|
Written by Start a WISP Site Admin
|
|
Monday, 03 October 2005 |
"I am trying to get fiber internet from my local electric company
instead of getting a t1. t1 in my area will cost about $512/month.
Fiber (2mbps, burstable to 4mbps, up and down) is only $250/month plus
the cost of getting the fiber to me. The cost of getting it to me is
broken down over the length of the contract, so for the first year it
might cost about the same as a t1, but after that it will be just
$250/month.
My questions are...
Does anyone else here have experience themselves, or know somebody who uses, fiber like this?
What are any drawbacks that anyone can see to using fiber instead of t1?
Thanks for all of the great support everyone here provides!"
cmaenginsb:
I knew of a few companies doing this, most are out of business now.
The
big drawback might be on the ability to resell, you need to scrutinize
this. Also depending on the technology it is probably more of a shared
thing like a cable modem.
superdog1:
Just because it's fiber doesn't mean its a good deal. You need to look
at how their network is setup(sonnet ring etc.) and look at their
peering arrangements. If They only have 1 point of entry to the net and
it is only a DS3 for example, You will have to share that with all the
other users on the network. Most power CO's are really good at
providing electricity, but they only got into the fiber game because
some analyst told them it would be a great idea. From my experiences,
they should stick to power!
IntraLink:
Fiber is a good medium, but may cost more to provision at first. Sounds
like that's not really the case with your fiber opportunity.
What
you really want to ask the people providing the fiber link is what they
can serve you in terms of a CIR (Commited Information Rate). You can't
really trust their offerings if they are giving you a "burst" rate
unless they have the math to back up their "burst" terms in their SLA.
And
ask them how much CIR bandwidth can they give you RIGHT NOW. That will
give you an idea of how oversubscribed they are or if they have CIR
bandwidth to spare. If it's not much, you can't trust that they will be
able to grow as you grow and then you're stuck.
But the advantage of fiber is usually the ability to seemlessly scale your rate without introducing new hardware.
Like most have stated here, fiber is just a medium and no indicator of what's being fed through it.
Original thread location
|
Just Starting Out? 
