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)
Re:Clear TOS (Score:3, Insightful)
Exactly true. One of the things that ought to be specified in the TOS is how much traffic for how much money. Don't say unlimited unless you really mean unlimited.
My suggestion would be a base cost which includes a certain amount of traffic allowance (which a typical home user would not exceed) plus a cost per additional megabyte. Having email reminders at certain traffic amounts
Re:Clear TOS (Score:3, Interesting)
Let's say they allow 30G/month. They divide it into 1G/day and increase the cap each day. The user would have the option of dipping into tomorrow's allowance. So if I'm offline on the 1st of the month, I have 2G to play with the next day. OTOH, if I dl a bunch of ISOs on the 1st, I'll have 1G/day for the rest of the month.
This would give the user a way to manage the byte
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 const
Re:Clear TOS (Score:5, Insightful)
Uhm, this requires a *ton* of thought. The scenario of "a township setting up communication infrastructure" is 180 degrees from "an isp offers cool new service". The asker's town should absolutely seek legal advice on this. Since they are an elected government, they have an obligation to every citizen that a corporation does not have.
When they shut down quake servers because of bandwidth issues, all of a sudden all those "it's their network, they can do what they want!" arguments are completely moot. The network will be (I think) de facto owned equally by all. In any case, a government should not simply "lay down a TOS" without completely understanding what that means.
Read about the legality of putting in public toilets in NYC for a quasi-similar issue. I'm sure an amatuer can find other good case law, too.
Re:Clear TOS (Score:2, Insightful)
There are some things that will definitely stand the test of time,
Check out Kutztown Pa. (Score:4, Informative)
Over-estimating the combined intelligence of /. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Over-estimating the combined intelligence of /. (Score:4, Insightful)
I mean, sure - if you want to decide whether or not a town-wide broadband rollout is feasible, the first thing to do is poll the potential users in that community.
Assuming this task is on the "to do" list (or was already completed), getting additional feedback from slashdot seems like a worthwhile endeavour.
The value in Slashdot largely comes from not necessarily having to read the "average thread" anyway. Thanks to the ability to moderate posts, it's easy to filter anything except for the exceptionally high-rated comments (or at least pay more attention to +4 and +5 rated comments).
More importantly ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Believe it or not, that was the selling factor for moving me into the apartment in the first place, and I couldn't believe that my entire neighborhood wasn't plugged in 24x7. Most of them couldn't care less, a few didn't want to pay $45 a month for that new-fangled interweb to view web sights, and a few were on dial-up (no joke.)
In a college community I would suspect a higher number of people that want in on it, but rather than not enough people wanting it I would pretty much bet the other extreme, 9,000 different connections all running P2P nodes and all wanting to run 1Mb/s sustained connections 24x7. At that point the bottleneck isn't the last mile - it is the central office's connection the the rest of the world. If you ran regular cablemodems to every house in your town they could STILL throttle the connection so running fiber is just begging them to
Cable is cheaper, I would imagine. Terminating the cable is also something your average cable monkey can do, terminating 9,000 fiber connections isn't going to be cheap. Wouldn't surprise me if you already had appropriate cable run the last mile already. Priced 9,000 ports of fiber optic switches lately?
Fiber is cool, but what do you honestly gain? Well you don't need to do it again in 3 years when the central office actually can handle 9,000 users wanting to run a full megabit per second sustained 24x7
If you honestly think the suscriber base will go for it, and then if you think they will do it without overdoing it, does it make sense to run fiber instead of cable? Short term, probably not. Long term
Gimme! (Score:2)
Re:Gimme! (Score:2)
Re:Gimme! (Score:2)
300 Baud. Awww, yeah.
Or the 3.2/.256 Connection I have now. Mmm... broadband
Re:Gimme! (Score:2)
Re:Gimme! (Score:2)
Re:Gimme! (Score:2)
Re:Gimme! (Score:3, Insightful)
The main difference between this LAN and a P2P network is that you're more likely to know the person, and they're less likely to throttle you back or limit your leeching
Why not use wireless? (Score:5, Insightful)
--Pat / zippy@cs.brandeis.edu
Re:Why not use wireless? (Score:3, Informative)
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...
