be, but Please Don't.)
It's about 3 square miles, and has about 8000 passings, the majority of which are single or double family residential; a sprinkling of multi-tenant, about a dozen city facilities, and a bunch of retail multi-unit business.
Oh, and a college campus, commuter.
My goal is to fiber the entire city, with a 3-pr tail on each single-family residence (or unit of a duplex/triplex), and N*1.5 on multi-tenant business buildings, and probably about N*1.1 or so on large multi-unit residences. Empty lots, if we have any, will also get a 3-pr tail, in a box.
My plan is for the city to contract out the design and build of the physical plant, with each individual pair home-run to a Master Distributing Frame in a city building. Since the diameter of the city is so small, this can be a single building, and it need not be centrally located -- since we are a coastal city, I want it at the other end. :-)
I propose to offer to clients, generally ISP, but also property owner/ renters, L1 connectivity, either between two buildings, or to a properly equipped ISP, and also to equip for and offer L2 aggregated connectivity to ISPs, where the city, instead of the ISP, will provide the necessary CPE termination gear (ONT). The entire L0 fiber build, and all L2 aggregation equipment (except potential GPON splitters mentioned next) will be the property of the City.
Assuming that the optical math pans out, we will hang GPON splitter frames in the MDT, and cross connect subscriber ports to the front of them, and the back of them to Provider equipment in an associated colo, in rooms or cages; we'll also probably do this for our L2 subscribers, using our own GPON splitters. Those will then be groomed into Ethernet handoffs for whatever providers want to take it that way, at a higher MRC. Splitters installed for Providers who take L1 handoffs will be their property, though installed in our MDF room.
We will do all M-A-C work on the MDF, into which Provider employees will generally not be admitted, at least unescorted, on a daily basis, except in "emergencies", for which an extra NRC will be levied.
The cost we will charge the Providers, per subscriber, will be a fixed MRC, similar to a 'tariffed' rate, which is published, and all Providers pay the same rate, which is subject by contract to occasional adjustment in either direction, and which is set to recover our costs to provide the service, based on take rates and depreciation periods which I have not yet determined. I'm assuming I can get 30 year depreciation out of the fiber plant with no problems, probably 40... maybe 50 if it's built to high enough standards -- I do not expect passive glass fiber to become obsolete in 50 years.
Active equipment, a much shorter period, of course, probably between 4 and 7 years, depending on how far up the S-curve of terminal equipment design it proves that we've already traveled. At the moment, my comparison device is the Calix E7-20, with either 24-port AE or the GPON cards; either 836GE interior ONTs, or their equivalent exterior ones (since the power module has to be inside anyway, I'm not sure you gain that much by putting the ONT outside, but...)
My motivation for not doing L3 is that it is said to greatly improve the chances for competition at the ISP level, a fact not yet in evidence.
My motivation for not doing GPON in the field is that it's thoroughly impractical to do that in an environment where an unknown number of multiple providers will be competing for the subscribers, and anyway it breaks point to point, which the city will need for itself, and which I want to offer to residents as well.
My motivation for doing L2 is that it takes a lost of the front-end cost burden off of potential smaller 'boutique' ISPs specializing in various disciplines (very low cost/lifeline service, very high speed, 'has a big local usenet spool', or what have you); such providers will have to pay (and recover) a higher per-subscriber MRC, in exchange for not having to themselves provision and install GPON splitters and something like a Calix E7 -- such hardware will be installed by the City, and cost-shared; if/when such a provider gets big enough, they can install their own, and we'll cut them over.
I propose to take the project to the council for funding and approval having in my pocket a letter of intent from a local 2nd tier ISP of long standing to become our launch provider, with no incentives over the published rates except the guarantee of additional subscribers.
My underlying motivation, which is intended to answer any tradeoff queries which I haven't explicitly addresses before this point, is to increase the City's position as being "full service" (as small as it is, it does it's own fire, police, garbage and water already), and improve it's chances of selection by people who are deciding where to move. The City already has a relatively good image, within its target market, but as time marches ever forwards, the maximum available broadband in its footprint will become less and less acceptable, and I expect that there are a significant number of people around the country for whom "I can get Gigabit in my house? Bidirectional? I'm moving" is a valid viewpoint.
I know already that "what kind of broadband can I get" is a top-5, and sometimes top-3 selection issue for people contemplating a move.
Things, therefore, which improve the city's image with potential immigrants, be they residents or small businesses, are a Good Thing, whether because those people actually want or need those services, or whether it's merely because they like to bask in the reflected glow there of.
