NYC's Educational Dark Fiber Network

An anonymous reader submits "A group of educational leaders in New York City has created a new fiber backbone network off previously layed but unused fiber. Connecting many city NYSERNet members (the Museum of Natural History, CUNY, Mt. Sinai-NYU Medical, Cornell Med., Columbia Med., and Columbia's primary campus), the newly activated backbone connects to Internet2 and commodity Internet and intends to be largely used for video streaming. Original plan info here."

Comments

ffs...

[Anonymous Coward]

"and intends to be largely used for video streaming"

is intended to be

bloody yanks

Re:A lot of this?

[Jouser]

Yes, there is a lot. During the dot-com boom lots of companies/startups were running and laying fiber. Since the dot-com bust, all the fiber became unlit and hence dark fiber.

In Ohio we've recently completed our Third Frontier Network which was largely built from dark fiber.

The speed of dark

[Matey-O]

Having dark capacity isn't surprising when you look at the economics.

1. Cost of laying a single strand of fiber: $12,000,000 NewYenRubles

2. Cost of laying 24 strands of fiber:
$12,000,001 NewYenRubles

At the time I worked for the local DOT, they laid 22 odd strands of fiber down the major highways in town, and used the revenue generated from selling off fiber to halp fund the project. It's good for the DOT as it lowers costs, and it's good for Telco/ISP/whoever because they don't have to dig a seonc trench, obtain permission, rip up roads again, etc.

VPNet Anyone?

[CyberDave]

VPNet, Spokane, WA: The Virtual Possibilities Network.

Built from dark fiber once owned by Avista Utilities before they spun off the telecom stuff and, specifically, the fiber to Columbia Fiber Solutions. (Also includes a couple of leased OC-3 lines.) Been in planning for a couple of years and back in September had the ceremonial launch and press event. It's all gigabit networking between the core routers in each node (except for the aforementioned OC-3 lines). Connects all the major educational institutions in the area as well as several research and commercial firms. As of right now, all the fiber is lit and the core routers are connected. Some sites (like the one I work at) are still waiting for network drops to be made from the router to the computer labs (red tape...). Should have an Internet2 connection as soon as another project (something Gigapop, my memory's a bit fuzzy on that) is completed in the next year or so.

Eastern Washington University, Cheney

Eastern Washington University, Spokane at Riverpoint

Gonzaga University

Inland Northwest Health Services (INHS)

Intercollegiate College of Nursing, WSU College of Nursing

North Idaho College

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL)

Community Colleges of Spokane (Spokane Community College)

Spokane Intercollegiate Research and Technology Institute (SIRTI)

Spokane Public Schools

University of Idaho

University of Idaho, Research Park, Post Falls

Washington State University, Pullman

Washington State University, Spokane

Whitworth College

Website: http://www.vpnet.org (a little bland at the moment, but still good info).

Re:A lot of this?

[Rasta Prefect]

Since the dot-com bust, all the fiber became unlit and hence dark fiber.

This isn't the only source of unused fiber - The majority of the fiber in the ground has never been lit. It costs almost as much to lay one strand as a hundred, so everybody laid a hundred, plus empty conduit it could be blown through later. The stuff on the ends however, is expensive, so they don't light it till they need it.

It's stuff like this

[Corellon Larethian]

that makes the MPAA and RIAA wet themselves.

WH00T!

It's not previously-laid fiber -- it's brand new

[n2ygk]

Despite the fact that several bidders offered to lease us their unused installed fiber we got a better price, better engineering, and better quality of fiber (SMF28e low water peak) by having brand new fiber installed. I have a map that shows me exactly where my fiber goes. (No, I can't share it with you.)

Re:Say No More

[n2ygk]

Actually, mostly high-end music lessons: http://www.columbia.edu/acis/networks/advanced/

Columbia's Connection sounds surprisingly wimpy

[billstewart]

Columbia's announcement says they've increased their internet connectivity to ~300 Mbps, from their previous 150 Mbps. Seems kind of wimpy - I'd have expected an announcement that says they're running at least gigabit connections to the other participants in the study. Maybe they're doing that and the press release just doesn't mention it? Or did they just start cheap and reuse their existing OC3 cards, while maybe some of the other players have fast connections to each other?

If you wade through the piles of documentation, it looks like they've got dark fiber routes from each of the participants to racks at a couple of hub locations where they can meet with each other and Nysernet and also crossconnect to other carriers at a carrier-neutral facility. That means they could be running whatever combination they want of DWDM or CWDM, 10 Gig Ether, 1 Gig Ether, or traditional SONET (155 Mbps x 1,4,16,64) depending on how much they want to spend on CPE. I couldn't tell how many fiber pairs they were deploying per customer, but they're using fairly new high-end fiber that supports almost anything. The cheapest way to light up the stuff is with GigE fiber connections, since you can get by with a pretty small router, and cheap cards for short-distance hops, but CWDM is coming down in price (Coarse Wavelength Division Multiplexing doesn't get as many channels per fiber as Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing, but the hardware's a lot cheaper) so you should be able to run multiple GigEs or whatever else you feel like. It looks like hardware costs for the CWDM versions are on the order of $5-10K per FDX GigE channel.