Re:Why not use wireless? (Score:2, Interesting)
Hey, I *like* being able to surf from the Dirt Cowboy (the only coffee shop in Hanover, for you non -Upper Valley of VT/NH folks) for free using Dartmouth's 802.11 network. And to think that when I travel Starbuck's wants to charge me...
Re:Why not use wireless? Hire NetHere aka Ricochet (Score:2)
Sounds like a win-win situation. NetHere gets a customer serious about networking and the town gets a less expensive installation.
LoB
Re:They already do (Score:2)
Rather than running fibre to every single house (very high install cost, may have some holdouts), run it to a couple of houses on each block, with an offer like "It's USD 50 a month standard, but if you'll buy us a wireless AP to connect the rest of your block, you can have it for USD 40. It pays for itself after xxx months and you help your neighbours."
External Connection? (Score:2, Interesting)
We had a heck of a time w/garbage (Score:2)
team up with some local isp? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:team up with some local isp? (Score:5, Insightful)
How about teaming up with a BUNCH of local ISPs?
I think that the obvious answer here is to separate the ``own and operate transmission lines'' function from the ``provide services over the transmission lines'' function.
The transmission lines are a natural monopoly. There isn't going to be any competition there, no matter what (That's the standard answer, anyway), so might as well let the gov't maintain ownership and control. You could still contract out maintenance work, if you're worried about inefficiency. You could keep it in-house if you're worried about getting public employee union support. If you let ownership go to a private company, you run the considerable risk of setting the wrong incentives and getting a nasty mess.
Providing billing, internet access and/or cable programming over the fiber is clearly NOT a natural monopoly. The city could make the fiber open to any provider of any service. It would be a bit like the Telcos opening their lines to competition, except that there would be no incentive for the city to backstab the providers. It would be a lot like what you're suggesting, except that you wouldn't be giving a monopoly to any one business. Why not give out the monopoly? Think of the telephone company: ``We don't care ... we don't have to. We're the phone company.''
To summarize, what I'm suggesting is that the city could operate fiber lines, and lease them to private businesses. There would be no billing from city to individuals. Private enterprise could use those lines to offer any service that folks would pay for, just as privately owned trucks, busses and cars run on publicly owned and operated roads. Private business would bill individuals for services rendered. Since no business would have a monopoly, all businesses would have to give individuals their money's worth, or see their customers take a hike.
You could have the reliable infrastructure that comes from a monopoly provider, and the attentive service and product innovations which come from fierce competition.
Re:team up with some local isp? (Score:2)
Re:team up with some local isp? (Score:2, Insightful)
http://transact.com.au/
They are building a huge Optical fiber network across the whole city. Through it you can get your phone, internet, and TV.
For the internet they use ISPs to resell the network. You actually sign up with another ISP, and use that ISP's connection, but your connection to the ISP is through Transact.
or with the college (Score:2)
That is, unless, the college isn't already raping its students with exhorbinant bandwidth prices.
ROI? (Score:3, Interesting)
Is this $40/month a flat rate or a minimun rate without "extras"? Will everyone have the same benefits?
Obviously, bandwith *will* have to be limited. Who will admin this? City Hall?
Expect AOL to SMTP-block your netblocks as well.
How is the fiber going to be terminated in every drop? Ethernet transceivers? ST/SC/whatever...
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
Re:Fast net and TV are both essentials (Score:2, Interesting)
Over here in Britain, we had a similar service called Homechoice. Everything was on a central server, and you could use your remote to choose what you wanted to watch (even music videos), and it would come over ADSL. It was cheap, being about 6GBP a month. Amazingly, it's still running [homechoice.co.uk] and it also provides broadban
If the town owns the wire... (Score:2, Interesting)
and the ISP.
Local control!
Skillsets (Score:2, Interesting)
Block outbound port 25 by default (Score:5, Interesting)
99% of your users have neither the intention nor the desire to run their own SMTP server. They'll use your mail server - that is, they'll talk POP or a similar protocol to whatever server you set up for them. That's enough for them - they just want email, and they'd rather not have to provide it for themselves.