These things will likely reduce the city's vacancy rate, and thus increase property tax revenue and hence the city's budget, in addition to slowly improving the city's socioeconomic demographics, which will itself likely have a salutary effect on the small businesses already here, and in the decision processes of people thinking to move one here or start one.
That's my thinking so far. Now comes the hard part: assembling enough other budgetary numbers to determine how much it will cost, how much we'll have to charge, and whether people will *pay* that much.
I don't have any illusions that the wholesale charges will be a revenue stream for the City, and I won't let the council get any such ideas either; the benefits to the city (aside from dark fiber to all our own buildings) are a bit deeper than that, and will require sufficient time to come to fruition.
I wrote this as a summary for all the helpful NANOGers who chimed in this week, and as a clarification for those who weren't quite sure where *I* was trying to go -- all muni builds are sui generis, and this one moreso than most.
If any of you see anything we've already said, but I left out, please let me know...
And have a Whacky Weekend. If any of you pass through the west coast enroute to ORL, let me know. :-)
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
-- Scott Helms Vice President of Technology ZCorum (678) 507-5000 -------------------------------- http://twitter.com/kscotthelms --------------------------------
----- Original Message -----
From: "Scott Helms" <khelms@zcorum.com>
Why on earth would you do this with PON instead of active Ethernet? What GPON vendor have you found where their technical staff will tell you this is a good architecture for their PON offering?
Asked and answered, Scott; have you been ignoring the threads all week? I'm pretty sure I even answered it in the posting, but just in case: 1) Line cards for the OLT frames appear to be 2 orders of magnitude denser for GPON termination than AE (480 ports per 10U vs 10k ports per 10U in Calix, unless I've badly misunderstood my sources), and 2) GPON is what potential L3 providers large enough to want an optical handoff are generally used to. If someone wants AE, they can certainly have it. (C'mon; miss the *next* turn, too :-) 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
Jay, I'm spotty on mailing lists since most of my time is spent building these kinds of networks. 1) Talk to more vendors than just Calix, especially if they're quoting their Ethernet density on the C7. Also, keep in mind that port density may or may not be relevant to your situation since space for muni shelves isn't usually a problem. Port density is much more important if you're deploying in existing telco enclosures but muni networks tend (not universally of course) to reuse existing city infrastructure building to house the nodes of their network. Please note that I am not reccomending against Calix, they're a good solution in many cases, but AE is not a strong point on the C7. The E7 and the B series, which is the old Occam product, is much better than the C7. For that matter I wouldn't consider doing a new build on the C7 since that platform's EoL can't be too far in the future. 2) I have no idea who told you this, but this is completely and utterly incorrect in nationwide terms. If you have a specific layer 3 provder in mind that tells you they want a GPON hand off then that's fine, but ISPs in general don't know what GPON is and have no gear to terminate that kind of connection. On Sat, Feb 2, 2013 at 3:22 PM, Jay Ashworth <jra@baylink.com> wrote:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Scott Helms" <khelms@zcorum.com>
Why on earth would you do this with PON instead of active Ethernet? What GPON vendor have you found where their technical staff will tell you this is a good architecture for their PON offering?
Asked and answered, Scott; have you been ignoring the threads all week?
I'm pretty sure I even answered it in the posting, but just in case:
1) Line cards for the OLT frames appear to be 2 orders of magnitude denser for GPON termination than AE (480 ports per 10U vs 10k ports per 10U in Calix, unless I've badly misunderstood my sources), and
2) GPON is what potential L3 providers large enough to want an optical handoff are generally used to.
If someone wants AE, they can certainly have it.
(C'mon; miss the *next* turn, too :-)
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
-- Scott Helms Vice President of Technology ZCorum (678) 507-5000 -------------------------------- http://twitter.com/kscotthelms --------------------------------
C7 is old school. E7/E20 is far far far far far far different. On Feb 2, 2013 2:55 PM, "Scott Helms" <khelms@zcorum.com> wrote:
Jay,
I'm spotty on mailing lists since most of my time is spent building these kinds of networks.
1) Talk to more vendors than just Calix, especially if they're quoting their Ethernet density on the C7. Also, keep in mind that port density may or may not be relevant to your situation since space for muni shelves isn't usually a problem. Port density is much more important if you're deploying in existing telco enclosures but muni networks tend (not universally of course) to reuse existing city infrastructure building to house the nodes of their network. Please note that I am not reccomending against Calix, they're a good solution in many cases, but AE is not a strong point on the C7. The E7 and the B series, which is the old Occam product, is much better than the C7. For that matter I wouldn't consider doing a new build on the C7 since that platform's EoL can't be too far in the future.
