Fibre and Telecommunications Infrastructure

Sponge Bob

Ah gwan, that shows copper running directly off an OLT FFS . The OLT will normally drive ONUs which are 'fibre modems' in the home and the ONU will break out copper GigE and RJ11. The OLT breaking out straight to copper not fibre must be within 100m of the subscriber. This does exist and is called FTTB ( basement) but is only suitable in sizeable apartment blocks with 100m Cat6 runs or 100m Cat5e runs to the subscriber apartment.

I suppose maybe Sandyford has one or two. In a town it will be pure fibre mainly.

here is a small 2U GEPON OLT that supports a few PONS of 32 ports each to a total of 256 premises. A full rack of them would nearly do all of Wexford

http://www.greatwaytech.com/FTTP/GOLT.pdf

I would not start with GEPON but with 10GEPON . These are IEEE not ITU standards by the way. ITU has some similar tech but the ITU 10G standard is not finalised. They will probably go with ITU-T G.984 standard on this trial but the IEEE standard has murdered the ITU standard in the wild, "GPON has less than 2 million installed ports. GEPON has approximately 30 million deployed ports" says the link below. Read the rest of it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_optical_network

ITU standards are a dead end, that is for sure.

Sponge Bob

Eircom confirm that they will use PON technology . This is a very impressive and farsighted presentation....even more so when you consider who made it

http://www.eircomwholesale.ie/dynamic/docs/FTTH_10_June_FINAL.ppt

They are going with GPON rather than GEPON though :rolleyes:

dubhthach

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Eircom confirm that they will use PON technology . This is a very impressive and farsighted presentation....even more so when you consider who made it

http://www.eircomwholesale.ie/dynamic/docs/FTTH_10_June_FINAL.ppt

They are going with GPON rather than GEPON though :rolleyes:

So start physical build in September/October and be basically finished with engineering work by January. Pity the trial is in Sandyford and not Sandymount

Well having the actual fibre in the ground will surely make it alot easier to upgrade to GEPON in the future. The problem I see happening though is Eircom is not going to have enough money to go further then the trial.

Steviemak

dubhthach wrote: »

The problem I see happening though is Eircom is not going to have enough money to go further then the trial.

Yes, hopefully the other operators will join them in financing this investment and share it equally. I don't believe eircom can do this on their own.

Sponge Bob

Eircom have launched Gigabit Ethernet more widely

This site is rotten with flash making linking difficult.

http://www.nextgenerationethernet.com/

dubhthach

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Eircom have launched Gigabit Ethernet more widely

This site is rotten with flash making linking difficult.

http://www.nextgenerationethernet.com/

You can find more details through "Eircom Wholesale"
[URL="http://www.eircomwholesale.ie/Products/Infrastructure/]http://www.eircomwholesale.ie/Products/Infrastructure/[/URL]

They are always catching up with competition. I know the connection we have here in the office from Colt can be upgraded to 2.5Gbit/s if we had a big enough wallet.

aphex™

dubhthach wrote: »

They are always catching up with competition. I know the connection we have here in the office from Colt can be upgraded to 2.5Gbit/s if we had a big enough wallet.

Colt built all that stuff 10 years ago AFAIK.

dubhthach

aphex™ wrote: »

Colt built all that stuff 10 years ago AFAIK.

Well the office building I'm in is only 3 years old. Though it helps that Colt is one of the other tenants

They have a direct fibre connection up to the T50 and the new undersea cable from Wales will be arriving nearby.

Sponge Bob

Wavelengths were 2.5Gb in 2000 and are more often 10gbit since. Modern wavelengths are 40gbit with 100gbit coming soon ...it is under discussion as a standard. I agree with Aphex, it is old gear

A fibre can take 16 Wavelengths quite easily and more if required. Eircom uses 10gbit Wavelenths ( aka Lambdas) on their core routes, eg Dublin - Galway or Dublin - Cork.

Yes that means ALL of Galway shares 10gbits to Dublin, Dubhthachs office has 1/4 the potential capacity of all eircoms Galway customers added together...I would add that adding another 10gbits is trivial , if required.

All of eircoms customers together were pushing 10gbits of IP traffic between them as recently as early 2007 , see this presentation by Pierre Danon

Sponge Bob

Sponge Bob wrote: »

You will find ALL of these maps here . Gaining access to the ducts is a complete pain in the hole because the state does not have a One Stop Shop for access to all of these assets.

I posted that in this thread on the 20th of September 2009 . On the 20th of September 2010 we are no nearer gaining access to state owned ducts.

The one stop shop proposal has been around for 3 years now.

dubhthach

Sponge Bob wrote: »

I posted that in this thread on the 20th of September 2009 . On the 20th of September 2010 we are no nearer gaining access to state owned ducts.

The one stop shop proposal has been around for 3 years now.