The other 1% of your users are smart and clued enough to set up their own mail servers, and probably have legitimate reasons to do so.
Now, back to your 99% who have no intention of talking on port 25, anywhere. Of them, 10% of your users probably will set up an open proxy, or run an open wireless node. Whether they do so with malicious intent (unlikely) or out of ignorance (highly likely!!) doesn't matter.
What matters is the fact that these nodes will be abused by spammers.
So, if you want the 1% of your geeky-and-clued customers to be able to send email to the rest of the world from their own MTA, it's up to you to make sure that the 10% of your clueless customers can't.
Otherwise, expect your users - clued and clueless alike - will be talkin' to the 550 like 24.0.0.0/8, 4.0.0.0/8, 12.0.0.0/8, and 200.0.0.0/6, four big chunks of netspace I - and others - don't wanna hear from, because they have a million open proxies spewing spam for every legitimate customer.
I'm not saying block outbound port 25 for everyone. I'm saying block it by default, and lift the block for anyone who calls the support center and says "I can't send mail. Yes I'm running my own mail server, and I need to run my own mail server for $REASON", where $REASON is basically anything other than "The guy who sold me the Millions Of Addresses CD said port 25 blocking was censorship!" :-)
Re:Block outbound port 25 by default (Score:2, Informative)
My $.02
Re:Block outbound port 25 by default (Score:2)
To me, end-to-end email encryption is valuable... enough so to run my own mailserver at home. Sure, 90% of the servers out there don't talk TLS and my transmission ends up going in the clear anyways, but my ISP's server won't talk TLS at all - which would make it 100% in the clear.
By running TLS, you can short-circuit at least some of their concerns, AND provide a more valuable
Fiber to Everyone (Score:2, Insightful)
Just what we need... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Just what we need... (Score:2)
so your saying you get hacked more when your online.. brillant Holmes.
Email (Score:2)
Municiple cable company (Score:4, Interesting)
Anyway, my advice:
If you figure that $20-$30/month goes to TV, that leaves somewhere between $10-20/month to an ISP. The upside is that the city is going to take care of the cable issues (and hopefully do it well...). $15x3000 (1/3 of the folks actually want internet) is $45K/month. That may not enough to run a new ISP, but it might be a nice additional chunk to an existing ISP.
The real trick is to find a GOOD ISP that is willing to pick up the extra customers. There may be a local (or nearby) ISP that is willing to pick up a job like this. My advice is to try to find a local house that will do it, and avoid the nationals if you can.
On the other hand, if someone was willing to set up a municiple ISP as a not-for-profit, they may be able to do well at it.
Good luck.
'willing to pay' $40 a month (Score:2)
$40 a month for broadband is a nice deal, obviously, but in the name of making sure "everybody" has equal access, will they be requiring people to pay the $40 monthly fee even if they don't plan to make use of the available service?
Increase property taxes (Score:2)
Re:Increase property taxes (Score:2)
$4000-$5000/year probably isn't too far off for Hanover. But this is the "Live Free or Die" State. Trust me, people around here have been known to get very angry about smaller amounts of money. Heck, the number
Ashland (Score:2)
Ashland Fiber Net [ashlandfiber.net]
The city now offers TV, Internet, and hosting at around $40/mo.
Travis
not a LAN, rather a MAN (Score:4, Informative)
Some acronyms for ya... (Score:5, Funny)
LAN = Local Area Network
WAN = Wide Area Network
MAN = Metropoliton Area Network
WOMAN = Wide Open Metropolitan Area Network
An online Starcraft RPG? Only at [netnexus.com]
In Soviet Russia, all your us are belong to base!
Re:not a LAN, rather a MAN (Score:3, Funny)
-
Would this be optional or a "tax"? (Score:2, Interesting)
Also, if you put a locally run cable company on this, usually you'd end up wi
Other benefits (Score:2)
Not only that, but it creates local jobs, too -- physical maintenance, system administrators, tech support and such.
--Jeremy
Internet 2 (Score:2)
Re:Internet 2 (Score:2)
Blacksburg did something like that way back when.. (Score:2, Interesting)
802.16 WMAN? (Score:2, Interesting)
This would of course require volunteer management of the address space, DNS, etc. bu
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
Interesting uses: (Score:5, Insightful)
- Telecommuting. I'm assuming there'd be a huge bandwidth benefit here. As long as you're within city limits, you could hit the company server.
