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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."
intends to be largely used for video streaming.
*Wink wink*
Unfortunately, I am not Wil Wheaton
"and intends to be largely used for video streaming"
is intended to be
bloody yanks
In rural Illinois we just run cable up the Interstate or build another series of attractive microwave towers when bandwidth gets short.
The problems of running a network, and a university for that matter, in a metropolis such as New York or Chicago are completely different. We have lots of cheap space but very little infrastructure, while they have too much infrastructure and hardly any space.
We just dig a hole and lay cable; in NYC all the holes have already been taken.
sigs, as if you care.
intends to be largely used for video streaming.
You misspelled sharing.
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.
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.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
Yep. Life is fair.
Monterey County CA, the maintenance guys were looking in some "unmarked" panels in the basement in the Salinas offices, and "found" about 200 strands of dark fiber. Apparently during the reign of one of the iterations of our local cable service (TCI/AT&T/Comcast, AT&T did it I know it :), they "knew" that fiber was the future and laid fiber all over the place, then they sold out to comcast without hooking any of it up.
:)
Montery started by connecting to schools and cities down the 101 highway, when MCOE lost antenna space for their educational television feed, they ran it down the fiber backbone, without causing any lag in any of the connections. So now places that were running 56k frame relays are now flying with 45mb to their router. They actually have a bigger connection than my isp
I just need a small space, near the router, I will stand, I don't need a chair, I just want to FEEL the bandwidth, please?
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
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.
Why?