2) I have no idea who told you this, but this is completely and utterly incorrect in nationwide terms. If you have a specific layer 3 provder in mind that tells you they want a GPON hand off then that's fine, but ISPs in general don't know what GPON is and have no gear to terminate that kind of connection.
On Sat, Feb 2, 2013 at 3:22 PM, Jay Ashworth <jra@baylink.com> wrote:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Scott Helms" <khelms@zcorum.com>
Why on earth would you do this with PON instead of active Ethernet? What GPON vendor have you found where their technical staff will tell you this is a good architecture for their PON offering?
Asked and answered, Scott; have you been ignoring the threads all week?
I'm pretty sure I even answered it in the posting, but just in case:
1) Line cards for the OLT frames appear to be 2 orders of magnitude denser for GPON termination than AE (480 ports per 10U vs 10k ports per 10U in Calix, unless I've badly misunderstood my sources), and
2) GPON is what potential L3 providers large enough to want an optical handoff are generally used to.
If someone wants AE, they can certainly have it.
(C'mon; miss the *next* turn, too :-)
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
-- Scott Helms Vice President of Technology ZCorum (678) 507-5000 -------------------------------- http://twitter.com/kscotthelms --------------------------------
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Out of curiosity, do you have plans for legal battles or anything? There have been some other places attempting or running muni broadband that have resulted in crap like the hilariously named "AN ACT TO PROTECT JOBS AND INVESTMENT BY REGULATING LOCAL GOVERNMENT COMPETITION WITH PRIVATE BUSINESS" bill. Sorry, misclicked, delete the first incomplete email if possible. On 2013-2-3, Jay Ashworth wrote:
Ok, here's a rough plan assembled from everyone's helpful contributions and arguing all week, based on the City with which, if I'm lucky, I might get a job Sometime Soon. :-) (I'm sure some of you can speculate which city it might be, but Please Don't.)
It's about 3 square miles, and has about 8000 passings, the majority of which are single or double family residential; a sprinkling of multi-tenant, about a dozen city facilities, and a bunch of retail multi-unit business.
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---- Original Message -----
From: "Dylan N" <dylan@dylannguyen.net>
Out of curiosity, do you have plans for legal battles or anything? There have been some other places attempting or running muni broadband that have resulted in crap like the hilariously named "AN ACT TO PROTECT JOBS AND INVESTMENT BY REGULATING LOCAL GOVERNMENT COMPETITION WITH PRIVATE BUSINESS" bill.
Believe me, budgeting for both legal, and PR to make Verizo<um><ahem>any large proprietary carrier look greedy and malign is in my plans, yes. :-) TTBOMK, Florida is not a state where Verizon succeeded in making muni ownership of the phy layer illegal. And since they're on record that a) they were cherrypicking and b) they're done now it shouldn't be too hard to suggest their intentions. 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
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jay Ashworth" <jra@baylink.com>
It's about 3 square miles, and has about 8000 passings, the majority of which are single or double family residential; a sprinkling of multi-tenant, about a dozen city facilities, and a bunch of retail multi-unit business.
I was musing, off-list, as to why there isn't a Mad-Lib you can just plug some numbers into and get within, say, 40% or so of your target costs for a given design. Well, http://www.ftthcommunitytoolkit.wikispaces.net isn't it, but it does have a bunch of useful information for this project, looks like. A couple of clarifying points: 1) I had posited GPON as I assumed that was where most of the CATV over FTTH hardware work was, vice FiOS. Turns out there's lots of hardware for IPTV as well, and quite a number of smaller deployments, so apparently that path is easier than I thought. The only difference is cross-connect fiber counts, and possibly some link budget. 2) I was planning to provide an IX switch in my colo, so all my L3 providers could short-circuit traffic to my *other* providers through it, unloading my uplinks. 3) Given that, I suppose I could put Limelight and Akamai racks in there, and couple them to the IX switch as well, policies permitting. 4) Given what a pisser it's going to be to get tags to me on the local backbone loops (about 3 are with 5 miles of my city border), I'm also considering having a 10G or 2 hauled in from each of 2 backbones, and reselling those to my L3 providers (again at cost recovery pricing), while not precluding any provider wanting to haul in their own uplink from doing so. 5) There's a possiblity my college campus may be on I2 (or want to); perhaps I can facilitate that as well -- and possible (again, policies permitting) extend such connections to relevant staff members or students who live in the city) (I'm not as familiar with I2 as I should be). 6) And pursuant to 3, perhaps I could even set up the IPTV service and resell that to the L3 provider to bundle with their IP service, so they don't have to do it themselves; while it's not a difficult as I had gathered, it's still harder than them doing VoIP as part of their own triple-play. 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
On Sat, 2 Feb 2013, Jay Ashworth wrote:
6) And pursuant to 3, perhaps I could even set up the IPTV service and resell that to the L3 provider to bundle with their IP service, so they don't have to do it themselves; while it's not a difficult as I had gathered, it's still harder than them doing VoIP as part of their own triple-play.