- Personal servers. I'm not talking about web servers, though those would be nice, rather I'm talking about leaving a box on all the time with a huge hard drive in it. I'd liike to keep my music and videos etc on it so that I can access it anywhere in town.
- DoS attacks against things like root servers would not bring down the ability for these people to communicate. The attacks would have to be community specific.
- Disaster relief. It's been proven before that the internet can be resilient to disasters such as earthquake. Useful maybe?
I should probably note that I'm not taking into account the town this is in. I'm imagining it existing here in Portland. Personally, I'd like to have my apartment complex all on a shared lan. I'd like to get to know my neighbors better. It'd be fun to have lan games etc.
Re:Interesting uses: (Score:2)
Anyway, the jackets provide a lot of strain relief. I think you'd have to bend/pull hard enough to break the jacket to trash the fibers. Plus, there's multiple strands. I don't think you pull any significant distance of fiber without having at least 3x the maximum number of strands you
Add phone service (Score:4, Interesting)
When you figure out that everything you buy has, oh, 35% - 100% or so (or more) profit tacked on to the cost, you begin to wonder why everyone isn't doing all of it on their own. Everything.
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.
Everybody can broadcast? (Score:2)
Potential Uses (Score:4, Interesting)
- Long Distance related -
1) Video phones. I have kids, and would pay to give them a video phone so that we could communicate via sight instead of just sound. If I lived there, I'd buy one too so that the rest of my family could join in -> virtual teleconference anyone? As someone who also has family overseas, this becomes even more important.
- Local Industries -
2) Distance learning. People in the town could realistically take classes from the university without having to physically attend class. Even better, the class could be taped and purchased for download (digitally) for less than the cost of actual enrollment, but the student base could go way up without major facility improvements.
3) True downloadable video on demand. Local servers in the town, perhaps even owned by the town, but with distribution rights, could sell/rent downloadable videos to the residents. Tivos can already file share within the house - why not across the neighborhood?
4) Yes, online games would rock. More importantly, localized community games would -scream-. How about hosting bridge/chess/etc parlor type games within the community? For a small fee to cover server expenses, a whole bunch of the older generation could play together from their homes, and TALK AT THE SAME TIME. Again, this is another local industry that could be started.
5) Town meeting multi-casts. Now, people don't have to crowd into some small room to discuss town policies. They can watch it online, and use VoIP to conference in (with a moderator of course).
Of course, these are just a few. If you can concentrate on local industries, more useful applications for the technology will appear. Best of luck. Maybe I'll consider moving a little further north if this is put in place. :-)
Re:Potential Uses (Score:2)
Finally a level playing field! I always hate it when I lag and some low-ping bastard schools me on Yahoo chess.
Sweden (Score:2)
not their first controversial networking adventure (Score:2, Flamebait)
Other services (Score:2, Interesting)
With a fiber network in the town you can offer very high speed local networking to the people and only limit bandwidth for external connections. Most people wont know what they can do with that, so you'll need to set up a few services that people can start using right away.
A few ideas off the top of my head for people with PCs:
Free vid
How about looking at local information flow? (Score:2, Interesting)
This poses some problems (Score:3, Insightful)
For one, how big is the actual pipe to the Internet going to be?
Two, servers of any kind are going to have to be serverly limited or not allow at all.
Three, Terms of Service. The number one most important thing of this project. The people of this college town, including the college students are going to have to read and sign that TOS. If they read and sign it, there will be less confusion as to the punishment for people that abuse having fast connections. Plus, it covers the City's butt.
Four, cost of fiber optic cable and equipment for the city and the customers. We all know how expensive fiber is. The last mile and Customer Premise Equipment can be prohibitively expensive. Also, I don't know know how many people are going to want to work for a city to support a network of that size. I mean, I don't care where you are, government work is goverment work.
But hey, this is just my opinion, I could be way off..
limit ports (Score:2)
Especially port 25. If one person leaves that open, your bandwidth will be sucked up by spammers.
