[LINK] NSW government fibre

[Alan Sawyer]

On Wed, 23 Oct 2002, Chirgwin, Richard wrote:


Richard,
You make several good points. The harder question to answer: Is there
sufficient demand and alligned co-operation to achieve such a thing?

<Snip commentary on secondhand market>
> 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?

There is but it's market specific, a lot of it is enterprise and older
core gear. The key would be to settle on a functional L2 switch platform
with LX/ZX70+ gbic support. Unfortunately finding a large supply of cheap
LH gbics would be difficult so perhaps thats where you swing a volume deal
with a generic vendor that manufactures such gbics.

Certainly with the market as it is, in terms of the equipment and
employment market, now would be the time to initiate such a venture and it
would probably sit well in terms of attracting govt support because it
continues development and growth in an otherwise flat market.
Don't ignore regulation though.

> 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.

In such a scenario even 4 9's should be achievable if the fiber
plant is well maintained. It's layer 3 and above where most of the issues
will occur. If you want 99.999% go to a quality datacenter and multihome,
that's about the only way you will get it (in a meaningful way i.e. can I
reach the vast majority of the internet vs can I reach my upstream peers)

Alan.

> 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.
> > >
> > >
> >
> > ----------
> > For Link list information see http://sunsite.anu.edu.au/link/
> >
> ----------
> For Link list information see http://sunsite.anu.edu.au/link/
>

----------
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