Re: Muni fiber: L1 or L2?

2013-02-02 Thread Eugen Leitl
On Fri, Feb 01, 2013 at 04:43:56PM -0800, Leo Bicknell wrote:

 The only place PON made any sense to me was extreme rural areas.
 If you could go 20km to a splitter and then hit 32 homes ~1km away
 (52km fiber pair length total), that was a win.  If the homes are
 2km from the CO, 32 pair (64km fiber pair length total) of home
 runs was cheaper than the savings on fiber, and then the cost of
 GPON splitters and equipment.  I'm trying to figure out if my assessment
 is correct or not...

Is there any specific reason why muni networks don't use 1-10 GBit
fiber mesh, using L3 switches in DSLAMs on every street corner?



Re: Muni fiber: L1 or L2?

2013-02-02 Thread Matt Addison
On Feb 1, 2013, at 22:54, Owen DeLong o...@delong.com wrote:

 If you have multicast and everyone is watching superbowl at same time,
 you're talking up very little bandwidth on that 2.mumble GPON link.

 Meh. Since everyone seems to want to be able to pause, rewind, etc.,
 multicast doesn't tend to happen so much even in the IPTV world these
 days.

Most of the time this is handled with a sliding buffer on the DVR at
the customer prem (TiVo time shifting style) unless you're talking
VOD.

On Feb 1, 2013, at 19:44, Leo Bicknell bickn...@ufp.org wrote:

 My limited understanding is that fiber really has two parameters,
 loss and modal disperson.  For most of the applications folks on
 this mailing list deal with loss is the big issue, and modal disperson
 is something that can be ignored.  However for for many of the more
 interesting applications involving splitters, super long distances,
 or passive amplifiers modal disperson is actually a much larger
 issue.

 I would imagine if you put X light into a 32:1 splitter, each leg
 would leg 1/32nd of the light (acutally a bit less, no doubt), but
 I have an inking the disperson characteristics would be much, much
 worse.

 Is this the cause of the shorter distance on the downstream GPON
 channel, or does it have to do more with the upstream GPON channel,
 which is an odd kettle of fish going through a splitter backwards?
 If it is the issue, have any vendors tried disperson compensation with
 any success?

I'd expect dispersion to be dispersion, in my limited optical
education I've only heard that this is influenced by distance, not
power level, so the signal would disperse the same amount whether its
7km of trunk + 100m of drop, or 100m of trunk + 7km of drop. 1310 and
1410 aren't particularly close so no need to worry about CMD causing
cross channel interference.

Quick googling shows this isn't an issue in 2.5G GPON plants which
have an 16000ps-nm CMD tolerance, but 10G (XGPON or whatever the
latest name is) will only have an 1100ps-nm tolerance which might add
up fast depending on the fiber in the ground (Anyone have any good
references on common fiber CMD/PMD at different wavelengths? Most of
the references I found were focused around 1550)

How the receiver in a GPON would respond to rapidly shifting
dispersion/power levels due to upstream TDMA isn't something I'm
familiar with. You could compensate for the power level with
attenuators, but if you needed DC on every customer that's going to
get expensive quick unless you can do it on the trunk side just to get
the worst offenders back into your receivers window.

~Matt



Re: Muni fiber: L1 or L2?

2013-02-02 Thread Jay Ashworth
- Original Message -
 From: Jean-Francois Mezei jfmezei_na...@vaxination.ca

 On 13-02-01 22:52, Owen DeLong wrote:
  Since the discussion here is about muni fiber capabilities and ideal
  greenfield
  plant designs, existing fiber is irrelevant to the discussion at
  hand.
 
 Not so irrelevant. If the municipality wishes to attract as many
 competitive ISPs as possible, it wants to build a standard last mile
 that ISPs can easily interface to. One which is compatible with other
 FTTH systems.
 
 Currently, the standard is GPON (even though there are many variations
 to the theme).

There is a certain amount of utility to the we should provide something
which incoming providers who are already revved up in a specific direction 
can work with easily argument, yes.

Assuming there really are no loss or dispersal problems with 'splitter
at the MDF', this will serve; an incoming L3 provider would have to put 
the boxes in slightly different places than usual, but at least they'd be 
the same boxes.

 Sone may say that having L1 service with each ISP having their OLT
 with
 splitters at the CO is an advantage. It also means that each ISP has
 to
 have its own ONTs in homes and they can all choose different configs
 for
 OLTs and the light in the fibre. Greater flexibility to differentiate
 between ISPs. (one may choose RFoG for TV with DOCSIS for data while
 the
 other is an all data link with IPTV.)

Correct; we say that.

 But for an end user, switching ISPs would mean switching the CPE
 equipment too since the ONT installed by ISP-1 may not be compatible
 with OLT used by ISP-2.

Sure, but that's already true, and that's not a problem I'm trying to
optimize out, frankly.  

 Requiring an ISP to have its own OLT at the CO with its own splitter
 also raises startup costs and reduces the chances of having
 competitive ISP environment.

See below.

 Providing L2 service means that ISPs connect to a municipal OLT, so they
 do not have to purchase OLTs and bother with splitters. At that point,
 it si simpler and cheaper to deploy splitters in neighbouhoods. It
 also reduces number of splices.

Yes, and no, in that order.

If you'd been following along all week, you would have seen that the OP
(me :-) wants to do *both*; supply L1 service to providers or subscribers
that want that, and L2 service for other providers who are willing to pay
more per sub per month, but have less capital investment up front.

 When you do 1:1, you may have a big cable with lots of strands leaving
 the CO, but you'll have a JWI in neighbouhood where you cross connect
 the strands from CO to the strand that uses the pre-fab cable to the
 backyards of homes served.

Sure.

Just no splitter.
 
 So in all the calculations made on dB loss, the number of splices was
 not factored in. You're not going to get a continuous cable from the CO
 to the telephone pole behind a home. If you put the splitter at the CO
 you get the losses from the splitter, and then losses from a splice at
 the neighbouhood where trunk from CO connects to cables that runs
 through backyards.

True.  Why I'll be subbing the plant design to a company that does that
every day of the year, instead of trying to do it myself.

 When you put the splitter in the neighbouhood, it performs both the
 splitting and the connection of the cable from CO to the backyards. So
 you eliminate one splice.

Yes, but everyone on a splitter must be backhauled to the same L1 provider,
and putting splitters *in the outside plant* precludes any other type
of L1 service, *ever*.  So that's a non-starter.

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth  Baylink   j...@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



RE: Will wholesale-only muni actually bring the boys to your yard?

2013-02-02 Thread Brandon Ross

On Fri, 1 Feb 2013, Frank Bulk (iname.com) wrote:

What's missing in this dialogue is the video component of an offering. 
Many customers like a triple (or quad) play because the price points are 
reasonable comparable to getting unbundled pricing from more than one 
provider, and they have just throat to choke and bill to pay.


I must be missing something here.  Why would a triple play using IPTV and 
VOIP be unachievable in this model?


--
Brandon Ross  Yahoo  AIM:  BrandonNRoss
+1-404-635-6667ICQ:  2269442
Schedule a meeting:  https://doodle.com/brossSkype:  brandonross



Re: Will wholesale-only muni actually bring the boys to your yard?

2013-02-02 Thread Jay Ashworth
- Original Message -
 From: Brandon Ross br...@pobox.com

 On Fri, 1 Feb 2013, Frank Bulk (iname.com) wrote:
 
  What's missing in this dialogue is the video component of an offering.
  Many customers like a triple (or quad) play because the price points
  are reasonable comparable to getting unbundled pricing from more than
  one provider, and they have just throat to choke and bill to pay.
 
 I must be missing something here. Why would a triple play using IPTV
 and VOIP be unachievable in this model?

Available Providers.

The City, remember, won't be doing L3, so we'd need to find someone who
was doing that.  You know how big a job it is to be a cable company?

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth  Baylink   j...@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



Re: Will wholesale-only muni actually bring the boys to your yard?

2013-02-02 Thread Brandon Ross

On Sat, 2 Feb 2013, Jay Ashworth wrote:


Available Providers.

The City, remember, won't be doing L3, so we'd need to find someone who
was doing that.  You know how big a job it is to be a cable company?


I would think in this model that the city would be prohibited from 
providing those services.


Perhaps I live in a different world, but just about all of the small to 
midsize service providers I work with offer triple play today, and nearly 
all of them are migrating their triple play services to IP.


If rural telco in Alabama or Mississippi can deliver triple play, surely a 
larger provider somewhere like NYC can do as well, no?


--
Brandon Ross  Yahoo  AIM:  BrandonNRoss
+1-404-635-6667ICQ:  2269442
Schedule a meeting:  https://doodle.com/brossSkype:  brandonross



Re: Will wholesale-only muni actually bring the boys to your yard?

2013-02-02 Thread Jay Ashworth
- Original Message -
 From: Brandon Ross br...@pobox.com

 On Sat, 2 Feb 2013, Jay Ashworth wrote:
 
  Available Providers.
 
  The City, remember, won't be doing L3, so we'd need to find someone
  who was doing that. You know how big a job it is to be a cable company?
 
 I would think in this model that the city would be prohibited from
 providing those services.

That is what I just said, yes, Brandon: the City would offer L1 optical
home-run connectivity and optional L2 transport and aggregation with
Ethernet provider hand-off, and nothing at any higher layers.

 Perhaps I live in a different world, but just about all of the small to
 midsize service providers I work with offer triple play today, and nearly
 all of them are migrating their triple play services to IP.

Really.  Citations?  I'd love to see it play that way, myself.

 If rural telco in Alabama or Mississippi can deliver triple play, surely a
 larger provider somewhere like NYC can do as well, no?

Well, I ain't no NYC, but... :-)

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth  Baylink   j...@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



Re: Muni fiber: L1 or L2?

2013-02-02 Thread Owen DeLong

On Feb 2, 2013, at 2:19 AM, Eugen Leitl eu...@leitl.org wrote:

 On Fri, Feb 01, 2013 at 04:43:56PM -0800, Leo Bicknell wrote:
 
 The only place PON made any sense to me was extreme rural areas.
 If you could go 20km to a splitter and then hit 32 homes ~1km away
 (52km fiber pair length total), that was a win.  If the homes are
 2km from the CO, 32 pair (64km fiber pair length total) of home
 runs was cheaper than the savings on fiber, and then the cost of
 GPON splitters and equipment.  I'm trying to figure out if my assessment
 is correct or not...
 
 Is there any specific reason why muni networks don't use 1-10 GBit
 fiber mesh, using L3 switches in DSLAMs on every street corner?

Well, one reason is that, IMHO, the goal here is to provide a flexible
L1 platform that will allow multiple competing providers a low barrier
to entry to provide a multitude of competitive services.

Owen




Re: Muni fiber: L1 or L2?

2013-02-02 Thread david peahi
Perhaps I missed a reference to receiver sensitivity in this thread. Since
the receiver optical-electric components are binary in nature, received
optical dB only has to be equal to or greater than the receiver's
sensitivity. Low or high dB received light produces the same quality at the
receiver. Thus, dB loss can be extensive due to factors such as
attenuation, splices, dispersal, but as long as the received dB level is
equal to the receiver sensitivity, it doesn't matter how much launched dB
is lost. Is the point that splitters reduce the effective distance from the
launch point in the PON architecture?

David

On Fri, Feb 1, 2013 at 7:52 PM, Owen DeLong o...@delong.com wrote:


 On Feb 1, 2013, at 14:17 , Jean-Francois Mezei 
 jfmezei_na...@vaxination.ca wrote:

  On 13-02-01 16:03, Jason Baugher wrote:
 
  The reason to push splitters towards the customer end is financial, not
  technical.
 
  It also has to do with existing fibre infrastructure. If a Telco has
  already adopted a fibre to a node philosophy, then it has a;ready
  installed a limited number of strands between CO and many neighbouhoods.

 Since the discussion here is about muni fiber capabilities and ideal
 greenfield
 plant designs, existing fiber is irrelevant to the discussion at hand.

  It makes sense to standardise on one technology. And if that technology,
  because it is used by many, ends up much cheaper due to economies of
  scale, it makes sense to adopt it.

 Only if you're a single vendor looking to provide a single-vendor solution.
 That's really not what this conversation is about, IMHO. In fact, that's a
 pretty good summary of the situation we're trying to fix.

  And remember that it isn't just the cable. You need to consider the OLT
  cards. An OLT card can often support a few GPON systems each passing 32
  homes.

 Not sure why this matters...

  With 1 strand per home, you take up one port per home served. (possibly
  per home passed depending on deployment philosophy). So you end up
  needing far more cards in an OLT to serve the same number of people.
  More $$$ needed.

 Uh, no... That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about still
 using
 splitters, but, putting the splitter next to the OLT instead of near the
 ONT
 end. That's all.