Make it a simple request, via web.
Check out the UTOPIA project (Score:2, Informative)
Lowell MI (Score:5, Insightful)
I live up in west Michigan nearby a town called Lowell. Now, around where I live, we have Comcast Cable for Internet and TV, and Charter for cable 'net, AT&T, MCI, Ameritech, what have you for phone companies. My household pays roughly $160 each month to these companies for cable internet, local and long distance phone, and digital cable service. Obvisouly, these are privately owned corps.
Now, drive 10 miles SE, to Lowell, MI, where the major utilities are owned by the city. They offer local phone, broadband internet, digital cable, the utilities, etc, and it's cheap. Running about $60 average for all the services. There isn't no private corporation involved. All of the infastructure was built, and is owned by the city.
So, would I rather pay $60 than $160. Yes, especially if it ain't to a large corporation out for better interests than the consumer. Plus, as a citizen of that city, in a way, you control and have a voice in what goes on. Thats why supporting your local infastructure could be important and better off in the long run for your community.
Re:Lowell MI (Score:3, Insightful)
Fiber (Score:2)
Malachi
IPv6 (Score:3, Insightful)
Projects like these are a GREAT way to introduce IPv6 to the masses, because every home can be given a range of IP adresses (hey, it's Ipv6, 2^128 adresses to waste! If that's not enough, someone make IPv8 a reality, 2^512 adresses.) for different computers, possibly a small subnet per house. While the internet itself (as we currently know it) can still be adressed by a centralized (or not, perhaps a backbone connection per district?) routing point which can receive requests for IPv4 sites and cause them to get delivered to IPv6 networks. This would instantly promote the use of IPv6 networks if this "city/town network" idea were to catch on.
As for actual uses, how about making it possible to do stuff online in a FAR more safe way? Because IP adresses are clearly assigned per household, any attempt at being naughty can be traced down to a physical adress with ease. This would make the privacy people jump up in sheer disgust, but that can be worked out in detail some time. It would also be extremely good for communities. Real life ones that is, where the inhabitants of a town can discuss stuff on several online forums, maybe video conferencing as well? This would also open up possibilities for actually everyone to get involved in local politics. Even with a bit of new protocal magic (bye bye SMTP) it could even be possible to institute a city-wide email system, where just everyone would get his own email adress, per person, not per ISP account, like j.doe@district.city.nl.
Of course, there are several things hampering this, mainly telcos who will do ANYTHING they can to stop this, to DMCA/$local_equivalent fanatics who will holler in rage because of the potential file-swapping possibilities, which with no doubt WILL happen. Then there is of course the standard problem with today's internet, like the last mile, annoying people who break stuff, innocent people who get framed by the aforementioned people, privacy people who will find any little detail to pounce upon and howl in rage... (Can be good or bad.)
Ah well, to be blunt; I'll expect this will never happen in every town/city. It's not like today's local goverments aren't tight-budgeted already, they don't have the money to initialize a project like this, let alone buy of the armies of lawyers to fend of the telcos and DMCA zealots/corporate goons. Still, depsite the odds, one can hope ad one can try to contribute to the impossible. We're still in the early days of modern day networking, TCP/IP being used around 1969 for the first time on ARPANET. It's been 34 years since then. The first powered aircraft flight was in 1903, while they still flew around in propellor planes in 1937.
Questions is, when will networking in general reach it's stage in life comparable to the jet angine in flight? A new set of protocols, like IPv6 and a new SMTP would be a very good step in the VERY right direction. Oh and it's 02:09 and I've only just realized the length of my story. Please excuse any typos you encounter.
Simple solution? (Score:2)
Encourage competition (Score:4, Insightful)
Mesh network (Score:2)
Of course, this would be very daring, but isn't it something to consider when you are already planning such an innovative thing like town networking?
what does the fiber connect to at the house? (Score:2)
What's the REAL price? (Score:2)
Also, is it a transparent service that can connect to multiple ISPs, or not
Fiber isn't nirvana.... (Score:2)
Learn from other towns that have done it (Score:2)
Hi!
