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Last-Mile Fiber Optic

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the building-the-home dept.

Johnny Mnemonic writes "The newsletter "The Town Paper" tracks the development of "traditional" new developments--developments with integrated shopping, parks, and that are pedestrian friendly. Their recent issue has an article that describes a new community in Issaquah WA that has, among it's interesting features: a wired LAN in every home, free community Intranet, and a choice for a fiber optic connection. It is probably no coincidence that Microsoft is planning on building 3 million square feet of office space there. How much is a pre-wired house worth to you? What will this do for community building?"

2 of 224 comments (clear)

  1. Hmm... by Ken@WearableTech · · Score: 0, Troll

    If the Microsoft involvement means MSN has to be my ISP, I'd pass.

  2. Pre-wired house? by insecuritiez · · Score: 1, Troll

    How hard is it to run the last mile of cable when you aren't running cable at all?

    It's sad that this sounds state-of-the-art. Fiber backbones have been around for a long time. I'm betting that their backbone is switched gigabit. Nice for the local intranet, but not noticeably faster than a good old 10Mbps CAT5 link. In fact, in my opinion, putting in wires has already dated the project. What would have really gotten me going is if Issaquah WA had installed 802.11.x (a, b, or g) access points and was offering Intra/Inter net via wireless access. Yesterday wires were in, wireless is happening today.

    And don't even mention security; there are many good stream ciphers out there. (Does RC4 ring a bell?)