  GPON isn't suited for trunks. But for last mile, is it really so bad ?

 Yes... Because...

  2.mumble gpbs of capacity for 32 homes yields 62mbps of sustained
  download for each home. (assuming you have 32 homes conected and using
  it at same time)

 Great by todays standards, but likely to be obsoleted within 10 years.
 Given
 the nearly 100 year old nature of some copper plants, I'd like to see us
 start
 building fiber plants in a way that doesn't lock us into a particular
 technology
 choice constrained to the economic tradeoffs that are relevant today and
 may be completely different in as little as 5 years.

  If you have multicast and everyone is watching superbowl at same time,
  you're talking up very little bandwidth on that 2.mumble GPON link.

 Meh. Since everyone seems to want to be able to pause, rewind, etc.,
 multicast doesn't tend to happen so much even in the IPTV world these
 days.

 Owen






Re: Will wholesale-only muni actually bring the boys to your yard?

2013-02-02 Thread Eric Brunner-Williams
On 2/2/13 9:54 AM, Jay Ashworth wrote:
  I would think in this model that the city would be prohibited from
  providing those services.
 That is what I just said, yes, Brandon: the City would offer L1 optical
 home-run connectivity and optional L2 transport and aggregation with
 Ethernet provider hand-off, and nothing at any higher layers.
 

The L0 (ROW, poles  conduits) provider, and
in option #1 L1 connectivity  provider, and
in option #2 L2 transport and aggregation provider,
aka City
is also a consumer of City 2 City service above L2, and
is also a consumer of City 2 Subscriber services above L2.

Creating the better platform for competitive access to the City's
L(option(s)) infrastructure must not prelude City as a provider.

Eric



Rollup: Small City Municipal Broadband

2013-02-02 Thread Jay Ashworth
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 

Re: Will wholesale-only muni actually bring the boys to your yard?

2013-02-02 Thread Jay Ashworth
- Original Message -
 From: Eric Brunner-Williams brun...@nic-naa.net

 The L0 (ROW, poles  conduits) provider, and
 in option #1 L1 connectivity provider, and
 in option #2 L2 transport and aggregation provider,
 aka City
 is also a consumer of City 2 City service above L2, and
 is also a consumer of City 2 Subscriber services above L2.
 
 Creating the better platform for competitive access to the City's
 L(option(s)) infrastructure must not prelude City as a provider.

The City will be it's own customer for L1 ptp between our facilities,
yes.  We will also be a customer of the L1 service to provide the L2
service, and that MRC cost-recovery will be included in the L2 cost.

While I realize that we could in turn be a competing L3 provider as a 
customer of the L1/2 provider, I'm loathe to go there if I'm not actually
forced to; even moreso than the L2 bump, that's a *big* increase in
labor and hence costs, in addition to which I've been convinced here
that potential L3 providers will be less likely not to assume The Fix 
Is In in that case; the City's L3 provider getting an unfair break.

If I can't get an LOI as suggested in the posting I just put up, then
we may need to be the provider-of-last-resort, at a higher cost to continue
to make coming in and competing as a provider.

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth  Baylink   j...@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



Re: Muni fiber: L1 or L2?

2013-02-02 Thread Jean-Francois Mezei
On 13-02-02 10:36, Jay Ashworth wrote:

 Yes, but everyone on a splitter must be backhauled to the same L1 provider,
 and putting splitters *in the outside plant* precludes any other type
 of L1 service, *ever*.  So that's a non-starter.


If you have 4 ISPs, why not put 4 splitters in the neighbourhood ?
Individual homes can be hooked to any one of the 4 splitters, and you
then only need 4 strands between splitter and CO.

I understand that having strands from CO to Homes is superior at the
technical point of veiw and gives you more flexibility for different
services (including commercial services to a home while the neighbour
gets residential services).

But if strands from CO to homes is so superior, how come telcos aren't
doing it and are using GPON instead ?




Re: Muni fiber: L1 or L2?

2013-02-02 Thread Jay Ashworth
Because telcos specifically want to /discourage/ competition.

You're perilously close to trolling, here, sir...
-jra

Jean-Francois Mezei jfmezei_na...@vaxination.ca wrote:

On 13-02-02 10:36, Jay Ashworth wrote:

 Yes, but everyone on a splitter must be backhauled to the same L1
provider,
 and putting splitters *in the outside plant* precludes any other type
 of L1 service, *ever*.  So that's a non-starter.


If you have 4 ISPs, why not put 4 splitters in the neighbourhood ?
Individual homes can be hooked to any one of the 4 splitters, and you
then only need 4 strands between splitter and CO.

I understand that having strands from CO to Homes is superior at the
technical point of veiw and gives you more flexibility for different
services (including commercial services to a home while the neighbour
gets residential services).

But if strands from CO to homes is so superior, how come telcos aren't
doing it and are using GPON instead ?

-- 
Sent from my Android phone with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.


Re: Muni fiber: L1 or L2?

2013-02-02 Thread Scott Helms
Owen,

A layer 1 architecture isn't going to be an economical option for the
foreseeable future so opining on its value is a waste of time...its simple
not feasible now or even 5 years from now because of costs.  The optimal
open access network (with current or near future technology) is well known.
 Its called Ethernet and the methods to do triple play and open access are
well documented not to mention already in wide spread use. Trying to
enforce a layer 1 approach would be more expensive than the attempts to
make this work with Packet Over SONET or even ATM.

What is about a normal Ethernet deployment that you see as a negative?
 What problem are you tying to solve?


On Sat, Feb 2, 2013 at 1:04 PM, Owen DeLong o...@delong.com wrote:


 On Feb 2, 2013, at 2:19 AM, Eugen Leitl eu...@leitl.org wrote:

  On Fri, Feb 01, 2013 at 04:43:56PM -0800, Leo Bicknell wrote:
 
  The only place PON made any sense to me was extreme rural areas.
  If you could go 20km to a splitter and then hit 32 homes ~1km away
  (52km fiber pair length total), that was a win.  If the homes are
  2km from the CO, 32 pair (64km fiber pair length total) of home
  runs was cheaper than the savings on fiber, and then the cost of
  GPON splitters and equipment.  I'm trying to figure out if my assessment
  is correct or not...
 
  Is there any specific reason why muni networks don't use 1-10 GBit
  fiber mesh, using L3 switches in DSLAMs on every street corner?

 Well, one reason is that, IMHO, the goal here is to provide a flexible
 L1 platform that will allow multiple competing providers a low barrier
 to entry to provide a multitude of competitive services.

 Owen





-- 
Scott Helms
Vice President of Technology
ZCorum
(678) 507-5000

http://twitter.com/kscotthelms



Re: Muni fiber: L1 or L2?

2013-02-02 Thread Owen DeLong

On Feb 2, 2013, at 11:23 AM, Jean-Francois Mezei jfmezei_na...@vaxination.ca 
wrote:

 On 13-02-02 10:36, Jay Ashworth wrote:
 
 Yes, but everyone on a splitter must be backhauled to the same L1 provider,
 and putting splitters *in the outside plant* precludes any other type
 of L1 service, *ever*.  So that's a non-starter.
 
 
 If you have 4 ISPs, why not put 4 splitters in the neighbourhood ?
 Individual homes can be hooked to any one of the 4 splitters, and you
 then only need 4 strands between splitter and CO.
 
 I understand that having strands from CO to Homes is superior at the
 technical point of veiw and gives you more flexibility for different
 services (including commercial services to a home while the neighbour
 gets residential services).
 
 But if strands from CO to homes is so superior, how come telcos aren't
 doing it and are using GPON instead ?
 

Because Telcos are optimizing for different parameters. They want the cheapest
way to provide an adequate solution by today's standards and, where possible,
to discourage competition. They want to offer a very small number of very
standardized products. GPON with splitters in the neighborhood meet those
goals.

Hopefully, a city has a somewhat opposite set of goals. To provide a quality
infrastructure for many years to come which encourages and supports the 
development
of a vibrant and competitive market for a wide variety of services.

Owen




Re: Rollup: Small City Municipal Broadband

2013-02-02 Thread Scott Helms
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 j...@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 

Re: Rollup: Small City Municipal Broadband

2013-02-02 Thread Dylan N

-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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Re: Rollup: Small City Municipal Broadband

2013-02-02 Thread Jay Ashworth
- Original Message -
 From: Scott Helms khe...@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   j...@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



Re: Muni fiber: L1 or L2?

2013-02-02 Thread Jay Ashworth
- Original Message -
 From: Scott Helms khe...@zcorum.com

 A layer 1 architecture isn't going to be an economical option for the
 foreseeable future so opining on its value is a waste of time...its
 simple
 not feasible now or even 5 years from now because of costs. The
 optimal
 open access network (with current or near future technology) is well
 known.
 Its called Ethernet and the methods to do triple play and open access
 are
 well documented not to mention already in wide spread use. Trying to
 enforce a layer 1 approach would be more expensive than the attempts
 to
 make this work with Packet Over SONET or even ATM.
 
 What is about a normal Ethernet deployment that you see as a negative?
 What problem are you tying to solve?

Well, Scott, assuming you mean ethernet over fiber, then you've just said
that it's economically infeasible to deploy the physical layer of 
precisely the architecture you advocate.

I find these conflicting reports most conflicting.

As for what problems are you trying to solve, I just itemized that.

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth  Baylink   j...@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



Re: Rollup: Small City Municipal Broadband

2013-02-02 Thread Jay Ashworth
 Original Message -
 From: Dylan N dy...@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 Verizoumahemany 
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   j...@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



Re: Ddos mitigation service

2013-02-02 Thread Beavis
+1 on Dosarrest, not so crazy price, used them before their support is
awesome. Used to be called whypigsfly, heard that some of their
techniques of mitigation we're used by prolexic as well.

I'm not a sales rep. nor will I ever be.

On Fri, Feb 1, 2013 at 10:28 AM, Joseph Chin l-na...@iodi.se wrote:
 From my personal experience, I am a fan of pure-play DDoS mitigation service
 providers (e.g. Prolexic, Dosarrest) because they are the least likely to
 give up on you when things get real difficult. Read the SLA careful to make
 sure it is fit for your purpose.

 -Original Message-
 From: James Thomas [mailto:j...@nimblesec.com]
 Sent: Friday, February 01, 2013 3:49 PM
 To: nanog@nanog.org
 Subject: Re: Ddos mitigation service

 Hi Pierre,

 Thank you for your interesting note.

 On 01/02/2013 09:57, Pierre Lamy wrote:
 The 3 major scrubbing vendors:

 Prolexic
 Verisign
 Akamai

 IIRC, CloudFlare claims to the same capcity of DDOS mitigation as Prolexic
 (500gb) and also has a free option with fewer scrubbing features.  Do you
 have experience with it, or is there some other reason to have excluded it
 from your list?  I apologize for my noobish question.

 Cheers,

 James







-- 
()  ascii ribbon campaign - against html e-mail
/\  www.asciiribbon.org   - against proprietary attachments

Disclaimer:
http://goldmark.org/jeff/stupid-disclaimers/



Re: Rollup: Small City Municipal Broadband

2013-02-02 Thread Scott Helms
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 j...@baylink.com wrote:

 - Original Message -
  From: Scott Helms khe...@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
 j...@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



Re: Rollup: Small City Municipal Broadband

2013-02-02 Thread Jay Ashworth
- Original Message -
 From: Scott Helms khe...@zcorum.com

 I'm spotty on mailing lists since most of my time is spent building
 these kinds of networks.

Showoff.  :-)

 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.

I hope I said E7; it's what I meant to say.  Yes, I wasn't going to 
stop at Calix; I'm just juggling budgetary type numbers at the moment;
I'll have 3 or 4 quotes before I go to press.  It's a 36 month project
just to beginning of build, at this point, likely.

Assuming I get the gig at all.

 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.

Other people here, said it.  If nothing else, it's certainly what the
largest nationwide FTTH provider is provisioning, and I suspect it serves
more passings than anything else; possibly than everything else.

But it doesn't matter either way, except in cross-connects between my MDF
and my colo cages; except for GPONs apparent compatibility with RF CATV
delivery (which I gather, but have not researched) is just block-upconvert,
I don't care either way; there's no difference in the plant buildout.

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth  Baylink   j...@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



Re: Muni fiber: L1 or L2?

2013-02-02 Thread Owen DeLong

On Feb 2, 2013, at 12:07 PM, Scott Helms khe...@zcorum.com wrote:

 Owen,
 
 A layer 1 architecture isn't going to be an economical option for the 
 foreseeable future so opining on its value is a waste of time...its simple 
 not feasible now or even 5 years from now because of costs.  The optimal open 
 access network (with current or near future technology) is well known.  Its 
 called Ethernet and the methods to do triple play and open access are well 
 documented not to mention already in wide spread use. Trying to enforce a 
 layer 1 approach would be more expensive than the attempts to make this work 
 with Packet Over SONET or even ATM.
 
