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."
Clear TOS (Score:5, Informative)
Check out Kutztown Pa. (Score:4, Informative)
team up with some local isp? (Score:4, Informative)
Fast net and TV are both essentials (Score:5, Informative)
New Zealand-centric story on it here:
http://www.idg.net.nz/webhome.nsf/UNID/7EA
some case study stuff from Ericsson here:
http://www.ericsson.com.au/network_operators/br
not a LAN, rather a MAN (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Why not use wireless? (Score:3, Informative)
Our town already has done it. (Score:5, Informative)
My Ramble (Score:3, Informative)
My only advice is just make sure you have clearly defined goals and that all the stakeholders are on the same page before you start. If all goes well the residents will be super happy. And happy constituents usually means votes, which means someone high up will love you if you can pull this off under their watch
Ask a town that has done it already.... (Score:2, Informative)
Do it. (Score:3, Informative)
I expect that the new centers of commercial growth are going to be the new technology centers that citiLEC Internet access distribution will make possible.
Silicon Valley had their chance to do this and blew it.
The fact that this is going to make life more convenient for the town's citizens, force competition for cable TV meaning lower prices based on experiences from other citiLEC communities is... probably of more interest to the community than a shot at becoming a techology center.
It's a win-win deal for everybody except incumbent cable / telco providers.
I suggest a setup where access is resold to ISPs as it was in the citiLEC in the Pacific Northwest, check the slashdot thread for more info.
Ashland did this... (Score:1, Informative)
http://www.ashlandfiber.net/ [ashlandfiber.net]
Sasha
Re:Block outbound port 25 by default (Score:2, Informative)
My $.02
Re:Why not use wireless? (Score:5, Informative)
The college has a policy that every square foot of campus should, in theory, be covered by fuzzy blanket of wireless signal. And I mean fuzzy in every sense--feel good, and the fact that sitting here in my dorm room I get no signal.
The trick with this is that to cover all college land, we bleed over into the town a *lot*. And since it's an unsecured network (anybody who knows the SSID can join), a not-completely-insignificant portion of the town that surrounds the school gets free internet access.
As for "a few access points", the number's well over a thousand just for the school, if memory serves right. The town (small as it is) is still way bigger than the school. Wireless APs are *not* cheap, especially ones that will mesh well into a large network.
Something tells me this network is going to end up tied to the college, using BlitzMail (Dartmouth's own proprietary email system, which eats it.) Of course, speaking as a student, that wouldn't be all bad...there are things at every school that can't be accessed outside their LAN, and that'd make it easier to live off campus.
On the upside, maybe that means they'd finally upgrade our non-I2 backbone. Heh.
Closing thought: Strange that the first I hear of a local issue is via Slashdot...
Check out the UTOPIA project (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Clear TOS (Score:3, Informative)
If P2P file sharing becomes a problem, KaZaA and any other ports (other than FTP and HTTP) transmitting too much data can simply be set to a lower priority.
I think a clear TOS is right on the money. People don't have time to read 20 pages or whatever. Make the TOS one or two pages. It can say things like "If your internet usage excedes an average of 2 MB/s per month, your connection will be set at lower priority (if we face bandwidth constraints). Please don't make game servers with more than 20 player slots. Unauthorized usage of others' computers or networks prohibited (hacking). 50 emails per day is your limit. If you have any issues or special needs, please contact us and we can work things out."
The point is, this is pretty much what the 20 page TOSes say. There could be an official TOS for if there are any questions, but other than that, it is good if your customers actually know the TOS. Also, things can be worked out. If 50 sent emails per day is not enough for a customer because they run a Linux email newsletter that people register for, then fine. Otherwise, no ordinary user would need to be able to write near 50 emails per day.
fiber to the house!!! (Score:2, Informative)
Specialization Fiber Optic Networks from 417 Megabits/sec - 1.6 Terabits/sec
[1.6 TB That means one reaaallly big pipe for lots of data to fly down]
By the way if they are looking for someone to run the network maintenance I am able to relocate!
Optical networking is generally used as a carrier for what ever type of digital data is being sent. For example say you have an Optical Carrier Signial uhhh lets say about an OC3 (3 T3's in optical format) All of the data that the OC3 is carrying is considered a payload; Electrical siginals like T3 to multiplexed with other peoples T3 (or 2 more from your facility). This would constitute a very basic and crude example of optical networking in the realm of todays technology.
For a clearer definition of this example go to a search engine and try SONET
First of all the logistics of spam etc. is an issue left to the individual. I would imagine that considering current Local Loop technologies, that the badnwidth to the home would be limited. This is easily done now with various types of high end optical routers (go dig through Cisco's web site if you can afford the time). Also see companies like Cox Communications (they use a cable network version of fiber to the neighborhood!) or any other Cable internet access carrier.
Second Many small cities around the US have went to Fiber-to-the-House. Not any more work than adding new copper to the same community (actually considerbly less).
3rd Hell YES bury the fiber and get it going on!!!!!
Everyone will benefit.
Finally the fiber to the house would requrie an interface somewhere between your equipment and the Optical signal, since I am sure that there are not too many tv's and PC's in the hood that can accomodate a direct optical connection?
Re:Besides high-speed pr0n? (Score:4, Informative)
That sums, plus "at high speed", would sum up to prescribed application of fiber in a network.
I think fiber to every household is reaching unnecessarily far and may not be feasible. A more conservative and workable approach might be similar to what the city of Stillwater, OK has done in partnership with Chickasaw Telecommunications (CTSI).
In outline:
1) fiber to every neighborhood
2) copper to each home for voice and data.
3) high speed fiber 'loops' to connect major areas, schools, city entities and businesses and to provide redundancy
Critical to the success of the plan were co-operation between Chickasaw and the city - to the point where city utility workers hung much of the above-ground fiber and the city not attempting to over-regulate Chickasaw's business interests.
The whole thing will take years to complete; it's still in progress in Stillwater, though the major, high speed portions are done, so patience and a long view will help.
One of the nicest (in a revenge sense) things is that the incument baby bell (SBC) dragged their feet from the beginning. This idea didn't fit their business model, so they tried several ways to block anyone else from doing it and became marginalized in the process when the city leaders pushed on to find a willing and capable partner.
Your city may want to contact the City of Stillwater, OK http://stillwater.ok.us for advice on how to procede. Maybe our experience will help your town avoid some of the traps and delays.
additional links:
http://www.stillwater.brightok.net/
http://www