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Building a Town-Wide LAN?

Posted by Cliff on from the just-think-of-the-lan-parties-you-could-have dept.

The Mainframe asks: "My town (Hanover, NH, home of Dartmouth College, the Dartmouth Medical School, and Dartmouth-Hitchcock Hospital, non-college population approx. 9K people, double that with the college) is conducting a feasibility study on building a town network. They'd like to deliver fiber to every home within town limits. This fiber will carry (certainly) the internet and (probably) cable-like television programming access. They're estimating that it will cost $40 per month per household. I just filled out and returned my survey (one sent to every Hanover household) in which they asked a number of questions like: 'What would your primary use of this service be?' and 'Would you be willing to pay $40 a month for this service?'. What reasons, other than the obvious benefit of having fiber to one's house, can you think of for making this kind of commitment to the infrastructure?

"I would imagine that there will be an enormous secondary benefit because we will become an attractive town to technically inclined people and businesses. At the same time, Is this a good idea? I, personally, think it would be wonderful, but (as an IT major) the technical challenges of laying fiber and maintaining a network to serve 9000+ citizens are mind boggling. Policy decisions, network abuse, outages, spam, filtering (god forbid), all nightmares that will require a dedicated, 24/7 network maintenance team. Any network engineers out there have any juicy morsels from their work on large networks?

I know the town manager, so I'd like to feed this discussion to her, after moderation has taken its toll (probably at a level of +3), so she can see what the technical community thinks."

3 of 304 comments (clear)

  1. Besides high-speed pr0n? by frank_adrian314159 · · Score: -1, Troll

    What else is there?

    --
    That is all.
  2. Re:Don't Want It by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    what a fucking queer manner you have. tell me, are you a dick-nosed faggot or were you just injected with aids by a homeless person and thus forced into the life you lead? jesus christ, you're a loser. check the numbers at dartmoth college...they've got their own infrastructre so saying that the numbers are going to be 18,000 is wrong. not all kids are living in the dorms, but the majority are. check the fucking numbers douchebag. you don't know shit you queer.

  3. Re:Why does there have to be profit? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    You're suggesting socialism you pinko! The Internet is not a need. Sewage treatment and water is. You're a fucking commie in disguise! Fuck you, you people lost. Piss off now.