 What is about a normal Ethernet deployment that you see as a negative?  What 
 problem are you tying to solve?
 

Ethernet works just fine in the L1 solution I've proposed, so I'm not sure why 
you say it isn't economically viable to do so.

Owen

 
 On Sat, Feb 2, 2013 at 1:04 PM, Owen DeLong o...@delong.com wrote:
 
 On Feb 2, 2013, at 2:19 AM, Eugen Leitl eu...@leitl.org wrote:
 
  On Fri, Feb 01, 2013 at 04:43:56PM -0800, Leo Bicknell wrote:
 
  The only place PON made any sense to me was extreme rural areas.
  If you could go 20km to a splitter and then hit 32 homes ~1km away
  (52km fiber pair length total), that was a win.  If the homes are
  2km from the CO, 32 pair (64km fiber pair length total) of home
  runs was cheaper than the savings on fiber, and then the cost of
  GPON splitters and equipment.  I'm trying to figure out if my assessment
  is correct or not...
 
  Is there any specific reason why muni networks don't use 1-10 GBit
  fiber mesh, using L3 switches in DSLAMs on every street corner?
 
 Well, one reason is that, IMHO, the goal here is to provide a flexible
 L1 platform that will allow multiple competing providers a low barrier
 to entry to provide a multitude of competitive services.
 
 Owen
 
 
 
 
 
 -- 
 Scott Helms 
 Vice President of Technology 
 ZCorum 
 (678) 507-5000 
  
 http://twitter.com/kscotthelms 
  



Fwd: Rollup: Small City Municipal Broadband

2013-02-02 Thread Scott Helms
 I hope I said E7; it's what I meant to say.  Yes, I wasn't going to
 stop at Calix; I'm just juggling budgetary type numbers at the moment;
 I'll have 3 or 4 quotes before I go to press.  It's a 36 month project
 just to beginning of build, at this point, likely.

 Assuming I get the gig at all.


The E7 is a good shelf, so that's a decent starting point.  I'd also talk
with Zhone, Allied Telesys, Adtran, and Cisco if for no other reason but
get the best pricing you can.  I'd also focus much more on your cost per
port than the density since your uptake rate will be driven by economics
long before port density and how much space your gear takes becomes an
issue.


  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.

 Other people here, said it.  If nothing else, it's certainly what the
 largest nationwide FTTH provider is provisioning, and I suspect it serves
 more passings than anything else; possibly than everything else.


I'm not sure what you mean by this.  The largest PON offering in the US is
Verizon's FIOS, but AFAIK they don't interconnect with anyone at layer 2
and their layer 3 fiber connections are either Packet Over SONET, Gig
E(most common), or very occasionally still ATM.  I have heard of a few
instances where they'd buy existing GPON networks but I've never heard of
them cross connecting like this even with operators that they do
significant business with in other ways.



 But it doesn't matter either way, except in cross-connects between my MDF
 and my colo cages; except for GPONs apparent compatibility with RF CATV
 delivery (which I gather, but have not researched) is just block-upconvert,
 I don't care either way; there's no difference in the plant buildout.


This is not correct.  DOCSIS is an MPEG stream over QAM or QPSK modulation
and there is nothing about it that is compatible to any flavor of PON.  In
fact if you look at the various CableLabs standards you'll see DPoE (
http://www.cablelabs.com/dpoe/specifications/index.html) which lists how a
DOCSIS system can inter-operate and provision an PON system. If you look at
the two largest PON networks (FIOS and Uverse) you'll see the two different
approaches to doing video with a PON architecture.  Verizon is simply
modulating a MPEG stream (this is block compatible to a cable plant, in
fact its the same way that a HFC network functions) on a different color on
the same fiber that they send their PON signalling.  ATT takes another
approach where they simply run IPTV over their PON network.  I've listened
to presentations from Verizon's VP of Engineering (at that time) for FIOS
and he said their choice was driven by the technology available when they
launched and they did modulated RF over their fiber instead of IPTV because
that technology wasn't as mature when they started. Verizon's approach may
be what someone was thinking of when they said that PON was compatible to
cable signaling but that's not how it works.



 Cheers,
 -- jra
 --
 Jay R. Ashworth  Baylink
 j...@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




-- 
Scott Helms
Vice President of Technology
ZCorum
(678) 507-5000

http://twitter.com/kscotthelms



Re: Muni fiber: L1 or L2?

2013-02-02 Thread Scott Helms
Owen,

Cross connecting at layer 1 is what I'm saying isn't feasible.  If you want
to simply hand them a fiber then sell dark fiber or DWDM ports but trying
to create an architecture around PON or other splitters won't work because
PON splitters aren't compatible with other protocols.


On Sat, Feb 2, 2013 at 4:26 PM, Owen DeLong o...@delong.com wrote:


 On Feb 2, 2013, at 12:07 PM, Scott Helms khe...@zcorum.com wrote:

 Owen,

 A layer 1 architecture isn't going to be an economical option for the
 foreseeable future so opining on its value is a waste of time...its simple
 not feasible now or even 5 years from now because of costs.  The optimal
 open access network (with current or near future technology) is well known.
  Its called Ethernet and the methods to do triple play and open access are
 well documented not to mention already in wide spread use. Trying to
 enforce a layer 1 approach would be more expensive than the attempts to
 make this work with Packet Over SONET or even ATM.

 What is about a normal Ethernet deployment that you see as a negative?
  What problem are you tying to solve?


 Ethernet works just fine in the L1 solution I've proposed, so I'm not sure
 why you say it isn't economically viable to do so.

 Owen


 On Sat, Feb 2, 2013 at 1:04 PM, Owen DeLong o...@delong.com wrote:


 On Feb 2, 2013, at 2:19 AM, Eugen Leitl eu...@leitl.org wrote:

  On Fri, Feb 01, 2013 at 04:43:56PM -0800, Leo Bicknell wrote:
 
  The only place PON made any sense to me was extreme rural areas.
  If you could go 20km to a splitter and then hit 32 homes ~1km away
  (52km fiber pair length total), that was a win.  If the homes are
  2km from the CO, 32 pair (64km fiber pair length total) of home
  runs was cheaper than the savings on fiber, and then the cost of
  GPON splitters and equipment.  I'm trying to figure out if my
 assessment
  is correct or not...
 
  Is there any specific reason why muni networks don't use 1-10 GBit
  fiber mesh, using L3 switches in DSLAMs on every street corner?

 Well, one reason is that, IMHO, the goal here is to provide a flexible
 L1 platform that will allow multiple competing providers a low barrier
 to entry to provide a multitude of competitive services.

 Owen





 --
 Scott Helms
 Vice President of Technology
 ZCorum
 (678) 507-5000
 
 http://twitter.com/kscotthelms
 





-- 
Scott Helms
Vice President of Technology
ZCorum
(678) 507-5000

http://twitter.com/kscotthelms



Re: Will wholesale-only muni actually bring the boys to your yard?

2013-02-02 Thread Brandon Ross

On Sat, 2 Feb 2013, Jay Ashworth wrote:


Perhaps I live in a different world, but just about all of the small to
midsize service providers I work with offer triple play today, and nearly
all of them are migrating their triple play services to IP.


Really.  Citations?  I'd love to see it play that way, myself.


Okay:

South Central Rural Telephone
Glasgow, KY
http://www.scrtc.com/
Left side of page, Digital TV service.  See this news article:

http://www.wcluradio.com/index.php?option=com_contentview=articleid=15567:capacity-crowd-hears-good-report-at-scrtc-annuan-mee

He also reported that SCRTC is continuing to upgrade our services, 
converting customers to the new IPTV service and trying to get as much 
fiber optic cable built as possible.


Camellia Communications
Greenville, AL
http://camelliacom.com/services/ctv-dvr.html
Note the models of set-top boxes they are using are IP based

Griswold Cooperative Telephone
Griswold, IA
http://www.griswoldtelco.com/griswold-coop-iptv-video

Farmer's Mutual Coopeative Telephone
Moulton, IA
http://farmersmutualcoop.com/

Citizens
Floyd, VA
http://www.citizens.coop/


How about a Canadian example you say?

CoopTel
Valcourt, QB
http://www.cooptel.qc.ca/en-residentiel-tele-guidesusager.php
Check out the models of set-top boxes here too.

Oh, also, have you heard of ATT U-Verse?

http://www.att.com/gen/press-room?pid=4800cdvn=newsnewsarticleid=26580

ATT U-verse TV is the only 100 percent Internet Protocol-based 
television (IPTV) service offered by a national service provider


So even the likes of ATT, in this scheme, could buy fiber paths to their 
subs and provide TV service.  I'm pretty sure ATT knows how to deliver 
voice services over IP as well.


Do you want more examples?  I bet I can come up with 50 small/regional 
telecom companies that are providing TV services over IP in North America 
if I put my mind to it.


--
Brandon Ross  Yahoo  AIM:  BrandonNRoss
+1-404-635-6667ICQ:  2269442
Schedule a meeting:  https://doodle.com/brossSkype:  brandonross



Re: Muni fiber: L1 or L2?

2013-02-02 Thread Owen DeLong
It seems that you are (deliberately or otherwise) seriously misconstruing what 
I am saying.

I'm saying that if you build an L1 dark fiber system as we have described, the 
purchasers can use it to deploy Ethernet, PON, or any other technology.

I'm not saying it's how I would build out a PON only system. That was never the 
goal.

The goal is to provide a municipal L1 service that can be used by ANY provider 
for ANY service, or as close to that as possible.

To make the offering more attractive to low-budget providers, the system may 
also incorporate some L2 services.

Owen

On Feb 2, 2013, at 1:31 PM, Scott Helms khe...@zcorum.com wrote:

 Owen,
 
 Cross connecting at layer 1 is what I'm saying isn't feasible.  If you want 
 to simply hand them a fiber then sell dark fiber or DWDM ports but trying to 
 create an architecture around PON or other splitters won't work because PON 
 splitters aren't compatible with other protocols.
 
 
 On Sat, Feb 2, 2013 at 4:26 PM, Owen DeLong o...@delong.com wrote:
 
 On Feb 2, 2013, at 12:07 PM, Scott Helms khe...@zcorum.com wrote:
 
 Owen,
 
 A layer 1 architecture isn't going to be an economical option for the 
 foreseeable future so opining on its value is a waste of time...its simple 
 not feasible now or even 5 years from now because of costs.  The optimal 
 open access network (with current or near future technology) is well known.  
 Its called Ethernet and the methods to do triple play and open access are 
 well documented not to mention already in wide spread use. Trying to enforce 
 a layer 1 approach would be more expensive than the attempts to make this 
 work with Packet Over SONET or even ATM.
 
 What is about a normal Ethernet deployment that you see as a negative?  What 
 problem are you tying to solve?
 
 
 Ethernet works just fine in the L1 solution I've proposed, so I'm not sure 
 why you say it isn't economically viable to do so.
 
 Owen
 
 
 On Sat, Feb 2, 2013 at 1:04 PM, Owen DeLong o...@delong.com wrote:
 
 On Feb 2, 2013, at 2:19 AM, Eugen Leitl eu...@leitl.org wrote:
 
  On Fri, Feb 01, 2013 at 04:43:56PM -0800, Leo Bicknell wrote:
 
  The only place PON made any sense to me was extreme rural areas.
  If you could go 20km to a splitter and then hit 32 homes ~1km away
  (52km fiber pair length total), that was a win.  If the homes are
  2km from the CO, 32 pair (64km fiber pair length total) of home
  runs was cheaper than the savings on fiber, and then the cost of
  GPON splitters and equipment.  I'm trying to figure out if my assessment
  is correct or not...
 
  Is there any specific reason why muni networks don't use 1-10 GBit
  fiber mesh, using L3 switches in DSLAMs on every street corner?
 
 Well, one reason is that, IMHO, the goal here is to provide a flexible
 L1 platform that will allow multiple competing providers a low barrier
 to entry to provide a multitude of competitive services.
 
 Owen
 
 
 
 
 
 -- 
 Scott Helms 
 Vice President of Technology 
 ZCorum 
 (678) 507-5000 
  
 http://twitter.com/kscotthelms 
  
 
 
 
 
 -- 
 Scott Helms 
 Vice President of Technology 
 ZCorum 
 (678) 507-5000 
  
 http://twitter.com/kscotthelms 
  



Followup: Small City Municipal Broadband

2013-02-02 Thread Jay Ashworth
- Original Message -
 From: Jay Ashworth j...@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   j...@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



Re: Fwd: Rollup: Small City Municipal Broadband

2013-02-02 Thread Brandon Ross

On Sat, 2 Feb 2013, Scott Helms wrote:

I'd also talk with Zhone, Allied Telesys, Adtran, and Cisco if for no 
other reason but get the best pricing you can.


