[LINK] NSW government fibre

[Chirgwin, Richard]

(I can't find Glen's original message...)

Anyhow. Another point to be made about opportunities for regionals is that
the vendors in the city are complaining somewhat about the amount of
secondhand kit on the market. Coffeeing with a country manager this week, he
remarked that there's an awful lot of Cisco on the market, plus some stuff
from other major vendors - which could, I guess, make things more feasible
for a co-op model?

Disclaimer to my next comment: since your message is missing from my inbox,
Glen, don't take it amiss if I've misunderstood you somehow...

What would be acceptible as a switch for this kind of operation depends
somewhat on your expectations, doesn't it? 

We talk about the five-nines, but is that truly necessary if we're building
a 'supplementary' service? If a rural/regional co-op (or any other co-op
model) is intended to offer new Internet capability, but not to replace the
home phone, then I'm less convinced that it has to be a fully telco-grade
platform. Longevity of the hardware is probably more important (IMNSHO) than
mean time between reboots...

Instead of telco-grade 99.999% uptime, 99.9% may be acceptible - because:
a) it's not providing a lifeline service for users; and
b) as a co-operative model, you're not losing revenue for downtime.

At three nines, you're predicting nine hours of downtime a year; and, of
course, the 99.9% is merely probability, you may have zero downtime or (even
in a five nines design) you may have a crisis.

Richard Chirgwin

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Alan Sawyer [mailto:alan@linerate.net]
> Sent: Tuesday, 22 October 2002 18:33
> To: Glen Turner
> Cc: link@www.anu.edu.au
> Subject: Re: [LINK] NSW government fibre
> 
> 
> On Tue, 22 Oct 2002, Glen Turner wrote:
> 
> > But not as easily as you'd expect.  For all the manufacturer's
> > positioning there is no GbE switch I can find that can be used
> > to build a solid WAN backbone.  That means either accepting
> > some deficiciences (ie: *not* a retail solution) or moving
> > several million dollars up the scale to DWDM equipment.
> 
> Glen,
> Have you looked at the Extreme Networks Summit 1i's?
> Since you draw comparisons to DWDM equipment you are only 
> talking about
> layer 2 and below and the Extreme kit does a solid job. (in fairness I
> believe Cisco and other vendors have somewhat similar kit).
> 
> For spans up to 70km of G652 fiber they work reliably and at 
> approx sub
> 10k per box they're a good solution. They also support EAPS which
> provides (for the most part) sub 1 second failover.
> Further the black diamonds support the 'cwdm' card which does 
> 8x1gb optically muxed (not ITU grid conformant) up
> to around 35km. I've used them all around europe and at least at L2
> they're solid boxes.
> 
> Now if you're talking about ULH... there is the right tool 
> for the right
> job.
> 
> Alan (who does not work for a vendor).
> 
> 
> >
> >   [I'd be very, very happy to be shown to be wrong about
> >    the ethernet switch statement.]
> >
> >  > Debate, conflict and delay will surround issues like:
> >  > - last mile rights..., "port rights"..., power struggles that
> >  > typify local government.
> >
> > Yep, goodwill counts for a lot in regional networking and
> > one or two people can stuff it entirely.  Equally, one or
> > two people can make it happen.  These people typically
> > aren't consultants, and finding these people has been a
> > problem for regional telco projects.
> >
> >
> 
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