I am planning to have access to fiber throughout an area that's probably 3x to 4x my current coverage area. I'll build my network around that fiber. However, I will retain wireless PtP links for redundancy. That cuts down on the need to consume valuable spectrum for primary backhaul links.
----- Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions http://www.ics-il.com -------------------------------------------------- From: "Tom DeReggi" <wirelessn...@rapiddsl.net> Sent: Monday, January 11, 2010 9:48 AM To: <bwebs...@wirelessmapping.com>; "WISPA General List" <wireless@wispa.org> Subject: Re: [WISPA] Why the telco's will never be true competitors to us > Let me clarify. > > I'm referring to Metro-E deployment. > I'm not refering to the physical medium "glass filled wire", which of > course > has a huge long reliable life. > > Metro-E typically runs from commercial building to commercial building. > Each > Hop is a potential failure point. > Metro-E tends to be a Sequential or In-Series deployment, where there are > many potential failure points between Start and End Point of a desired > link. > Most Metro-E Deployments whether Layer3 or Layer2, tend to terminate > everything at the end of the line at a central place, so there is often > much > shared infrastructure on the way to the far end.infrastructure. > The fact that Fiber can extend in 20-40 mile incrememnts without power is > irrelevent when its most cost viable for Metro-E providers to stop at each > building along the path on the way. > > What Fiber Providers cant control (no better than us), is the rules and > decissions Building Owners need to make to maintain their building and > power. For example, recently, there was a water leak in a building, the > Building protocol was Turn off power to the electrical rooms in the > building > until leak fixed. The building owner could care less that the Fiber > infrastructure would be turned off, becaue they had a bigger > responsibility > to the maintenance and safety of their Half-Billion dollar commercial > office > building. So, Fiber routers got powered off and service went down. These > type things happen ALL the time. At one building, it might only happen > 2-3 > times over 5 years, but multiply that times 20 buildings in-line path, and > that becomes 40-60 outages in 5 years. > > With Wireless PTP, we tend to go longer distances before a hop is > incurred, > and minimizing the number of buildings in-line that could have an effect > on > whether we had power or not to our gear. > > If we compare RF to Light, the difference in uptiem by technology isavery > insignificant amount even if Fiber better. But if we compare deployment > its > not so insignificant to compare wireless with 2-3 buildings inline to > fiber > 10-20 buildings inline. > > The fact is, fiber does have the ability to deploy redundant technology, > but > so does Wireless. And Fiber carriers bypass redundancy in many cases for > the > same reasons Wireless carriers do, to reduce cost, add simplicity for > maintenance, and capacity planning/control. What you see happening is > Fiber > carriers using one fiber strand, and then putting EVERYTHING on that one > strand of Fiber. They do this because they often dont own the fiber, and > have to buy Dark Fiber, and they pay per strand. Fiber deployments are not > automatically redundant as much as people think, when considering all > networking components. For example, LAyer2, Layer3, OSPF, and BGP all > have > to function both waysacross all redundant paths for all customers. > > When there are one or two hops inline with Wireless, its so much easier > and > less disruptive to verify and test that redundancy doesactually work in a > failure situatuation. With Fiber carriers it is to risky to test redundant > configs because to many people are sharing the infrastructure and it > crosses > so many hops. The Fiber carriers make config mistakes. And when they share > so much infrastructure, its easy to harm another customer's config, when > configuring new customers. > > I can not give national data for all carriers deployment. BUT.... from our > experience on our network the most reliable network components are our > wireless PTP links. The largest cause is Power. One of the reasons we did > not increase the uptime of our wireless towers fed by fiber was that it > did > no good to have power systems that gave uptimes larger than the uptime > delivered by our fiber carrier's power systems. The truth is batteries > fail, and nobody knows it until a failure occurs, and the 4 hour uptimes > doesn't occur. The more buildings inline, the more chances one of the > buildings inline is effected by a power outage somewhere. > > The number we use is that when one of our end users experiences an outage > it > is 4x more likely it is