I can't believe I'm going to beat Owen to this point, but considering you 
a building a brand new infrastructure, I'd hope you'd support your service 
provider's stakeholders if they want to do IPv6.  To do so securely, 
you'll want your neutral layer 2 infrastrcuture to at least support 
RA-guard and DHCPv6 shield.  You might also want/need DHCPv6 PD snooping, 
MLD snooping.  We have found VERY disappointing support for these features 
in this type of gear.


--
Brandon Ross  Yahoo  AIM:  BrandonNRoss
+1-404-635-6667ICQ:  2269442
Schedule a meeting:  https://doodle.com/brossSkype:  brandonross



Re: Followup: Small City Municipal Broadband

2013-02-02 Thread Brandon Ross

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
+1-404-635-6667ICQ:  2269442
Schedule a meeting:  https://doodle.com/brossSkype:  brandonross



Re: Followup: Small City Municipal Broadband

2013-02-02 Thread Owen DeLong

On Feb 2, 2013, at 2:26 PM, Jay Ashworth j...@baylink.com wrote:

 - Original Message -
 From: Jay Ashworth j...@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




Re: Fwd: Rollup: Small City Municipal Broadband

2013-02-02 Thread Scott Helms
That's one of the reasons to look at active ethernet over gpon.  There is
much more of a chance to do v6 on that gear, especially cisco's Metro
ethernet switches.
On Feb 2, 2013 5:27 PM, Brandon Ross br...@pobox.com wrote:

 On Sat, 2 Feb 2013, Scott Helms wrote:

  I'd also talk with Zhone, Allied Telesys, Adtran, and Cisco if for no
 other reason but get the best pricing you can.


 I can't believe I'm going to beat Owen to this point, but considering you
 a building a brand new infrastructure, I'd hope you'd support your service
 provider's stakeholders if they want to do IPv6.  To do so securely, you'll
 want your neutral layer 2 infrastrcuture to at least support RA-guard and
 DHCPv6 shield.  You might also want/need DHCPv6 PD snooping, MLD snooping.
  We have found VERY disappointing support for these features in this type
 of gear.

 --
 Brandon Ross  Yahoo  AIM:
  BrandonNRoss
 +1-404-635-6667ICQ:
  2269442
 Schedule a meeting:  https://doodle.com/brossSkype:
  brandonross



Re: Followup: Small City Municipal Broadband

2013-02-02 Thread Jay Ashworth
- Original Message -
 From: Brandon Ross br...@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   j...@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



Re: Rollup: Small City Municipal Broadband

2013-02-02 Thread Jay Ashworth
- Original Message -
 From: Brandon Ross br...@pobox.com

 I can't believe I'm going to beat Owen to this point, but considering you
 a building a brand new infrastructure, I'd hope you'd support your service
 provider's stakeholders if they want to do IPv6. To do so securely,
 you'll want your neutral layer 2 infrastrcuture to at least support
 RA-guard and DHCPv6 shield. You might also want/need DHCPv6 PD
 snooping, MLD snooping. We have found VERY disappointing support for these
 features in this type of gear.

IPv6 would be on my ticklist, yes.  :-)

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth  Baylink   j...@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



Re: Followup: Small City Municipal Broadband

2013-02-02 Thread Jay Ashworth
- Original Message -
 From: Jay Ashworth j...@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   j...@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



Re: Followup: Small City Municipal Broadband

2013-02-02 Thread Brandon Ross

On Sat, 2 Feb 2013, Jay Ashworth wrote:


- Original Message -

From: Brandon Ross br...@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
+1-404-635-6667ICQ:  2269442
Schedule a meeting:  https://doodle.com/brossSkype:  brandonross



Re: Followup: Small City Municipal Broadband

2013-02-02 Thread Leo Bicknell
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 - bickn...@ufp.org - CCIE 3440
PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/


pgpC6aLOUA4B5.pgp
Description: PGP signature


Re: Followup: Small City Municipal Broadband

2013-02-02 Thread Jay Ashworth
- Original Message -
 From: Brandon Ross br...@pobox.com

  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.

Could be.  To compete with Roadrunner, people will have to do triple
play, and the CATV is the hard part.  If someone else is already doing
the aggregation, I'm good with that.

  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.

My colo's uplinks to the world, which were one of three things I proposed
offering at wholesale to ISPs.

  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.

Precisely.  Akamai's business model is that they just show up?  Me and
my ISPs don't have to pay them?

 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?

Perhaps; yeah.

 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.

Ok, fair point.  My goal in IX and Akamai was unload my uplinks.

The bigger my downlinks are, the more I will care.

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth  Baylink   j...@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



Re: Followup: Small City Municipal Broadband

2013-02-02 Thread Jay Ashworth
- Original Message -
 From: Leo Bicknell bickn...@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   j...@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



Re: Followup: Small City Municipal Broadband

2013-02-02 Thread Brandon Ross

On Sat, 2 Feb 2013, Jay Ashworth wrote:


- Original Message -

From: Brandon Ross br...@pobox.com



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.


My colo's uplinks to the world, which were one of three things I proposed
offering at wholesale to ISPs.


I guess I missed that.  You are saying that you would aggregate/resell 
transit bandwidth in your colo?  I would argue against that as well.  I'd 
suggest making sure your colo had adequate entrance facilities to allow 
whomever wants to provide upstream service there to show up, and allow 
them access to the fiber, which you already effectively have done.



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.


Precisely.  Akamai's business model is that they just show up?  Me and
my ISPs don't have to pay them?


I guess as far as putting an Akamai server in a colo/on an exchange, I 
assumed they didn't charge, but now that you mention it, I don't have 
first hand knowledge of that.  I certainly would suggest that the city 
should not pay for anyone to show up at the colo, but allow them access if

they care to do so on equal footing.

Of course Akamai charges for their services, that's a bit different than 
just exchanging traffic.


--
Brandon Ross  Yahoo  AIM:  BrandonNRoss
+1-404-635-6667ICQ:  2269442
Schedule a meeting:  https://doodle.com/brossSkype:  brandonross



Re: Muni fiber: L1 or L2?

2013-02-02 Thread Scott Helms
Owen,
I think the confusion I have is that you seem to want to create solutions
for problems that have already been solved.   There is no cost effective
method of sharing a network at layer 1 since DWDM is expensive and requires
compatible gear on both sides and no one has enough fiber (nor is cheap
enough in brand new builds) to simply home run every home and maintain
that.  ISPs that would want to use the shared network in general (95% in
my experience) don't want to maintain the access gear and since there is no
clear way to delineate responsibilities when there is an issue its hard.


The long and short of it is lots of people have tried to L1 sharing and its
not economical and nothing I've seen here or elsewhere changes that.  The
thing you have to remember is that muni networks have to be cost effective
and that's not just the capital costs.  The operational cost in the long
term is much greater than the cost of initial gear and fiber install.
On Feb 2, 2013 4:54 PM, Owen DeLong o...@delong.com wrote:

 It seems that you are (deliberately or otherwise) seriously misconstruing
 what I am saying.

 I'm saying that if you build an L1 dark fiber system as we have described,
 the purchasers can use it to deploy Ethernet, PON, or any other technology.

 I'm not saying it's how I would build out a PON only system. That was
 never the goal.

 The goal is to provide a municipal L1 service that can be used by ANY
 provider for ANY service, or as close to that as possible.

 To make the offering more attractive to low-budget providers, the system
 may also incorporate some L2 services.

 Owen

 On Feb 2, 2013, at 1:31 PM, Scott Helms khe...@zcorum.com wrote:

 Owen,

 Cross connecting at layer 1 is what I'm saying isn't feasible.  If you
 want to simply hand them a fiber then sell dark fiber or DWDM ports but
 trying to create an architecture around PON or other splitters won't work
 because PON splitters aren't compatible with other protocols.


 On Sat, Feb 2, 2013 at 4:26 PM, Owen DeLong o...@delong.com wrote:


 On Feb 2, 2013, at 12:07 PM, Scott Helms khe...@zcorum.com wrote:

 Owen,

 A layer 1 architecture isn't going to be an economical option for the
 foreseeable future so opining on its value is a waste of time...its simple
 not feasible now or even 5 years from now because of costs.  The optimal
 open access network (with current or near future technology) is well known.
  Its called Ethernet and the methods to do triple play and open access are
 well documented not to mention already in wide spread use. Trying to
 enforce a layer 1 approach would be more expensive than the attempts to
 make this work with Packet Over SONET or even ATM.

 What is about a normal Ethernet deployment that you see as a negative?
  What problem are you tying to solve?


 Ethernet works just fine in the L1 solution I've proposed, so I'm not
 sure why you say it isn't economically viable to do so.

 Owen


 On Sat, Feb 2, 2013 at 1:04 PM, Owen DeLong o...@delong.com wrote:


 On Feb 2, 2013, at 2:19 AM, Eugen Leitl eu...@leitl.org wrote:

  On Fri, Feb 01, 2013 at 04:43:56PM -0800, Leo Bicknell wrote:
 
  The only place PON made any sense to me was extreme rural areas.
  If you could go 20km to a splitter and then hit 32 homes ~1km away
  (52km fiber pair length total), that was a win.  If the homes are
  2km from the CO, 32 pair (64km fiber pair length total) of home
  runs was cheaper than the savings on fiber, and then the cost of
  GPON splitters and equipment.  I'm trying to figure out if my
 assessment
  is correct or not...
 
  Is there any specific reason why muni networks don't use 1-10 GBit
  fiber mesh, using L3 switches in DSLAMs on every street corner?

 Well, one reason is that, IMHO, the goal here is to provide a flexible
 L1 platform that will allow multiple competing providers a low barrier
 to entry to provide a multitude of competitive services.

 Owen





 --
 Scott Helms
 Vice President of Technology
 ZCorum
 (678) 507-5000
 
 http://twitter.com/kscotthelms
 





 --
 Scott Helms
 Vice President of Technology
 ZCorum
 (678) 507-5000
 
 http://twitter.com/kscotthelms
 





Re: Followup: Small City Municipal Broadband

2013-02-02 Thread Scott Helms
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 j...@baylink.com wrote:

 - Original Message -
  From: Brandon Ross br...@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
 j...@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



Re: Muni fiber: L1 or L2?

2013-02-02 Thread Jay Ashworth
- Original Message -
 From: Scott Helms khe...@zcorum.com

 Owen
 I think the confusion I have is that you seem to want to create solutions
 for problems that have already been solved. There is no cost effective
 method of sharing a network at layer 1 since DWDM is expensive and requires
 compatible gear on both sides and no one has enough fiber (nor is cheap
 enough in brand new builds) to simply home run every home and maintain
 that.

That's my fundamental design assumption, and you're the first person to 
throw a flag on it.  I'm hearing $700 per passing and $600 per sub; those
seem sustainable numbers for a 30 year service life amortization.

I'm not yet 100% clear if that's layer 1 only or layer 2 agg as well.

[ And note that for me, it's practical; most everyone else is merely
along for the ride. ]

   ISPs that would want to use the shared network in general (95%
 in my experience) don't want to maintain the access gear and since there
 is no clear way to delineate responsibilities when there is an issue its
 hard.

You're talking about what I'm calling L2 clients.  If layer 2 falls over
it's my fault, and believe me, I'll know about it.

 The long and short of it is lots of people have tried to L1 sharing
 and its
 not economical and nothing I've seen here or elsewhere changes that.

You just changed gears again, no?

I'm not trying to share L1 *drops*.  I'm trying to make it possible 
to share *the entire L1 deployment between providers*, a drop at a time.

 The thing you have to remember is that muni networks have to be cost
 effective
 and that's not just the capital costs. The operational cost in the long
 term is much greater than the cost of initial gear and fiber install.

Depends on what you're trying to do.  But yes, I do know the difference
between CAPEX and OPEX.

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth  Baylink   j...@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



Re: Muni network ownership and the Fourth

2013-02-02 Thread Robert E. Seastrom

Owen DeLong o...@delong.com writes:

 On Jan 29, 2013, at 20:30 , Jean-Francois Mezei jfmezei_na...@vaxination.ca 
 wrote:

 On 13-01-29 22:03, Leo Bicknell wrote:
 
 The _muni_ should not run any equipment colo of any kind.  The muni
 MMR should be fiber only, and not even require so much as a generator
 to work.  It should not need to be staffed 24x7, have anything that
 requires PM, etc.
 
 This is not possible in a GPON system. The OLT has to be carrier neutral
 so that different carriers can connect to it. It is the last point of
 aggregation before reaching homes.
 
 Otherwise, you would need to run multiple strands to each splitter box
 and inside run as many splitters as there are ISPs so that one home an
 be connect to the splitter used by ISP-1 while the next home's strand is
 connected to another splitter associated with ISP-2. This gets complicated.
 

