"a limited set of providers willing to sell it, if at all." I know of one (Windstream) that offers it on a portion of their footprint. I swore others did, but I couldn't find them. Does anyone know who else in the NANOG area who does this? ----- Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions http://www.ics-il.com Midwest-IX http://www.midwest-ix.com ----- Original Message ----- From: Mark Tinka <mark@tinka.africa> To: Dave Cohen <craetdave@gmail.com> Cc: nanog@nanog.org, Mike Hammett <nanog@ics-il.net> Sent: Sun, 12 May 2024 17:34:19 -0500 (CDT) Subject: Re: Alien Waves On 5/13/24 00:11, Dave Cohen wrote:
Mark,
Many/all of these points are fair. My experience is purely terrestrial and obviously both the capacity and economic calculations are vastly different in those situations, which I should have called out.
Actually, terrestrial economics are easier to consider because you have the one thing the subsea applications don't have in abundance... power. Fair point, terrestrial revenues are significantly lower than subsea revenues on a per-bit basis, but so are the deployment costs. That evens out, somewhat.
However, I don’t think that the optical vendor is really the challenge - I would agree that, generally, spectrum is going to be available through larger providers that are using “traditional carrier grade” platforms - but rather at the service provider level. When something invariably breaks at 3 AM and the third shift Tier I NOC tech who hasn’t read the service playbook says “I don’t see any errors on your transponder, sorry, it’s not on our end” because they’re not aware that they actually don’t have access to the transponder and need to start looking elsewhere, that’s the sort of thing that creates systemic challenges for users regardless of whether the light is being shot across a Ciena 6500 or a Dave’s Box-o’-Lasers 1000.
I think you are contradicting yourself a bit, unless I misunderstand your point. Legacy vendors who have spectrum controllers have made this concern less of an issue. But then again, to be fair, adopting spectrum controllers along with bandwidth expansions via things like gridless line systems and C+L backbone architectures that make spectrum sales a lot more viable at scale do come at a hefty $$ premium. So I can understand that offering spectrum independent of spectrum controllers is going to be more trouble than it is worth. Ultimately, what I'm saying is that technologically, this is now a solved problem, for the most part. That said, I don't think it will be the majority of DWDM operators offering spectrum services en masse, for at least a few more years. So even if you want to procure managed spectrum or spectrum sharing, you are likely to come up against a limited set of providers willing to sell it, if at all. Mark.
There are some single-market/regional providers that I'm aware of currently offering spectrum, but I believe you'll be hard pressed to find others with national footprints in the US that will. Zayo and Lumen both did a bit of a will they/won't they with it for a long time, and my understanding is that neither of them currently offer it, or at least will tell you that publicly. On Sun, May 12, 2024 at 9:48 PM Mike Hammett <nanog@ics-il.net> wrote:
"a limited set of providers willing to sell it, if at all."
I know of one (Windstream) that offers it on a portion of their footprint. I swore others did, but I couldn't find them. Does anyone know who else in the NANOG area who does this?
----- Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions http://www.ics-il.com
Midwest-IX http://www.midwest-ix.com
----- Original Message ----- From: Mark Tinka <mark@tinka.africa> To: Dave Cohen <craetdave@gmail.com> Cc: nanog@nanog.org, Mike Hammett <nanog@ics-il.net> Sent: Sun, 12 May 2024 17:34:19 -0500 (CDT) Subject: Re: Alien Waves
On 5/13/24 00:11, Dave Cohen wrote:
Mark,
Many/all of these points are fair. My experience is purely terrestrial and obviously both the capacity and economic calculations are vastly different in those situations, which I should have called out.
Actually, terrestrial economics are easier to consider because you have the one thing the subsea applications don't have in abundance... power.
Fair point, terrestrial revenues are significantly lower than subsea revenues on a per-bit basis, but so are the deployment costs. That evens out, somewhat.
However, I don’t think that the optical vendor is really the challenge - I would agree that, generally, spectrum is going to be available through larger providers that are using “traditional carrier grade” platforms - but rather at the service provider level. When something invariably breaks at 3 AM and the third shift Tier I NOC tech who hasn’t read the service playbook says “I don’t see any errors on your transponder, sorry, it’s not on our end” because they’re not aware that they actually don’t have access to the transponder and need to start looking elsewhere, that’s the sort of thing that creates systemic challenges for users regardless of whether the light is being shot across a Ciena 6500 or a Dave’s Box-o’-Lasers 1000.
I think you are contradicting yourself a bit, unless I misunderstand your point.
Legacy vendors who have spectrum controllers have made this concern less of an issue. But then again, to be fair, adopting spectrum controllers along with bandwidth expansions via things like gridless line systems and C+L backbone architectures that make spectrum sales a lot more viable at scale do come at a hefty $$ premium. So I can understand that offering spectrum independent of spectrum controllers is going to be more trouble than it is worth.
Ultimately, what I'm saying is that technologically, this is now a solved problem, for the most part. That said, I don't think it will be the majority of DWDM operators offering spectrum services en masse, for at least a few more years. So even if you want to procure managed spectrum or spectrum sharing, you are likely to come up against a limited set of providers willing to sell it, if at all.
Mark.
-- - Dave Cohen craetdave@gmail.com
On 5/12/24 22:11, Dave Cohen wrote:
There are some single-market/regional providers that I'm aware of currently offering spectrum, but I believe you'll be hard pressed to find others with national footprints in the US that will. Zayo and Lumen both did a bit of a will they/won't they with it for a long time, and my understanding is that neither of them currently offer it, or at least will tell you that publicly.
I engaged Zayo about some spectrum and/or a single alien wave between a couple of "nearby" regional PoPs a couple years ago and got told pretty unequivocally that, despite it being in their service catalog, productized, and even having some form of standard pricing, they did not want to actually offer it. I doubt that's changed given my dealings with them since (which have been fine, to be clear), but I can't be 100% sure. I suspect they did at least turn up a few of them given that they went to the trouble of creating a full-fledged product for it. Maybe they found out the hassle wasn't worth it?
On 5/13/24 05:32, Brandon Martin wrote:
I doubt that's changed given my dealings with them since (which have been fine, to be clear), but I can't be 100% sure. I suspect they did at least turn up a few of them given that they went to the trouble of creating a full-fledged product for it. Maybe they found out the hassle wasn't worth it?
The upfront cash you get is great to make the quarter's/year's number in one go, but after that, all you are earning is annual O&M, which is not a lot especially if you still have to spend quite a bit maintaining the outside plant. And once that spectrum is gone, you can't touch it again even if the customer you sold it to may not be using all of it at the time. Electrical bandwidth is slow to shift, but it is stable monthly/quarterly revenue that you can bank a business plan on. Mark.
participants (4)
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Brandon Martin -
Dave Cohen -
Mark Tinka -
Mike Hammett