So you are going to prohibit the operator of the fiber plant from running layer 3 services, but then turn around and let them offer IPTV? That seems quite inconsistent to me. And just because it's "hard"? Running a decent layer 3 service is "hard" too. Isn't the whole point to let these service providers compete with each other on the quality and cost of their services? -- Brandon Ross Yahoo & AIM: BrandonNRoss +1-404-635-6667 ICQ: 2269442 Schedule a meeting: https://doodle.com/bross Skype: brandonross
----- Original Message -----
From: "Brandon Ross" <bross@pobox.com>
6) And pursuant to 3, perhaps I could even set up the IPTV service and resell that to the L3 provider to bundle with their IP service, so they don't have to do it themselves; while it's not a difficult as I had gathered, it's still harder than them doing VoIP as part of their own triple-play.
So you are going to prohibit the operator of the fiber plant from running layer 3 services, but then turn around and let them offer IPTV? That seems quite inconsistent to me. And just because it's "hard"?
No; I wouldn't offer it retail; I'd offer it to all provider-comers wholesale, at cost plus, just like everything else.
Running a decent layer 3 service is "hard" too. Isn't the whole point to let these service providers compete with each other on the quality and cost of their services?
You could say the same thing about the uplink, though; I note you didn't throw a flag at that, or at Akamai; is the IPTV issue different to you? Fair point. 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
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jay Ashworth" <jra@baylink.com>
So you are going to prohibit the operator of the fiber plant from running layer 3 services, but then turn around and let them offer IPTV? That seems quite inconsistent to me. And just because it's "hard"?
No; I wouldn't offer it retail; I'd offer it to all provider-comers wholesale, at cost plus, just like everything else.
It's just been pointed out to me that I can farm that out. :-) 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
On Sat, 2 Feb 2013, Jay Ashworth wrote:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Brandon Ross" <bross@pobox.com>
6) And pursuant to 3, perhaps I could even set up the IPTV service and resell that to the L3 provider to bundle with their IP service, so they don't have to do it themselves; while it's not a difficult as I had gathered, it's still harder than them doing VoIP as part of their own triple-play.
So you are going to prohibit the operator of the fiber plant from running layer 3 services, but then turn around and let them offer IPTV? That seems quite inconsistent to me. And just because it's "hard"?
No; I wouldn't offer it retail; I'd offer it to all provider-comers wholesale, at cost plus, just like everything else.
It sure seems like just pushing the competition (or lack thereof) up the stack.
Running a decent layer 3 service is "hard" too. Isn't the whole point to let these service providers compete with each other on the quality and cost of their services?
You could say the same thing about the uplink,
Which uplink is that? I'm a little confused.
though; I note you didn't throw a flag at that, or at Akamai; is the IPTV issue different to you?
If you were to open your colo to all comers that have similar models to Akamai, that seems fair. After all, it's not the city selling Akamai services to either the ISPs or end-users, the city is just providing a convenient way for the providers that are there to interconnect with content providers that care to show up. Now if you were to encourage an IPTV services provider that WASN'T the city to co-locate at the facility, that seems reasonable as long as terms were even if another one wanted to show up. I could imagine that some might sell service direct retail, others might go wholesale with one of the other service providers. Maybe both? This whole thing is the highway analogy to me. The fiber is the road. The city MIGHT build a rest stop (layer 2), but shouldn't be allowed to either be in the trucking business (layer 3), nor in the business of manufacturing the products that get shipped over the road (IPTV, VOIP, etc.), and the same should apply to the company that maintains the fiber, if it's outsourced. -- Brandon Ross Yahoo & AIM: BrandonNRoss +1-404-635-6667 ICQ: 2269442 Schedule a meeting: https://doodle.com/bross Skype: brandonross
In a message written on Sat, Feb 02, 2013 at 06:14:56PM -0500, Brandon Ross wrote:
This whole thing is the highway analogy to me. The fiber is the road. The city MIGHT build a rest stop (layer 2), but shouldn't be allowed to either be in the trucking business (layer 3), nor in the business of manufacturing the products that get shipped over the road (IPTV, VOIP, etc.), and the same should apply to the company that maintains the fiber, if it's outsourced.