 Why can't the splitters be in the MMR? (I'm genuinely asking... I confess
 to a certain level of GPON ignorance).

Sorry for being late to the party (real work and all that).

There is no reason whatsoever that one can't have centralized
splitters in one's PON plant.  The additional costs to do so are
pretty much just limited to higher fiber counts in the field, which
adds, tops, a couple of percent to the price of the build.  More than
offset by futureproofing and not requiring forklift upgrades to add a
new technology for a few customers.  Obviously the splitters should be
owned by the service provider and upstream of the mega-patch-bay for a
muni open access system.

Meanwhile, EPON seems to be the technology that's won out on a global
basis.  Might have something to do with the price - all the hooks to
support legacy ATM stuff in GPON's GEM come at a cost.  :-)

-r

PS: Back in the mid-90s, I used to fantasize about being able to say
legacy ATM.





Re: Muni fiber: L1 or L2?

2013-02-02 Thread Scott Helms

  Owen
  I think the confusion I have is that you seem to want to create solutions
  for problems that have already been solved. There is no cost effective
  method of sharing a network at layer 1 since DWDM is expensive and
 requires
  compatible gear on both sides and no one has enough fiber (nor is cheap
  enough in brand new builds) to simply home run every home and maintain
  that.

 That's my fundamental design assumption, and you're the first person to
 throw a flag on it.  I'm hearing $700 per passing and $600 per sub; those
 seem sustainable numbers for a 30 year service life amortization.

 I'm not yet 100% clear if that's layer 1 only or layer 2 agg as well.


OK, think about it like this.  The most efficient topology to provide both
coverage and resiliency is a ring with nodes (shelves) from which end users
are connected.  That ring (usually Gig or 10Gig Ethernet today) needs to be
connected to a central location so you can interconnect to other providers
(your ISP customers) and/or to connect to the Internet if the city is also
going to provide direct L3 services.  If you instead push down a L1 path
then the most expensive pieces of gear in the access network (the FTTx
shelves) have to be replicated by everyone who wants to offer services.
 This bad not just from the initial cost perspective but because people and
companies that identify themselves as ISPs seldom know anything beyond
Ethernet and IP and then only in a few manufacturers (mainly Cisco and
Juniper).  They are most certainly not comfortable working with Calix,
Adtran, and the rest of the carrier (formerly telco) equipment
manufacturers.  To make matters more complicated in cases of problems you
don't have a good demarcation of responsibility.  What do you do as the L1
provider when one of your ISP partners tells you one of his customers can't
connect or stay connected to that ISP's gear?  Whose responsible in that
case?  What happens when your tech goes out with an OTDR (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_time-domain_reflectometer) meter and
says the connection is fine but your ISP insists its your problem?



 [ And note that for me, it's practical; most everyone else is merely
 along for the ride. ]

ISPs that would want to use the shared network in general (95%
  in my experience) don't want to maintain the access gear and since there
  is no clear way to delineate responsibilities when there is an issue its
  hard.

 You're talking about what I'm calling L2 clients.  If layer 2 falls over
 it's my fault, and believe me, I'll know about it.


What I'm telling you is that you can't reliably have L1 clients in shared
model.  You can of course lease someone a dark fiber from point A to point
B, but that's not a traditional way of partnering with ISPs and in any case
will only be feasible for a small number of connections since you
(probably) can't afford to home run each location in your network.


  The long and short of it is lots of people have tried to L1 sharing
  and its
  not economical and nothing I've seen here or elsewhere changes that.

 You just changed gears again, no?

 I'm not trying to share L1 *drops*.  I'm trying to make it possible
 to share *the entire L1 deployment between providers*, a drop at a time.


That's what I'm trying to tell you can't do.  Its more expensive in both
the initial and long term costs.


  The thing you have to remember is that muni networks have to be cost
  effective
  and that's not just the capital costs. The operational cost in the long
  term is much greater than the cost of initial gear and fiber install.

 Depends on what you're trying to do.  But yes, I do know the difference
 between CAPEX and OPEX.

 Cheers,
 -- jra
 --
 Jay R. Ashworth  Baylink
 j...@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



Re: Muni fiber: L1 or L2?

2013-02-02 Thread Jay Ashworth
- Original Message -
 From: Scott Helms khe...@zcorum.com

   Owen
   I think the confusion I have is that you seem to want to create
   solutions
   for problems that have already been solved. There is no cost
   effective
   method of sharing a network at layer 1 since DWDM is expensive and
  requires
   compatible gear on both sides and no one has enough fiber (nor is
   cheap
   enough in brand new builds) to simply home run every home and
   maintain
   that.
 
  That's my fundamental design assumption, and you're the first person to
  throw a flag on it. I'm hearing $700 per passing and $600 per sub; those
  seem sustainable numbers for a 30 year service life amortization.
 
  I'm not yet 100% clear if that's layer 1 only or layer 2 agg as
  well.
 
 OK, think about it like this. The most efficient topology to provide both
 coverage and resiliency is a ring with nodes (shelves) from which end users
 are connected. That ring (usually Gig or 10Gig Ethernet today) needs to be
 connected to a central location so you can interconnect to other providers
 (your ISP customers) and/or to connect to the Internet if the city is
 also going to provide direct L3 services. If you instead push down a L1
 path then the most expensive pieces of gear in the access network (the FTTx
 shelves) have to be replicated by everyone who wants to offer
 services.

In short, you're saying I *must* have a ring with active equipment 
scattered around it, and I *cannot* home run each property.

No one else is saying that, and you don't appear to justify it later
in this email:

 This bad not just from the initial cost perspective but because people
 and companies that identify themselves as ISPs seldom know anything beyond
 Ethernet and IP and then only in a few manufacturers (mainly Cisco and
 Juniper). They are most certainly not comfortable working with Calix,
 Adtran, and the rest of the carrier (formerly telco) equipment
 manufacturers. 

Well, ok, but those people who are not comfortable handling access gear
like the Calix will be L2 clients, anyway, taking a groomed 802.1q handoff
from my Calix/whatever core, so they won't *have* to care.

L1 access will be there a) cause it has to be anyway, to keep active
equipment out of the outside plant, b) for people who really want PtP,
and 3) for ISPs large enough to want to do it themselves, if any show 
up (they admittedly might not; we're only 6k households).

 To make matters more complicated in cases of problems
 you don't have a good demarcation of responsibility. What do you do as the
 L1 provider when one of your ISP partners tells you one of his customers
 can't connect or stay connected to that ISP's gear? Whose responsible in
 that case?

Well that's an interesting question, but I don't see that it's not 
orthogonal to the issue you raised earlier.

 What happens when your tech goes out with an OTDR (
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_time-domain_reflectometer) meter
 and says the connection is fine but your ISP insists its your problem?

On an L1 connection, you mean?  I'll do what people always do; I'll work
the ticket; at that level, this stuff's relatively digital, no?

  You're talking about what I'm calling L2 clients. If layer 2 falls
  over it's my fault, and believe me, I'll know about it.
 
 What I'm telling you is that you can't reliably have L1 clients in
 shared model. 

You're telling me that, but you're not giving me good reasons *why* you
think so.

You can of course lease someone a dark fiber from point A to point
 B, but that's not a traditional way of partnering with ISPs and in any
 case will only be feasible for a small number of connections since you
 (probably) can't afford to home run each location in your network.

Well, I'll have to see on that, won't I?  That's my next practicality 
checkpoint; fiber passing costs.

   The long and short of it is lots of people have tried to L1
   sharing and its
   not economical and nothing I've seen here or elsewhere changes
   that.
 
  You just changed gears again, no?
 
  I'm not trying to share L1 *drops*. I'm trying to make it possible
  to share *the entire L1 deployment between providers*, a drop at a
  time.

 That's what I'm trying to tell you can't do. Its more expensive in
 both the initial and long term costs.

I can see 'initial', maybe, but if I reduce the utility of the field 
network by putting active equipment in it, then I've already raised the
OPEX, substantially, as well as reducing the intrinsic value of that 
network.

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth  Baylink   j...@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



Re: Muni network ownership and the Fourth

2013-02-02 Thread Jay Ashworth
- Original Message -
 From: Robert E. Seastrom r...@seastrom.com

  Why can't the splitters be in the MMR? (I'm genuinely asking... I
  confess to a certain level of GPON ignorance).
 
 Sorry for being late to the party (real work and all that).
 
 There is no reason whatsoever that one can't have centralized
 splitters in one's PON plant. The additional costs to do so are
 pretty much just limited to higher fiber counts in the field, which
 adds, tops, a couple of percent to the price of the build. 

Ok, see, this is what Leo, Owen and I all think, and maybe a couple others.

But Scott just got done telling me it's *so* much more expensive to 
home-run than ring or GPON-in-pedestals that it's commercially infeasible.

  More than
 offset by futureproofing and not requiring forklift upgrades to add a
 new technology for a few customers. Obviously the splitters should be
 owned by the service provider and upstream of the mega-patch-bay for a
 muni open access system.

Well, I would assume the splitters have to be compatible with the OLT/ONT
chosen by a prospective L1 client, no?  Or is GPON GPON, which is GPON?

 Meanwhile, EPON seems to be the technology that's won out on a global
 basis. Might have something to do with the price - all the hooks to
 support legacy ATM stuff in GPON's GEM come at a cost. :-)

Hmmm.  I invite you, Rob, if you have the time, to look at the Rollup
and Followup posts I put out this afternoon, which are the look at this
which is closest to current in time.

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth  Baylink   j...@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



Re: Fwd: Rollup: Small City Municipal Broadband

2013-02-02 Thread Jason Baugher
On Feb 2, 2013 3:33 PM, Scott Helms khe...@zcorum.com wrote:

..

 This is not correct.  DOCSIS is an MPEG stream over QAM or QPSK modulation
 and there is nothing about it that is compatible to any flavor of PON.  In
 fact if you look at the various CableLabs standards you'll see DPoE (
 http://www.cablelabs.com/dpoe/specifications/index.html) which lists how a
 DOCSIS system can inter-operate and provision an PON system. If you look
at

Jay may be referring to something I alluded to earlier,  what Calix refers
to as RF overlay. The RF signal from the traditional cable system is
converted to 1550nm and combined onto the PON before the splitter with a
CWDM module. Certain model ONT's split the 1550 back off and convert back
to an RF port.


Re: Muni network ownership and the Fourth

2013-02-02 Thread Jason Baugher
On Feb 2, 2013 7:56 PM, Jay Ashworth j...@baylink.com wrote:



 Well, I would assume the splitters have to be compatible with the OLT/ONT
 chosen by a prospective L1 client, no?  Or is GPON GPON, which is GPON?


Splitters are passive. They only split light. They care not what
information the light is carrying.


Re: Muni network ownership and the Fourth

2013-02-02 Thread Leo Bicknell
In a message written on Sat, Feb 02, 2013 at 08:55:34PM -0500, Jay Ashworth 
wrote:
  From: Robert E. Seastrom r...@seastrom.com
  There is no reason whatsoever that one can't have centralized
  splitters in one's PON plant. The additional costs to do so are
  pretty much just limited to higher fiber counts in the field, which
  adds, tops, a couple of percent to the price of the build. 
 
 Ok, see, this is what Leo, Owen and I all think, and maybe a couple others.
 
 But Scott just got done telling me it's *so* much more expensive to 
 home-run than ring or GPON-in-pedestals that it's commercially infeasible.

Note, both are right, depending on the starting point and goals.

Historically teclos have installed (relatively) low count fiber
cables, based on a fiber to the pedistal and copper to the prem
strategy.  If you have one of these existing deployments, the cost
of home run fiber (basically starting the fiber build from scratch,
since the count is so low) is more expensive, and much greater cost
than deploying GPON or similar over the existing plant.

However, that GPON equipment will have a lifespan of 7-20 years.

In a greenfield scenario where there is no fiber in the ground the
cost is in digging the trench.  The fiber going into it is only ~5%
of the cost, and going from a 64 count fiber to a 864 count fiber
only moves that to 7-8%.  The fiber has a life of 40-80 years, and
thus adding high count is cheaper than doing low count with GPON.

Existing builds are optimizing to avoid sending out the backhoe and
directional boring machine.  New builds, or extreme forward thinking
builds are trying to send them out once and never again.

-- 
   Leo Bicknell - bickn...@ufp.org - CCIE 3440
PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/


pgpTLITWvZ_KU.pgp
Description: PGP signature


Re: Muni fiber: L1 or L2?

2013-02-02 Thread Scott Helms
 
  OK, think about it like this. The most efficient topology to provide both
  coverage and resiliency is a ring with nodes (shelves) from which end
 users
  are connected. That ring (usually Gig or 10Gig Ethernet today) needs to
 be
  connected to a central location so you can interconnect to other
 providers
  (your ISP customers) and/or to connect to the Internet if the city is
  also going to provide direct L3 services. If you instead push down a L1
  path then the most expensive pieces of gear in the access network (the
 FTTx
  shelves) have to be replicated by everyone who wants to offer
  services.

