Trading Right-Of-Way For High Bandwidth?

eldub asks: "I want to trade several miles of right-of-way for an OC3 or T3 line. A local phone company needs to cross several miles of my ranch in order to lay a new fiber backbone. They are asking for a ridiculous easement granting full access not only to the affected areas but the entire property. That being said, I'm thinking of asking them for something equally ridiculous--a full T3 or OC3 line dropped into the house in exchange for the privilege of digging around in my dirt." This seems like a fair thing to ask for, but how likely is a company to grant such a boon, even if they do want to use your property to run their wires?

"I'm not sure exactly what I should ask for--I'd like to enumerate everything I would need to plug a computer at the house and have mucho grande broadband access. Any of this crowd have any tips?"

Comments

Class D IP space?

[schnurble]

CID 3:

This has got to be the best way of getting bandwidth, for close to nothing. I'd ask for at least a T3, make sure they include a CSU/DSU, and a full class D IP range. Then you could run fiber to all of your neighbors and charge them for access. :)

CID 5:

First off, don't ask for a full Class D, unless you're planning on giving the entire town internet access, or literally wall-papering your house with terminals, you'd need at most a 16-IP class D, or in techno-speak, a /28 IP block.

Guys. Please. If you're going to reply and spout off smart-sounding technical terms, at least use the correct ones.

A class A is a /8 (16,777,216 IPs), a class B is a /16 (65,536 IPs), and a class C is a /24 (256 IPs). Class D IP space is -MULTICAST-. Not unicast IP space. It's multicast (224.0.0.0). It's not the size of an IP block. And given that noone uses classful IP anymore (at least, not anyone with a clue), asking an ISP for a Class anything block will probably get inquisitive stares and/or laughter.

That said, we'll move on now to the "ask for a guaranteed minimum of 400Mbit/s full duplex" comment.

Basically, you're full of crap. OC3 is 155Mbit, an OC12 is 622Mbit. There's nothing in between. Telco's dont run Ethernet (100xX or 1000xX) over WAN, so where did you get this "100mbit per fiber" crap? You really expect to take an underground-rated singlemode pair of fiber $TELCO ran into your back yard and plug it into some $1200 Linksys switch? And, do you -really- think some telco is going to just GIVE you this kind of bandwidth? The cheapest I've seen bandwidth sold for is around $400 PER MEGABIT per MONTH. You expect $TELCO to give away $62,000 (OC3) in revenue a MONTH just to drop a conduit on this guy's property? Where do you buy your crack, and can I have some?

Remember, telco's would sell their own mothers for a price. And not necessarily a high one, either.

Here's a more realistic request.

Ask for a 768K FT1 or frame + transit, a /28 (16 IPs, 14 useable), a DSU and router (nothing fancy, a cisco 2611 with WIC-1T would do nicely), and offer to take the rep out to lunch. Even this is probably a stretch, but it's one HELL of a lot more likely than the previous suggestions.

If you act like an ass, and start getting pie-in-the-sky-dreams of an OC12 for your bathroom (like previous posters), complete with termination and routing equipment, $TELCO is going to tell you to stuff it where the sun don't shine, and alter their plans to move about 5 miles around you and you get nothing.

-j