I think your analogy is largely correct (I'm not sure Rest Stop == Layer 2 is perfect, but close enough), but it is a very important way of describing things to a non-technical audience. FTTH should operate like roads in many respects. From ownership and access, to how the network is expanded. For instance a new neighborhood would see the developer build both the roads and fiber to specifications, and then turn them over to the municipality. Same model. Having multiple people build the infrastructure would be just as inefficeint as if every house had two roads built to it by two private companies. -- Leo Bicknell - bicknell@ufp.org - CCIE 3440 PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/
----- Original Message -----
From: "Leo Bicknell" <bicknell@ufp.org>
Having multiple people build the infrastructure would be just as inefficeint as if every house had two roads built to it by two private companies.
I was going to trot on the Manhattan 26-crossbuck telephone pole, and multiple power wires and water pipes, but roads is *much* better. Especially since my dad did this in the 70s, and I am a *big* fan of <deep breath> The Dwight D Eisenhower System of Interstate and Defense Highways. Yes, the Interstate System has a home page: https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/interstate/homepage.cfm 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
Jay, While its certainly technically possible to offer linear video in a shared network model the content owners have big objections of that. There really is no way to do wholesale IPTV except for a very few organizations like the cable coop (NCTC http://www.nctconline.org/). On Sat, Feb 2, 2013 at 5:57 PM, Jay Ashworth <jra@baylink.com> wrote:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Brandon Ross" <bross@pobox.com>
6) And pursuant to 3, perhaps I could even set up the IPTV service and resell that to the L3 provider to bundle with their IP service, so they don't have to do it themselves; while it's not a difficult as I had gathered, it's still harder than them doing VoIP as part of their own triple-play.
So you are going to prohibit the operator of the fiber plant from running layer 3 services, but then turn around and let them offer IPTV? That seems quite inconsistent to me. And just because it's "hard"?
No; I wouldn't offer it retail; I'd offer it to all provider-comers wholesale, at cost plus, just like everything else.
Running a decent layer 3 service is "hard" too. Isn't the whole point to let these service providers compete with each other on the quality and cost of their services?
You could say the same thing about the uplink, though; I note you didn't throw a flag at that, or at Akamai; is the IPTV issue different to you?
Fair point.
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
-- Scott Helms Vice President of Technology ZCorum (678) 507-5000 -------------------------------- http://twitter.com/kscotthelms --------------------------------
On Feb 2, 2013, at 2:26 PM, Jay Ashworth <jra@baylink.com> wrote:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jay Ashworth" <jra@baylink.com>
It's about 3 square miles, and has about 8000 passings, the majority of which are single or double family residential; a sprinkling of multi-tenant, about a dozen city facilities, and a bunch of retail multi-unit business.
I was musing, off-list, as to why there isn't a Mad-Lib you can just plug some numbers into and get within, say, 40% or so of your target costs for a given design.
Well,
http://www.ftthcommunitytoolkit.wikispaces.net
isn't it, but it does have a bunch of useful information for this project, looks like.
A couple of clarifying points:
1) I had posited GPON as I assumed that was where most of the CATV over FTTH hardware work was, vice FiOS. Turns out there's lots of hardware for IPTV as well, and quite a number of smaller deployments, so apparently that path is easier than I thought. The only difference is cross-connect fiber counts, and possibly some link budget.
2) I was planning to provide an IX switch in my colo, so all my L3 providers could short-circuit traffic to my *other* providers through it, unloading my uplinks.
3) Given that, I suppose I could put Limelight and Akamai racks in there, and couple them to the IX switch as well, policies permitting.
4) Given what a pisser it's going to be to get tags to me on the local backbone loops (about 3 are with 5 miles of my city border), I'm also considering having a 10G or 2 hauled in from each of 2 backbones, and reselling those to my L3 providers (again at cost recovery pricing), while not precluding any provider wanting to haul in their own uplink from doing so.
A better model, IMHO, is to encourage the backbones to come meet your providers at your IX/Colo.
5) There's a possiblity my college campus may be on I2 (or want to); perhaps I can facilitate that as well -- and possible (again, policies permitting) extend such connections to relevant staff members or students who live in the city) (I'm not as familiar with I2 as I should be).
Do some research before you pursue this too vocally or commit to it.
6) And pursuant to 3, perhaps I could even set up the IPTV service and resell that to the L3 provider to bundle with their IP service, so they don't have to do it themselves; while it's not a difficult as I had gathered, it's still harder than them doing VoIP as part of their own triple-play.
Pandora's can of worms. Owen
participants (7)
-
Brandon Ross -
Dylan N -
Jay Ashworth -
Leo Bicknell -
Owen DeLong -
Scott Helms -
Tim Jackson