 In short, you're saying I *must* have a ring with active equipment
 scattered around it, and I *cannot* home run each property.

 No one else is saying that, and you don't appear to justify it later
 in this email:


I'm not saying that you have to, but that's the most efficient and
resilient (both of those are important right?) way of arranging the gear.
 The exact loop length from the shelves to the end users is up to you and
in certain circumstances (generally really compact areas) you can simply
home run everyone.  Most muni networks don't look that way though because
while town centers are generally compact where people (especially the
better subdivisions) live is away from the center of town in the US.  I
can't give you a lot insight on your specific area since I don't know it,
but those are the general rules.



  This bad not just from the initial cost perspective but because people
  and companies that identify themselves as ISPs seldom know anything
 beyond
  Ethernet and IP and then only in a few manufacturers (mainly Cisco and
  Juniper). They are most certainly not comfortable working with Calix,
  Adtran, and the rest of the carrier (formerly telco) equipment
  manufacturers.

 Well, ok, but those people who are not comfortable handling access gear
 like the Calix will be L2 clients, anyway, taking a groomed 802.1q handoff
 from my Calix/whatever core, so they won't *have* to care.


That works, so long as its an Ethernet hand off you're (usually there is
some goofy gear out there) in good shape.


 L1 access will be there a) cause it has to be anyway, to keep active
 equipment out of the outside plant, b) for people who really want PtP,
 and 3) for ISPs large enough to want to do it themselves, if any show
 up (they admittedly might not; we're only 6k households).


Keep in place, but I've worked with virtually all of the nationwide guys
and most of the regional ones and they don't as a rule want anything to do
with your fiber plant.  Even in major metro areas selling dark fiber
doesn't have a huge uptake because if you the network owner didn't light it
you have no idea how good or bad the splices and runs are.


  To make matters more complicated in cases of problems
  you don't have a good demarcation of responsibility. What do you do as
 the
  L1 provider when one of your ISP partners tells you one of his customers
  can't connect or stay connected to that ISP's gear? Whose responsible in
  that case?

 Well that's an interesting question, but I don't see that it's not
 orthogonal to the issue you raised earlier.

  What happens when your tech goes out with an OTDR (
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_time-domain_reflectometer) meter
  and says the connection is fine but your ISP insists its your problem?

 On an L1 connection, you mean?  I'll do what people always do; I'll work
 the ticket; at that level, this stuff's relatively digital, no?


No, its not and I've seen several of networks fail because demarc issues.
 US Carrier (a statewide network here in GA) was recently sold for pennies
on the dollar largely because of blurry demarcs. You can and will get
sucked into scenarios you don't want to be in and will lose money on.


   You're talking about what I'm calling L2 clients. If layer 2 falls
   over it's my fault, and believe me, I'll know about it.
 
  What I'm telling you is that you can't reliably have L1 clients in
  shared model.

 You're telling me that, but you're not giving me good reasons *why* you
 think so.


Because:
1) There won't be much interest in doing it from experienced operators so
you're only going to get customers for it that are also new to the
business.  So your combined troubleshooting and install time will be bad
for a long time until everyone in the chain kind of understand what they're
doing.

2)  Unless you can home run every single connection you're going to run
into a lot of access related issues.  You will be working for the city so
they won't have a problem with you getting into their building at the water
tower/sewage treatment plant/power sub station or other  city owned
property.  Your L1 customer isn't going to have that access (not with the
city manager/mayor/council's knowledge anyway) because of regulatory and
liability reasons.  If you do home run everything you still have an access
challenge (where are you going to 

Re: Fwd: Rollup: Small City Municipal Broadband

2013-02-02 Thread Scott Helms
Jason,

Yeah, that's what I figured.  There are lots of older PON deployments that
used the modulated RF approach.


On Sat, Feb 2, 2013 at 9:03 PM, Jason Baugher ja...@thebaughers.com wrote:


 On Feb 2, 2013 3:33 PM, Scott Helms khe...@zcorum.com wrote:
 
 ..

  This is not correct.  DOCSIS is an MPEG stream over QAM or QPSK
 modulation
  and there is nothing about it that is compatible to any flavor of PON.
  In
  fact if you look at the various CableLabs standards you'll see DPoE (
  http://www.cablelabs.com/dpoe/specifications/index.html) which lists
 how a
  DOCSIS system can inter-operate and provision an PON system. If you look
 at

 Jay may be referring to something I alluded to earlier,  what Calix refers
 to as RF overlay. The RF signal from the traditional cable system is
 converted to 1550nm and combined onto the PON before the splitter with a
 CWDM module. Certain model ONT's split the 1550 back off and convert back
 to an RF port.




-- 
Scott Helms
Vice President of Technology
ZCorum
(678) 507-5000

http://twitter.com/kscotthelms



Re: Muni network ownership and the Fourth

2013-02-02 Thread Scott Helms
The difference between building a ring and then dropping connections and
home running all of the connections is much more than difference in fiber
count.  However, its certainly true that home running works in some
greenfield deployments and I hope I have not confused anyone on that point.
 A detailed look at the area to be covered along with the goals of the
network will definitely drive you in the correct deployment model.  This
should be one of the first things you do.


On Sat, Feb 2, 2013 at 9:12 PM, Leo Bicknell bickn...@ufp.org wrote:

 In a message written on Sat, Feb 02, 2013 at 08:55:34PM -0500, Jay
 Ashworth wrote:
   From: Robert E. Seastrom r...@seastrom.com
   There is no reason whatsoever that one can't have centralized
   splitters in one's PON plant. The additional costs to do so are
   pretty much just limited to higher fiber counts in the field, which
   adds, tops, a couple of percent to the price of the build.
 
  Ok, see, this is what Leo, Owen and I all think, and maybe a couple
 others.
 
  But Scott just got done telling me it's *so* much more expensive to
  home-run than ring or GPON-in-pedestals that it's commercially
 infeasible.

 Note, both are right, depending on the starting point and goals.

 Historically teclos have installed (relatively) low count fiber
 cables, based on a fiber to the pedistal and copper to the prem
 strategy.  If you have one of these existing deployments, the cost
 of home run fiber (basically starting the fiber build from scratch,
 since the count is so low) is more expensive, and much greater cost
 than deploying GPON or similar over the existing plant.

 However, that GPON equipment will have a lifespan of 7-20 years.

 In a greenfield scenario where there is no fiber in the ground the
 cost is in digging the trench.  The fiber going into it is only ~5%
 of the cost, and going from a 64 count fiber to a 864 count fiber
 only moves that to 7-8%.  The fiber has a life of 40-80 years, and
 thus adding high count is cheaper than doing low count with GPON.

 Existing builds are optimizing to avoid sending out the backhoe and
 directional boring machine.  New builds, or extreme forward thinking
 builds are trying to send them out once and never again.

 --
Leo Bicknell - bickn...@ufp.org - CCIE 3440
 PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/




-- 
Scott Helms
Vice President of Technology
ZCorum
(678) 507-5000

http://twitter.com/kscotthelms



Re: Muni fiber: L1 or L2?

2013-02-02 Thread Leo Bicknell
In a message written on Sat, Feb 02, 2013 at 09:28:06PM -0500, Scott Helms 
wrote:
 I'm not saying that you have to, but that's the most efficient and
 resilient (both of those are important right?) way of arranging the gear.
  The exact loop length from the shelves to the end users is up to you and
 in certain circumstances (generally really compact areas) you can simply
 home run everyone.  Most muni networks don't look that way though because
 while town centers are generally compact where people (especially the
 better subdivisions) live is away from the center of town in the US.  I
 can't give you a lot insight on your specific area since I don't know it,
 but those are the general rules.

If the goal is the minimize the capital outlay of a greenfield
build, your model can be more efficient, depending on the geography
covered.  Basically you're assuming that the active electronics to
make a ring are cheaper than building high count fiber back to a
central point.  There are geographies where that is both true, and
not true.  I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you're model is
cheaper for a majority of builds.

On the other hand, I am not nearly as interested in minimizing the
up front capital cost.  It's an issue, sure, but I care much more
about the total lifecycle cost.  I'd rather spend 20% more up front
to end up with 20-80% lower costs over 50 years.  My argument is
not that high count fiber back to a central location is cheaper in
absolute, up front dollars, but that it's at worst a minimal amount
more and will have neglegable additonal cost over a 40-80 year
service life.

By contrast, the ring topology you suggest may be slightly less
expensive up front, but will require the active parts that make up
the ring to be swapped out every 7-20 years.  I believe that will
lead to greater lifecycle cost; and almost importantly impeed
development of new services as the existing gear ends up incompatable
with newer technologies.

-- 
   Leo Bicknell - bickn...@ufp.org - CCIE 3440
PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/


pgpCc5V1mvTmK.pgp
Description: PGP signature


Re: Fwd: Rollup: Small City Municipal Broadband

2013-02-02 Thread Jeff Kell
This has been a fascinating discussion :)  While we don't quite qualify
as a small city, we do have quite a dispersion of coverage across our
residence halls and general campus.  There is an ongoing RFP process to
build out our own CATV distribution (or more generally, to avoid the
resident CATV provider charge monopoly). 

Initial competitors included incumbent cable (largely RF coax), new
providers (also RF coax), and content-only providers (either assuming we
do distribution over our fiber, or add another distribution component),
to IPTV solutions (using existing network). 

IPTV requires a very co-operative multicast distribution, which we
currently do not have (not exclusive vendor gear end-to-end); it needs
to be designed that way from the beginning as opposed to bolted onto the
end.

RF CATV (or HFC distribution) requires some unique fiber plant...
notably AFC terminations as opposed to the UPCs we have for data.  And
you have to consider one-way content provider network, versus two-way
feedback (and the associated set-top box complications we're trying to
avoid).

And throw in the phone for the other triple play component, and you're
generally talking PoE[+].

Even in a captive audience, the possibilities are challenging :)

Jeff




Re: Muni fiber: L1 or L2?

2013-02-02 Thread david peahi
Technically, any of the architectures espoused by some of the commentators
on this thread will work, and would at least be an order of magnitude
better than what is available in the local loop today.

One of the commentators, however, did underscore the biggest challenge by
far to national broadband. (Even the watered down version consisting of a
welter of autonomous municipal networks as is the subject of this thread).
And that challenge is the stranglehold that incumbent telcos have on the
local loop, and their caustic, anti-progress influence in City Halls, Sate
Legislatures, and Washington DC.

That is why the Australian NBN serves as a good example of how to wrest
control of the local loop plant away from the telcos. In many areas of the
US a parallel fiber network is already in place, built out by the Federal
School Lunch e-rate program. Here, regrettably, the telcos have exerted
their caustic influence by compelling legislators to allow only school and
library traffic on the e-rate fiber.

As far as a purely technical solution, in my own experience some years ago
I worked in the entertainment business in the Burbank/Glendale, Ca. area.
Both cites, led by the visionary Burbank Department of Water and Power,
built out dark fiber networks. Of course, getting municipal fiber in
Glendale required an intense struggle with the incumbent telco, which sent
a representative to every city council meeting arguing that municipal fiber
was bad for the city residents.

David
On Sat, Feb 2, 2013 at 6:35 PM, Leo Bicknell bickn...@ufp.org wrote:

 In a message written on Sat, Feb 02, 2013 at 09:28:06PM -0500, Scott Helms
 wrote:
  I'm not saying that you have to, but that's the most efficient and
  resilient (both of those are important right?) way of arranging the gear.
   The exact loop length from the shelves to the end users is up to you and
  in certain circumstances (generally really compact areas) you can simply
  home run everyone.  Most muni networks don't look that way though because
  while town centers are generally compact where people (especially the
  better subdivisions) live is away from the center of town in the US.  I
  can't give you a lot insight on your specific area since I don't know it,
  but those are the general rules.

 If the goal is the minimize the capital outlay of a greenfield
 build, your model can be more efficient, depending on the geography
 covered.  Basically you're assuming that the active electronics to
 make a ring are cheaper than building high count fiber back to a
 central point.  There are geographies where that is both true, and
 not true.  I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you're model is
 cheaper for a majority of builds.

 On the other hand, I am not nearly as interested in minimizing the
 up front capital cost.  It's an issue, sure, but I care much more
 about the total lifecycle cost.  I'd rather spend 20% more up front
 to end up with 20-80% lower costs over 50 years.  My argument is
 not that high count fiber back to a central location is cheaper in
 absolute, up front dollars, but that it's at worst a minimal amount
 more and will have neglegable additonal cost over a 40-80 year
 service life.

