Bandwidth in Little Rock, AR?

ioctl asks: "My company needs a 45Mb link from mid-town Little Rock, AR (University exit, I-630) to North Little Rock, AR (Wildwood exit, I-167). Our telco doesn't have any glass in the area, and wants about $800K over the next 5 years to build it out. We looked at another local provider who has the buildout already done, but their tech didn't show for the initial meeting (My boss: "He forgot it?!?!"). We've also looked into doing wireless via TCBY Tower (Proxim Tsunami or Aeras Networks Wavelink), but they are > $80K, plus rooftop space. Does bandwidth have to be this expensive? Are there any other possible solutions?"

Comments

Don't forget...

[kinnell]

A van full of hard drives. OK, it's probably not applicable, but you didn't mention your latency requirements ;-) Might look good in your report as evidence of "thinking outside the box", though.

um... take another meeting with that local firm?

[Artifex]

Seriously, call the company, ask to talk to the president of the company, explain to them that his tech almost cost him a major deal, and asks if he still wants one.

Oh, and if you get on good terms with that company, let them know there's at least one network engineer laid off from an international Tier 1 provider living in Dallas, Texas, who talked you into giving him another chance and would looove to move in and replace that tech :)

Do you really need 45Mbps?

[Keyoke]

I'm not familiar with the area, but you can MUX a handful of Ts together I suppose. If your still in the 0-mile area of a provider, that might not be too horribly expensive. I don't know what Ts cost out there tho. If you don't need more'n about 10Mbps, this might work. I think the most I've ever seen MUX'd is 8 Ts.

Second that

[0x0d0a]

The story submitter should call the local firm back. Don't get me wrong, I realize that the tech left a bad impression (i.e. is bad service going to dog them through their dealings with the company?), and the folks probably feel snubbed. However, as someone else pointed out, this is not a multimillion dollar deal. It's bad, but people also do occasionally forget things. Heck, I've made a couple of mistakes and oversights in my life, and I've been glad when people give me a chance to make good on it. Maybe the guy's wife just broke up with him, maybe some other company kept having emergencies that he had to handle and got overwhelmed, forgetting about the appointment. Maybe his PDA that he used to keep appointments with was stolen and he's been trying to adapt to using pen-and-paper. Who knows?

Giving folks a chance to make one mistake, unless you're in a situation where a particular mistake absolutely cannot happen is not a bad idea. It can't hurt (aside from a bit of the submitter's time) to bring the people in. He can always decide not to go with them. Given the amount of money on the line, it seems like worthwhile being gracious may be worthwhile.

Also, as others have pointed out, have you considered all possibilities? Do you really need a 45Mbps link? Can you get away with mirroring some fileservers on each side, or something along those lines? We don't really have any idea of what you're doing.

Just a thought -- It might also be worthwhile to hire a local network engineering consultant to give his advice as to what's best to do. He might know of worthwhile things that other local companies have done.

You might consider working a deal with any other businesses interested in doing the same thing and maybe even the city. If there are other businesses that desperately need network connectivity or could reduce their ISP fees by joining into such a thing, perhaps the people asking $800K could be made to give a better deal, or at least split costs.

If you decide to do rooftop links, remember that the failure conditions are different from lines. Depending upon the sort of system you decide upon, bad weather can negatively impact your link.

[Sigh] There's just so little information that it's hard to give more than very basic guesses as to what you want to do.

Re:Uhm...

[Doco]

DS3 does run over copper - but it can't over twisted pair. It is generally run using coax cable, and not exactly the cable-tv type of coax either. The equipment is set up for a 75ohm impedance, and expects repeaters on a regular basis. If the cable isn't already there - you might as well run fiber as it will be cheaper because of fewer repeaters and give you more bandwidth.

Time Warner

[austad]

Have you checked into Time Warner?

They have Metro Area ethernet in a lot of major cities, and pricing is damn good. Here in Minneapolis, I can do gigabit Fibre Channel between offices. Now that's just damn cool. Not sure about little rock, but it may be worth looking into. Time Warner Telecom has the benefit of being able to use Time Warner Cable's right-of-way. Which means that when they run fiber, they don't have to get permits and go through as much hassle because in the early 80's cable companies were granted huge rights which allowed them to pretty much run cable wherever they pleased without having to get permits. And, if your location makes business sense to TW, they will finance the cost of the install (like if there are other large potential customers in your building).

Although, for the recurring monthly cost of a link like this, after 10 to 12 months, you could have just paid for that wireless solution you were looking at. Keep in mind 802.15.3 wireless is coming out soon too, which will drop costs dramatically.