You're not the first community to consider the idea. Kutztown, Pennsylvania has had a very successful experience in building out a Municipal Area Network--it would be well worth your while to study how Kutztown set about doing what they've done, and how they did it. Here's a brief overview [opticalsolutions.com] PDF file from a vendor--it's a vendor's sales piece, but there's a good intro. A couple of key points:
watch out on the legal front (Score:3, Insightful)
According to an op-ed piece in a recent edition of the Wisconsin State Journal by the mayor of that town, the cable TV companies are lobbying to pass a statewide resolution making such a thing illegal. The mayor, who didn't seem much of radical lefty, thought this was a bit over the top.
I have very little additional information. There's nothing online as far as I can tell about this controversy, which is why I didn't submit it as a Slashdot story.
Apparently, competition from the public sector is going to be illegal though. I wonder how come we still have a postal service. Anyway, your town needs to watch out for being blindsided by this.
Re:watch out on the legal front (Score:2)
One thing they mentioned was the ability to remotely read electric meters rather than manually having to check them however often. Maybe a small cost compared to the additional IT support but I'd bet there are some other ancillary benefits like this.
First things first VoIP (Score:2)
OK good services Network access obviously a good vlan or MPLS i
Like cable? (Score:3, Interesting)
How is what you are proposing different?
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
Wow, the possibilities (Score:3, Insightful)
Real time audio streaming of town meetings, city council, public court hearings. You've got the bandwidth to setup and sustain a few hundred streaming realplayer connections.
Keep a consistent interface. I would suggest a web-based initiative, because you can find content management systems (I use this one [xoops.org], but there's [movabletype.org] more of them [slashcode.com], where you could setup a simple username and password interface to let everyone logon, use web-based email, get local alerts etc.
Think of seeing the pictures of a wanted suspect everywhere in the neighborhood in seconds. Grab a mugshot, scan it in, and boom, thanks to integrating your phone service through this (which, if you don't, you'll look at yourself in 10 years and really kick yourself) the guy won't be able to go anywhere near a residential neighborhood without getting tagged. A phone call (or special ring?) will alert you to an "emergency message" provided via email, instead of having to hear about it through the TV (and all the rigamarole that entails, compared to just sending out an email). Think of weather alerts in this same vein. A blizzard coming and you need to warn the masses?
Keep wireless access points around town. I mean, if its in the city limits and you're going to go, go all the way. That way if their notebook has a wireless card, they can still sit in the restaraunt and eat quietly while surfing the net.
Everyone gets an email address that is not spammed and can only be used for city business and contacts. This is a peculiar idea consider, but it would assure that you would never, ever, get spam from this address. This one you can throw away, but I thought I would throw it in the mix.
Teleconferencing intra-city. With video. Nuff said. (Think X-11 or something. You can push the bandwidth.)
If you integrate your phone service through this line, the shared cost would be more than enough to keep a techie or two onhand for support, a few DNS/Web/FTP servers running, etc etc.
Just a few ideas. There is no way this cannot help your town, and I congratulate you in your efforts. Good luck.
Sell the computational power (Score:2)
Things to do with Fiber (Score:4, Interesting)
TRANSACT in Canberra, ACT (Australia) (Score:2)
It carries broadband internet and Cable TV. Don't know what the cost is
Well, this could really increase the popularity (Score:2)
Re:Besides high-speed pr0n? (Score:2)
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
Re:Don't Want It (Score:2)
Broadband monopolies are catching on throughout the country. Laying cable is expensive. No one is going to run a cable across town when most of their potential customers already have a service provider. Even cable companies and phone companies aren't bothering to lay new cable.
Expensive infrastructure development naturally forms m
Re:Don't Want It (Score:2)
Likewise I normaly be against moving toward big-government too but at least with local governments you can pack the town
Function of government (Score:2)
So you'd rather have the big media companies and the cable companies tightly coupled with your flow of data? You obviously have never tried "broadband" cable internet. I'm on it now. They'll ass-fist you. Poor service, absurd restrictions in the AUP, and total crap. I only use it is because my landlord won't let me get a second phone line, and m
GAH! Adelphia + cable modem = disaster! (Score:2)
I understand that Adelphia's DOCSIS per