 By contrast, the ring topology you suggest may be slightly less
 expensive up front, but will require the active parts that make up
 the ring to be swapped out every 7-20 years.  I believe that will
 lead to greater lifecycle cost; and almost importantly impeed
 development of new services as the existing gear ends up incompatable
 with newer technologies.

 --
Leo Bicknell - bickn...@ufp.org - CCIE 3440
 PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/



Re: Muni fiber: L1 or L2?

2013-02-02 Thread Scott Helms
 If the goal is the minimize the capital outlay of a greenfield
 build, your model can be more efficient, depending on the geography
 covered.  Basically you're assuming that the active electronics to
 make a ring are cheaper than building high count fiber back to a
 central point.  There are geographies where that is both true, and
 not true.  I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you're model is
 cheaper for a majority of builds.


Agreed, there are definitely scenarios where home running everything makes
sense.


 On the other hand, I am not nearly as interested in minimizing the
 up front capital cost.  It's an issue, sure, but I care much more
 about the total lifecycle cost.  I'd rather spend 20% more up front
 to end up with 20-80% lower costs over 50 years.  My argument is
 not that high count fiber back to a central location is cheaper in
 absolute, up front dollars, but that it's at worst a minimal amount
 more and will have neglegable additonal cost over a 40-80 year
 service life.


Here's the thing, over the time frame your describing you're probably going
to have to look at more fiber runs just because of growth in areas that you
didn't build for before.  Even if you nail the total growth of homes and
businesses in your area your chances of getting both the numbers right
_and_ the locations are pretty slim. Also, you're going to have to replace
gear no matter where it is core or nodes on a ring.  Granted gear that
lives in a CO can be less expensive but its not that much of a difference
(~1% of gear costs).  Having a ring topology is basically the best way
we've come up with as of yet to hedge your bets, especially since you can
extend your ring when you need.






 --
Leo Bicknell - bickn...@ufp.org - CCIE 3440
 PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/




-- 
Scott Helms
Vice President of Technology
ZCorum
(678) 507-5000

http://twitter.com/kscotthelms



Re: Rollup: Small City Municipal Broadband

2013-02-02 Thread Tim Jackson
C7 is old school. E7/E20 is far far far far far far different.
On Feb 2, 2013 2:55 PM, Scott Helms khe...@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 j...@baylink.com wrote:

  - Original Message -
   From: Scott Helms khe...@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
  j...@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
 



Re: Fwd: Rollup: Small City Municipal Broadband

2013-02-02 Thread Tim Jackson
Word to dropping docsis science on NANOG.
On Feb 2, 2013 3:34 PM, Scott Helms khe...@zcorum.com wrote:

  I hope I said E7; it's what I meant to say.  Yes, I wasn't going to
  stop at Calix; I'm just juggling budgetary type numbers at the moment;
  I'll have 3 or 4 quotes before I go to press.  It's a 36 month project
  just to beginning of build, at this point, likely.
 
  Assuming I get the gig at all.
 

 The E7 is a good shelf, so that's a decent starting point.  I'd also talk
 with Zhone, Allied Telesys, Adtran, and Cisco if for no other reason but
 get the best pricing you can.  I'd also focus much more on your cost per
 port than the density since your uptake rate will be driven by economics
 long before port density and how much space your gear takes becomes an
 issue.

 
   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.
 
  Other people here, said it.  If nothing else, it's certainly what the
  largest nationwide FTTH provider is provisioning, and I suspect it serves
  more passings than anything else; possibly than everything else.
 

 I'm not sure what you mean by this.  The largest PON offering in the US is
 Verizon's FIOS, but AFAIK they don't interconnect with anyone at layer 2
 and their layer 3 fiber connections are either Packet Over SONET, Gig
 E(most common), or very occasionally still ATM.  I have heard of a few
 instances where they'd buy existing GPON networks but I've never heard of
 them cross connecting like this even with operators that they do
 significant business with in other ways.


 
  But it doesn't matter either way, except in cross-connects between my MDF
  and my colo cages; except for GPONs apparent compatibility with RF CATV
  delivery (which I gather, but have not researched) is just
 block-upconvert,
  I don't care either way; there's no difference in the plant buildout.
 

 This is not correct.  DOCSIS is an MPEG stream over QAM or QPSK modulation
 and there is nothing about it that is compatible to any flavor of PON.  In
 fact if you look at the various CableLabs standards you'll see DPoE (
 http://www.cablelabs.com/dpoe/specifications/index.html) which lists how a
 DOCSIS system can inter-operate and provision an PON system. If you look at
 the two largest PON networks (FIOS and Uverse) you'll see the two different
 approaches to doing video with a PON architecture.  Verizon is simply
 modulating a MPEG stream (this is block compatible to a cable plant, in
 fact its the same way that a HFC network functions) on a different color on
 the same fiber that they send their PON signalling.  ATT takes another
 approach where they simply run IPTV over their PON network.  I've listened
 to presentations from Verizon's VP of Engineering (at that time) for FIOS
 and he said their choice was driven by the technology available when they
 launched and they did modulated RF over their fiber instead of IPTV because
 that technology wasn't as mature when they started. Verizon's approach may
 be what someone was thinking of when they said that PON was compatible to
 cable signaling but that's not how it works.


 
  Cheers,
  -- jra
  --
  Jay R. Ashworth  Baylink
  j...@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
 



 --
 Scott Helms
 Vice President of Technology
 ZCorum
 (678) 507-5000
 
 http://twitter.com/kscotthelms
 



Re: Fwd: Rollup: Small City Municipal Broadband

2013-02-02 Thread Tim Jackson
What does Cisco shitty metro switches have to do with anything?

Haay we have the best shitty metro-e boxes around. We're awesome.
On Feb 2, 2013 4:49 PM, Scott Helms khe...@zcorum.com wrote:

 That's one of the reasons to look at active ethernet over gpon.  There is
 much more of a chance to do v6 on that gear, especially cisco's Metro
 ethernet switches.
 On Feb 2, 2013 5:27 PM, Brandon Ross br...@pobox.com wrote:

  On Sat, 2 Feb 2013, Scott Helms wrote:
 
   I'd also talk with Zhone, Allied Telesys, Adtran, and Cisco if for no
  other reason but get the best pricing you can.
 
 
  I can't believe I'm going to beat Owen to this point, but considering you
  a building a brand new infrastructure, I'd hope you'd support your
 service
  provider's stakeholders if they want to do IPv6.  To do so securely,
 you'll
  want your neutral layer 2 infrastrcuture to at least support RA-guard and
  DHCPv6 shield.  You might also want/need DHCPv6 PD snooping, MLD
 snooping.
   We have found VERY disappointing support for these features in this type
  of gear.
 
  --
  Brandon Ross  Yahoo  AIM:
   BrandonNRoss
  +1-404-635-6667ICQ:
   2269442
  Schedule a meeting:  https://doodle.com/brossSkype:
   brandonross
 



Re: Muni fiber: L1 or L2?

2013-02-02 Thread Leo Bicknell
In a message written on Sat, Feb 02, 2013 at 10:17:24PM -0500, Scott Helms 
wrote:
 Here's the thing, over the time frame your describing you're probably going
 to have to look at more fiber runs just because of growth in areas that you
 didn't build for before.  Even if you nail the total growth of homes and
 businesses in your area your chances of getting both the numbers right
 _and_ the locations are pretty slim. Also, you're going to have to replace
 gear no matter where it is core or nodes on a ring.  Granted gear that
 lives in a CO can be less expensive but its not that much of a difference
 (~1% of gear costs).  Having a ring topology is basically the best way
 we've come up with as of yet to hedge your bets, especially since you can
 extend your ring when you need.

I'm not sure I understand your growth argument; both models will
require additional build costs for growth to the network, and I
think they roughly parallel the tradeoff's we've been discussing.

As for the gear, I agree that the cost per port for the equipment
providing service (Ethernet switch, GPON bits, WDM mux, whatever)
is likely to be roughly similar in a CO and in the field.  There's
not a huge savings on the gear itself.

But I would strongly disagree the overall costs, and services are
similar.  Compare a single CO of equipment to a network with 150
pedistals of active gear around a city.  The CO can have one
generator, and one battery bank.  Most providers don't even put
generator with each pedistal, and must maintain separate battery
banks for each.  A single CO could relatively cheaply have 24x7x356
hands to correct problems and swap equipment, where as the distributed
network will add drive time to the equation and require higher
staffing and greater costs (like the truck and fuel).

Geography is a huge factor though.  My concept of home running all fiber
would be an extremely poor choice for extremely rural, low density
networks.  Your ring choice would be much, much better.  On the flip
side, in a high density world, say downtown NYC, my dark fiber to the
end user network is far cheaper than building super-small rings and
maintaining the support gear for the equipment (generators and
batteries, if you can get space for them in most buildings).

Still, I think direct dark fiber has lower lifecycle costs for 70-80% of
the population living in cities and suburban areas.

-- 
   Leo Bicknell - bickn...@ufp.org - CCIE 3440
PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/


pgpUSC9UGSK2M.pgp
Description: PGP signature


Re: Muni fiber: L1 or L2?

2013-02-02 Thread Scott Helms
On Sat, Feb 2, 2013 at 10:32 PM, Leo Bicknell bickn...@ufp.org wrote:

 In a message written on Sat, Feb 02, 2013 at 10:17:24PM -0500, Scott Helms
 wrote:
  Here's the thing, over the time frame your describing you're probably
 going
  to have to look at more fiber runs just because of growth in areas that
 you
  didn't build for before.  Even if you nail the total growth of homes and
  businesses in your area your chances of getting both the numbers right
  _and_ the locations are pretty slim. Also, you're going to have to
 replace
  gear no matter where it is core or nodes on a ring.  Granted gear that
  lives in a CO can be less expensive but its not that much of a difference
  (~1% of gear costs).  Having a ring topology is basically the best way
  we've come up with as of yet to hedge your bets, especially since you can
  extend your ring when you need.

 I'm not sure I understand your growth argument; both models will
 require additional build costs for growth to the network, and I
 think they roughly parallel the tradeoff's we've been discussing.


Yes, but the reason why a ring with nodes is often the
better architecture is because while both situations require more fiber to
accomidate growth in areas that didn't previously have customers the
distance from $new_area to existing ring is going to be shorter almost
invariably than the distance from $new_area to CO.  This matters not only
from the stand point of it costs a certain amount per mile to bury or hang
fiber but also because of right of ways and other hurdles that involve
getting from point A to point B.



 As for the gear, I agree that the cost per port for the equipment
 providing service (Ethernet switch, GPON bits, WDM mux, whatever)
 is likely to be roughly similar in a CO and in the field.  There's
 not a huge savings on the gear itself.

 But I would strongly disagree the overall costs, and services are
 similar.  Compare a single CO of equipment to a network with 150
 pedistals of active gear around a city.  The CO can have one
 generator, and one battery bank.  Most providers don't even put
 generator with each pedistal, and must maintain separate battery
 banks for each.  A single CO could relatively cheaply have 24x7x356
 hands to correct problems and swap equipment, where as the distributed
 network will add drive time to the equation and require higher
 staffing and greater costs (like the truck and fuel).


Absolutely, getting a separate power meter for each enclosure, dealing with
batteries there, and just remote gear all increases operational costs and
the more nodes you have the greater that cost will be.




 Geography is a huge factor though.  My concept of home running all fiber
 would be an extremely poor choice for extremely rural, low density
 networks.  Your ring choice would be much, much better.  On the flip
 side, in a high density world, say downtown NYC, my dark fiber to the
 end user network is far cheaper than building super-small rings and
 maintaining the support gear for the equipment (generators and
 batteries, if you can get space for them in most buildings).

 Still, I think direct dark fiber has lower lifecycle costs for 70-80% of
 the population living in cities and suburban areas.


This is where the math gets hard and the specifics of each situation
dictate what you need to do.  IF you know precisely what your service area
can be and that area is already densely populated then you're probably
going to be able to cover all of that area with a single build.  Downtown
NYC is a scenario I'd completely agree with since you probably would also
struggle trying to find places to install enclosures and you have a very
tightly defined area that is densely populated today.  I'd also say that
this is not the normal muni network in the US today, since generally
speaking muni networks spring up where the local area is poorly served by
commercial operators.



 --
Leo Bicknell - bickn...@ufp.org - CCIE 3440
 PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/




-- 
Scott Helms
Vice President of Technology
ZCorum
(678) 507-5000

http://twitter.com/kscotthelms



Re: Muni fiber: L1 or L2?

2013-02-02 Thread Jay Ashworth
- Original Message -
 From: Scott Helms khe...@zcorum.com

 Here's the thing, over the time frame your describing you're probably going
 to have to look at more fiber runs just because of growth in areas that you
 didn't build for before. Even if you nail the total growth of homes and
 businesses in your area your chances of getting both the numbers right
 _and_ the locations are pretty slim. Also, you're going to have to replace
 gear no matter where it is core or nodes on a ring. Granted gear that
 lives in a CO can be less expensive but its not that much of a difference
 (~1% of gear costs). Having a ring topology is basically the best way
 we've come up with as of yet to hedge your bets, especially since you
 can extend your ring when you need.