from a fiber related outage, not from our Metro > Wireless back haul. > > I'll give a real world example, We provide wholesale to a WISP in DC. I'm > estimating that they had near 8 outages in two years if not more, and all > were related to fiber. The DragonWave wireless link and Tlink-45 inline > serving them the last mile has not failed once in the same time. > > Sure I'll agree that Long Haul Fiber is likely more reliable, because it > is > built to be. But Metro-Fiber and FTTH is not built to that same spec most > of > the time. > > One of the bigger mistakes I made is I paid for fiber instead of Licensed > links early on. (ACtually it was not a mistake, it was a lack of upfront > cash/pitol at the time). I lost a lot of business because I relied on > Fiber > Metrol Transports, that could not deliver the SLA or Uptime anywhere near > the expectations that I set for my Wireless transport network. EVEN my > Trango 5830s, I had PTP links that never had a hickup for 5 years. > > The bottom line is, IF I can get a wireless link between two points, and > the > capacity I need does not exceed capabilty of Wireless, I will ALWAYS > choose > Wireless for better uptime. > > Fiber is good when the capacity exceeds wireless's. Fiber is good if it > has > a shorter number of Hops than Wireless does. Wireless backhaul tends to > develop undesirable packetloss if the number of hops get to large. We try > to keep our Core Wireless transport/backhaul HOPs under 3. But if > Line-of-sight can be acheived, that gives a 30-60 mile radius that can > best > be served with Wireless backhaul for small providers, that dont expect > huge > capacities. A 300mbps wireless backhaul is more capacity than most small > WISPs ever need, to achieve good ROI.. > > Note that I did not say "quality". I said "Reliabilty", meaning uptime and > repair time. > Wireless is also less expensive, I have never once seen a fiber carrier > quote a lower cost per mb than a Wireless provider's lease payment to > build > their own, IF quote was for something like a tower site, where there were > not numerous fiber carriers competing to that site location. > > IF I could get Dark Fiber cariers to sell me Dark Fiber as cheap as Metro > E, > with dedicated uninhibited paths dedicated to me extending 20 miles a hop, > I > could build Fiber to be more reliable than wireless, But its not cost > effective to buy Dark Fiber in most cases. They want 5x more for Dark > Fiber > because of the opportunity cost. Dark Fiber is often priced to be not > worth > it unless pushing 10GB or more. > > As a matter of fact, IF I did a FTTH deployment, I'd feel more comfortable > feeding it with a 300mb Wireless link, for better uptime. Because I'd > know > it would be more than enough capacity considering oversubscription. > > Tom DeReggi > RapidDSL & Wireless, Inc > IntAirNet- Fixed Wireless Broadband > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Brian Webster" <bwebs...@wirelessmapping.com> > To: "WISPA General List" <wireless@wispa.org> > Sent: Monday, January 11, 2010 9:18 AM > Subject: Re: [WISPA] Why the telco's will never be true competitors to us > > >> Tom, >> When you make the claim that wireless has more uptime than fiber, where >> do >> you base those facts from and what types of fiber deployments are you >> comparing it to? While I believe wireless is a great thing, one has to >> wonder why a company who's name was MCI (Microwave Communications >> Incorporated) eventually switched everything to fiber? I helped buy a >> bunch >> of their old microwave tower sites after they were decommissioned. They >> built them for capacity and did everything right. It just seems that >> eventually the larger WISP's will need to consider the path that MCI took >> over time and wonder if they won't evolve along a similar path. Now their >> failure was not due to their choice of fiber over wireless and that's >> another story altogether. Fiber deployments have been commonplace between >> telephone switches for years now and I have never heard about reliability >> issues and/or downtime problems with the fiber. Not that they don't >> happen >> but when you average their uptime to their outages, I would think they >> have >> some of the better reliability figures over any technology. >> >> >> >> Thank You, >> Brian Webster >> >> >> -----Original Message----- >> From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org]on >> Behalf Of Tom DeReggi >> Sent: Monday, January 11, 2010 8:40 AM >> To: WISPA General List >> Subject: Re: [WISPA] Why the telco's will never be true competitors to >> us >> >> >> Agreed, Brett. >> >> I see people use business Cable all the time, UNTIL they have an outage, >> and >> then they loose all their customers feeding off it after that. >> If there is one Thing the Cable Cos understand