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Last-Mile Fiber Optic
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?"
A pre-wired house isn't worth much, to a geek like me. To someone else it's probably worth a lot.
The reason? Well, being a geek I would want my wires in a very specific configuration just for me. I would be pissed off about having the jack in the wrong part of the wall. I wouldn't like having to modify my computing to match the house. I want the house to match the way I like to do things. Ideally I would have one room of the house with many computers in it and many cables. I would have an office with one computer in it, wired. Every other room in the house woul be accomodated by a single WAP.
If it's expensive fiber or a configuration I have to adapt to, rather than one that adapts to me I wont like it.
Non geek people would love it though, if they can get it to work.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
- when somebody switched on Kazaa, everyone's connection came almost to a standstill
- we had to wire the house ourselves to make it cost efficient
- somebody had to maintain everything
To me it seems like the biggest problem in an apartment complex or neighborhood would be the last issue. Who maintains it? For us, it was essentially somebody's job to tend to it (just like it was somebody's job to wash dishes on Sunday morning). Anybody know how this happens in these cases we're talking about? Is there a benevolent net admin (dictator) or do people pay a fee to some 3rd party?
The problem with having incredibly fast last mile is that you need incredibly, incredibly fast upstream connectivity. For a stub system (i.e. a system which won't allow transit across itself,) the usual figures quoted are 16:1 contention; that is, sum(CPE bandwidth)/16.
For a transit system (a system which provides connectivity between other systems/networks,) peering bandwidth should not exceed intra-system bandwidth, but also needs to be great enough that systems who use you as a transit network actually do wind up getting the fastest path, as BGP has no concept of 'speed' as a metric.
Given that this idea is proposing to deploy fibre at (i would assume) at least 10Mb to the home, the upstream bandwidth will almost certainly need to be in the gigabits for this to be useful. Transit infrastructure will likely also need to be upgraded if too many smaller ISPs start rolling this out.
I don't think the networking infrastructure we have necessarily has the capacity right now. Perhaps when DWDM becomes more commonplace, with each run of Single mode carrying 100s of gigabits, but for now I think it's really only a pipe dream.
Another idea worth considering is the 'script kiddie terrorist' argument. If you give uncapped 10Mb access to every script kiddie on your block, you'll need to make sure that everything else scales proportionally, or script kiddie targets will suffer an exponentially worse fate.
You're doing it wrong.
On the first month of home sales, Red Hat should offer fresh boxed copies of Linux (yes, with the usual support) to each new resident. Just drop off the promotional crate with the sales agent; it's just like some laundry detergent, barbecue briquette or furniture coupons that other subdivisions offer their new home-owning residents.
How about Linux missionaries riding their bicycles through the neighorhoods?
(The doorbell rings, two young men dressed in simple black and white clothes waiting.)
homeowner: Yes?
missionary: Hello, sir. Have you ever tried Linux?
homeowner: Isn't that a laundry detergent?
missionary: Only in Germany, sir. Would you be interested to know that you don't have to buy Windows every two years?
homeowner: I think you're an encyclopedia salesman! And I like Windows.
missionary: Why not give Linux a try? Here, I'll install it for you. (pushes door open and runs for computer room)
homeowner: Hey, get out of here! I'll call the police!
(2 hours later...)
homeowner: (robot voice) I like Linux. I hate Windows. RMS is a god. I must tell my friends.
missionary: Very good sir! See you at the next LUG meeting, then!
A dingo ate my sig...