In most cases that's true.  My city, however, is built so close to 100%
that I don't think it matters much.  Over 2500 units per sqmi.

The problem with gear in the ring isn't cost.  It's OAMP, and upgrades, and
distributed emergency power, and, and, and...

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth  Baylink   j...@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



Re: Fwd: Rollup: Small City Municipal Broadband

2013-02-02 Thread Jean-Francois Mezei
On 13-02-02 21:29, Scott Helms wrote:
 Yeah, that's what I figured.  There are lots of older PON deployments that
 used the modulated RF approach.


From what I have read, Verizon's FIOS does that. RFoG cable TV for
certain frequencies, normal ethernet data for other frequencies, and
dedicated bandwidth for VoIP.

Cable companies in Canada have begun to deploy FTTH in greenfields. And
those are deployed to be compatible with their coax infrastructure. The
fibre from the CMTS is simply extended to the home instead of stopping
at a node on a telephone pole. The coax starts at the ONT to get to
the TV sets.  Not sure if they have a DOCSIS modem attached to the coax
or if they get the ethernet out of ONT.

However, Rogers seems to have areas being deployed differently and I
*believe* it is pure ethernet. (and not even sure if GPON). Rogers also
wants to go all IPTV , something unexpected from a traditional cableTV
company.

Something to consider about dark fibre L1 service: If city lets Service
Providers perform installations (string from telephone pole to homes
etc), you need to worry about damages they can cause. And in cases when
customer unsubscribes from SP-1 and subscribes to SP-2 you have to make
sure that SP-1 doesn't damage the termination of the fibre in the home
to make installation by SP-2 harder/costlier.


In an L2 service, the city is responsible for all installations and
de-installs and has no incentive to damage the infrastructure to hurt a
competitor. And generally, the CPE is installed by city and stays in
place when end user swiches service provider.







Re: Rollup: Small City Municipal Broadband

2013-02-02 Thread Jay Ashworth
- Original Message -
 From: Jean-Francois Mezei jfmezei_na...@vaxination.ca

 Something to consider about dark fibre L1 service: If city lets Service
 Providers perform installations (string from telephone pole to homes
 etc), you need to worry about damages they can cause. And in cases when
 customer unsubscribes from SP-1 and subscribes to SP-2 you have to make
 sure that SP-1 doesn't damage the termination of the fibre in the home
 to make installation by SP-2 harder/costlier.

You're still not getting it.  And I'm not sure if it's on purpose or not.

But I've been pretty clear:

Home run from each prem to an MDF.  City employes do all M-A-C patch cable
moves on the MDF, to horizontals into the colo, where the provider's gear
aggregates it from L1 to whatever.

No aerial plant at all, no multple provider runs to the prems.

That's most of the point here.

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth  Baylink   j...@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



Re: Rollup: Small City Municipal Broadband

2013-02-02 Thread Jean-Francois Mezei
On 13-02-02 23:17, Jay Ashworth wrote:

 Home run from each prem to an MDF.  City employes do all M-A-C patch cable
 moves on the MDF, to horizontals into the colo, where the provider's gear
 aggregates it from L1 to whatever.
 
 No aerial plant at all, no multple provider runs to the prems.

Not talking about MDF/CO/MMR or whatever you call the aggregation point.
While you've made it clear that you don't let Service Providers play
around in that aggregation point, you didn't define (or perhaps I missed
it) the responsabilities for work at homes.


When municipality does the buildout, does it just pass homes, or does it
actually connect every home ?

When passing homes, you would generally have pre-built taps such as
Corning FlexNAPs along the cable so that a strand can be added quickly
between the tap at telephone pole and the home wanting to get service.
You only connect homes that subscribe to your service. (so you have to
decide who is responsible for stringing fibre from telephone pole to the
home when end user subscribes to a Service Provider's services.

Not entirely sure what sort of methods they use when it is an
underground cable plant. (perhaps more likely to see fibre brought to
each home during the dig, perhaps not).


In any event,  you still have to worry about responsability if you allow
Service Providers to install their on ONT or whatever CPE equipment in
homes. If they damage the fibre cable when customer unsubscribes, who is
responsible for the costs of repair ? (consider a case where either
homeowner or SP just cuts the fibre as it comes out of wall when taking
the ONT out to be returned to the SP.


In Canada, the wholesale regime gives the owner of the cable plant
(telco or cableco) responsibility for all installs even for independent
ISPs. However, independent ISPs are responsible for providing approved
modems to their customers. (different for VDSL where the telco provides
the modems even for custoemrs of indy ISPs since the modems are
customized to work with the VDSL DSLAMS selected by the telcos). In the
case of cable companies, they have a list of approved DOCIS modems they
allow independent ISPs to sell to teir customers.

We'll see in the next few months what will transpire for a wholesale
FTTH access in terms of responsabilities for CPE equipment (ONT, battery
backup etc).






RE: Muni fiber: L1 or L2?

2013-02-02 Thread Frank Bulk
Live TV still makes up the majority of video viewing.
http://www.thecab.tv/main/bm~doc/multiscreeninsights-2q12-p.pdf

Multicasting video remains a valuable video distribution technique.

Frank

-Original Message-
From: Owen DeLong [mailto:o...@delong.com] 
Sent: Friday, February 01, 2013 9:53 PM
To: Jean-Francois Mezei
Cc: nanog@nanog.org
Subject: Re: Muni fiber: L1 or L2?

On Feb 1, 2013, at 14:17 , Jean-Francois Mezei jfmezei_na...@vaxination.ca
wrote:

snip

 If you have multicast and everyone is watching superbowl at same time,
 you're talking up very little bandwidth on that 2.mumble GPON link.

Meh. Since everyone seems to want to be able to pause, rewind, etc.,
multicast doesn't tend to happen so much even in the IPTV world these
days.

Owen








RE: Will wholesale-only muni actually bring the boys to your yard?

2013-02-02 Thread Frank Bulk
Yes, but IP TV is not profitable on stand-alone basis -- it's just a
necessary part of the triple play.  A lot of the discussion has been about
Internet and network design, but not much about the other two plays.

Frank

-Original Message-
From: Brandon Ross [mailto:br...@pobox.com] 
Sent: Saturday, February 02, 2013 3:53 PM
To: Jay Ashworth
Cc: NANOG
Subject: Re: Will wholesale-only muni actually bring the boys to your yard?

On Sat, 2 Feb 2013, Jay Ashworth wrote:

 Perhaps I live in a different world, but just about all of the small to
 midsize service providers I work with offer triple play today, and nearly
 all of them are migrating their triple play services to IP.

 Really.  Citations?  I'd love to see it play that way, myself.

Okay:

South Central Rural Telephone
Glasgow, KY
http://www.scrtc.com/
Left side of page, Digital TV service.  See this news article:

http://www.wcluradio.com/index.php?option=com_contentview=articleid=15567:
capacity-crowd-hears-good-report-at-scrtc-annuan-mee

He also reported that SCRTC is continuing to upgrade our services, 
converting customers to the new IPTV service and trying to get as much 
fiber optic cable built as possible.

Camellia Communications
Greenville, AL
http://camelliacom.com/services/ctv-dvr.html
Note the models of set-top boxes they are using are IP based

Griswold Cooperative Telephone
Griswold, IA
http://www.griswoldtelco.com/griswold-coop-iptv-video

Farmer's Mutual Coopeative Telephone
Moulton, IA
http://farmersmutualcoop.com/

Citizens
Floyd, VA
http://www.citizens.coop/


How about a Canadian example you say?

CoopTel
Valcourt, QB
http://www.cooptel.qc.ca/en-residentiel-tele-guidesusager.php
Check out the models of set-top boxes here too.

Oh, also, have you heard of ATT U-Verse?

http://www.att.com/gen/press-room?pid=4800cdvn=newsnewsarticleid=26580

ATT U-verse TV is the only 100 percent Internet Protocol-based 
television (IPTV) service offered by a national service provider

So even the likes of ATT, in this scheme, could buy fiber paths to their 
subs and provide TV service.  I'm pretty sure ATT knows how to deliver 
voice services over IP as well.

Do you want more examples?  I bet I can come up with 50 small/regional 
telecom companies that are providing TV services over IP in North America 
if I put my mind to it.

-- 
Brandon Ross  Yahoo  AIM:  BrandonNRoss
+1-404-635-6667ICQ:  2269442
Schedule a meeting:  https://doodle.com/brossSkype:  brandonross






RE: Rollup: Small City Municipal Broadband

2013-02-02 Thread Frank Bulk
Scott:

Is there a vendor that supports RFoG on the same strand as ActiveE?

Frank

-Original Message-
From: Scott Helms [mailto:khe...@zcorum.com] 
Sent: Saturday, February 02, 2013 3:30 PM
To: NANOG
Subject: Fwd: Rollup: Small City Municipal Broadband

 But it doesn't matter either way, except in cross-connects between my MDF
 and my colo cages; except for GPONs apparent compatibility with RF CATV
 delivery (which I gather, but have not researched) is just
block-upconvert,
 I don't care either way; there's no difference in the plant buildout.

This is not correct.  DOCSIS is an MPEG stream over QAM or QPSK modulation
and there is nothing about it that is compatible to any flavor of PON.  In
fact if you look at the various CableLabs standards you'll see DPoE (
http://www.cablelabs.com/dpoe/specifications/index.html) which lists how a
DOCSIS system can inter-operate and provision an PON system. If you look at
the two largest PON networks (FIOS and Uverse) you'll see the two different
approaches to doing video with a PON architecture.  Verizon is simply
modulating a MPEG stream (this is block compatible to a cable plant, in
fact its the same way that a HFC network functions) on a different color on
the same fiber that they send their PON signalling.  ATT takes another
approach where they simply run IPTV over their PON network.  I've listened
to presentations from Verizon's VP of Engineering (at that time) for FIOS
and he said their choice was driven by the technology available when they
launched and they did modulated RF over their fiber instead of IPTV because
that technology wasn't as mature when they started. Verizon's approach may
be what someone was thinking of when they said that PON was compatible to
cable signaling but that's not how it works.



 Cheers,
 -- jra
 --
 Jay R. Ashworth  Baylink
 j...@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




-- 
Scott Helms
Vice President of Technology
ZCorum
(678) 507-5000

http://twitter.com/kscotthelms






RE: Rollup: Small City Municipal Broadband

2013-02-02 Thread Warren Bailey
Don't know what frequency they use but ppm.co.uk does all the way to 14ghz (our 
ku band) over dwdm..


From my Android phone on T-Mobile. The first nationwide 4G network.



 Original message 
From: Frank Bulk frnk...@iname.com
Date: 02/02/2013 10:10 PM (GMT-08:00)
To: 'Scott Helms' khe...@zcorum.com,NANOG nanog@nanog.org
Subject: RE: Rollup: Small City Municipal Broadband


Scott:

Is there a vendor that supports RFoG on the same strand as ActiveE?

Frank

-Original Message-
From: Scott Helms [mailto:khe...@zcorum.com]
Sent: Saturday, February 02, 2013 3:30 PM
To: NANOG
Subject: Fwd: Rollup: Small City Municipal Broadband

 But it doesn't matter either way, except in cross-connects between my MDF
 and my colo cages; except for GPONs apparent compatibility with RF CATV
 delivery (which I gather, but have not researched) is just
block-upconvert,
 I don't care either way; there's no difference in the plant buildout.

This is not correct.  DOCSIS is an MPEG stream over QAM or QPSK modulation
and there is nothing about it that is compatible to any flavor of PON.  In
fact if you look at the various CableLabs standards you'll see DPoE (
http://www.cablelabs.com/dpoe/specifications/index.html) which lists how a
DOCSIS system can inter-operate and provision an PON system. If you look at
the two largest PON networks (FIOS and Uverse) you'll see the two different
approaches to doing video with a PON architecture.  Verizon is simply
modulating a MPEG stream (this is block compatible to a cable plant, in
fact its the same way that a HFC network functions) on a different color on
the same fiber that they send their PON signalling.  ATT takes another
approach where they simply run IPTV over their PON network.  I've listened
to presentations from Verizon's VP of Engineering (at that time) for FIOS
and he said their choice was driven by the technology available when they
launched and they did modulated RF over their fiber instead of IPTV because
that technology wasn't as mature when they started. Verizon's approach may
be what someone was thinking of when they said that PON was compatible to
cable signaling but that's not how it works.



 Cheers,
 -- jra
 --
 Jay R. Ashworth  Baylink
 j...@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




--
Scott Helms
Vice President of Technology
ZCorum
(678) 507-5000

http://twitter.com/kscotthelms