----- Original Message ----- > From: "William Herrin" <b...@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 j...@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