it is "you didn't buy a >> service with an SLA because we dont offer one, so we can care less if you >> are down for a week, read the small print.". >> And what can you tell your subs once it occurred? "Oh I used a low cost >> Cable service, uh oh yeah why did I say we had better service than the >> Cable >> cos?" >> >> Plus, Wireless is more reliable from an uptime perspective, than any >> other >> technology (even Fiber), so why would a WISP want to use anything other >> than >> Wireless for connectivity to a tower? >> >> Well, it is true that some Business CAble services are less expensive >> than >> a >> single antenna roof right fee. But I used that arguement to negotiate >> lower >> roof right fees. >> >> Tom DeReggi >> RapidDSL & Wireless, Inc >> IntAirNet- Fixed Wireless Broadband >> >> >> ----- Original Message ----- >> From: Bret Clark >> To: WISPA General List >> Sent: Sunday, January 10, 2010 5:49 PM >> Subject: Re: [WISPA] Why the telco's will never be true competitors to >> us >> >> >> Blah...I wouldn't rely on any telco or cable company to serve our >> towers. >> We are completely wireless between towers, even our upstream Internet >> links >> are wireless running to local Internet exchange points. That way if there >> is >> a problem we are responsible for it and we can fix it without getting the >> run around from a telco. >> >> I was in the CLEC business for over 10 years and if there is one thing >> telco's do better than anyone else is finger point! It was never their >> problem until you provided beyond a shadow of a doubt it was their >> problem >> and 90% of the time is was their problem to begin with! >> >> Bret >> >> Tom Sharples wrote: >> I found out about so-called business DSL a few years ago. We had it here >> (Qwest), and every three to four weeks it would go belly-up. The "fix" >> was >> that, after a day or two of dead air, Qwest would send out a tech to >> power-cycle the ancient and creaky Nortel neighborhood dslam. This went >> on >> for a few months, until I switched to Comcast business-class cable. That >> has >> proven to be extremely reliable, and I haven't looked back since. >> >> Tom S. >> >> >> ----- Original Message ----- >> From: "Marlon K. Schafer" <o...@odessaoffice.com> >> To: "WISPA General List" <wireless@wispa.org> >> Sent: Sunday, January 10, 2010 1:41 PM >> Subject: [WISPA] Why the telco's will never be true competitors to us >> >> >> I have a tower down. It's fed by a *business* grade DSL link. >> >> Can't get to the main router at that local. >> >> So I log onto the Century Tel (century link nowadays) web site go find a >> phone number for tech support. >> >> IF there is a phone number on their Microsoft Bing cloan of a web site, I >> couldn't find it. So, I decided to try the online chat thingy. >> >> Up pops a page with a spot for a the username, phone number and zip code. >> Naturally, I put the right things in the boxes. Only to get an error. >> So >> I >> tried again, and again. Finally I actually READ what the smallish print >> said you can ONLY put in ONE of the fields, not all of them. Hate to >> allow >> any answer to work rather than make people only fill in one field where >> they >> usually have to fill in all of them. My fault for not reading the fine >> print, but then again, I shouldn't have to.... >> >> Next, I finally get a tech on the screen. Well, kinda, the web site >> doesn't >> have anything but an error at the top. But the chat part eventually came >> up >> and a tech was on the line. We quickly established that the tech support >> guy wasn't able to see if there was a dsl connection or not. ug >> >> So, he gave me a phone number for tech support. >> >> I called that number only to sit on hold for a while (not toooo bad >> though) >> and then find out that that wasn't the right number for a business >> account. >> >> Called the next number. Sat on hold a bit longer this time, but still >> only >> a few minutes. We quickly got through all of the who are you type stuff. >> Then the gal on the support end asked me to tell her what lights were on >> on >> the modem. "Um, I'm an hour and a half form there." "Well, sir, I'm >> unable >> help you unless someone is on at the site." >> >> Sigh. The home owner at this site is a snow bird and won't be home for >> months yet. >> >> The tech support people aren't able to tell if there is a connection or >> not. >> It's not like this is a little, rinky dink company like mine. This is a >> HUGE telco! Ug. >> >> They won't even try to fix a business account that I pay $1200.00 per >> year >> for. Probably even more than that. Amazing. >> >> Have a great day, I know I will. >> marlon >> >> >> >> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- >> ---- >> WISPA Wants You! 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