In comparison in the US we are seeing alot of stimulus money been spent to build "middle mile" fibre networks. eg. providing backhaul connections to local MAN's

An example is the "Northern Missouri High-Speed Broadband Delivery Network":
http://www.mo.gov/85-million-investment-in-rural-broadband/

Here the official government position is that the "private sector" will drive Broadband infrastructure development. Given that state already has build MAN's in over 95 towns and owns a huge amount of unused ducting along motorways/gas pipelines it would be considerably cheaper to put it all together here. awh well :rolleyes:

dubhthach

Good news for School sector. Another 600 schools will get 100Mb/s connections in 2011/2012. Well if the IMF isn't called in that is

http://siliconrepublic.com/comms/item/18094-600-more-irish-schools-to/

dubhthach

I was listening to the radio the other morning and it would seem that Bord Gáis are finally gonna use the ducting the installed along the gas pipeline going to Galway. There is a map up on "Aurora Telecom" (Bord Gáis owns Aurora) website showing the route:


This means there will be at least three backhaul providers into Galway (ESB, BT the others). If the NRA ever got off their hole they could provide a 4th backhaul connection using the ducting put in the M6/M4.

Edit -- Bord Gáis are calling it FTTW (Fibre to the West) project:
http://www.bordgais.ie/networks/Networks/FTTW

dubhthach

Seems like the Fibre that the ESB lay with the Interconnector will be going live some time early next year. This along with the "Celtix Connect" cable should hopefully lead to a reduction in costs and major increase in international bandwidth connectivity. Cogent are the first customer announced on the ESB cable.

http://www.mynewsdesk.com/uk/view/pressrelease/geo-geo-and-esb-telecom-announce-intended-uk-dublin-subsea-route-and-welecomes-first-customer-cogent-communications-513730

Sponge Bob

Interesting and useful tool showing what is connected to what in Internet terms from Hurricane Electric

http://bgp.he.net/

Here are some of the major Irish Networks and their peers

http://bgp.he.net/AS5466#_asinfo (eircom)
http://bgp.he.net/AS2110#_asinfo (bt)
http://bgp.he.net/AS6830#_asinfo (upc)
http://bgp.he.net/AS15502#_asinfo (vodafone)
http://bgp.he.net/AS21327#_asinfo (3)
http://bgp.he.net/AS13280#_asinfo (o2)
http://bgp.he.net/AS31122#_asinfo (digiweb)
http://bgp.he.net/AS39093#_asinfo (westnet)
http://bgp.he.net/AS44212#_asinfo (net1)
http://bgp.he.net/AS48142#_asinfo (permanet)

dubhthach

dubhthach wrote: »

Good news for School sector. Another 600 schools will get 100Mb/s connections in 2011/2012. Well if the IMF isn't called in that is

http://siliconrepublic.com/comms/item/18094-600-more-irish-schools-to/

Seems the budget contains €44million for the 300 schools to get 100Mb/s connections in 2011.
http://siliconrepublic.com/comms/item/19507-digsch2010/

The plan then is to connect an additional 300 schools with such a connection in 2012 (if IMF aren't fully in charge by then)

irishguy

dubhthach wrote: »

Seems the budget contains €44million for the 300 schools to get 100Mb/s connections in 2011.
http://siliconrepublic.com/comms/item/19507-digsch2010/

The plan then is to connect an additional 300 schools with such a connection in 2012 (if IMF aren't fully in charge by then)

What the hell is the point in giving them 100Mbps, sure there isnt even a widely available computer course on the curriculum.

dubhthach

irishguy wrote: »

What the hell is the point in giving them 100Mbps, sure there isnt even a widely available computer course on the curriculum.

Green Party policy about the "Knowledge economy" perhaps? On a more serious note connecting in schools with Fibre can act as anchor points for further network infrastructure improvements in the area. It's considerably cheaper to piggy back off existing ducting put in for the school then to have to build from scratch. I wouldn't be surprised if half the schools will take part in the scheme where they get "All weather lighting" on sports fields as long as they allow Mobile masts on the light pylons.

irishguy

Sure will we throw in some medical equipment too and hope they learn how to use it by being close to it, it may solve the problem with the shortage of doctors.

You would think if the government is spending millions on the connectivity to schools they would put in place a plan on how to teach students how to use it.

The country is crying out for skilled IT people, if only they introduced a proper leaving cert course we could have students leaving school with basic development/network/PC maintenance skills.

spacetweek

irishguy wrote: »

You would think if the government is spending millions on the connectivity to schools they would put in place a plan on how to teach students how to use it.

The country is crying out for skilled IT people, if only they introduced a proper leaving cert course we could have students leaving school with basic development/network/PC maintenance skills.

Gotta agree. Never saw the point of computers for the sake of computers in schools - unless there's some specific point to it, the kids will just use it to check their Facebook pages.

When I was in secondary school in the 90s we learned useful skills like.... how to copy a floppy disk using DOS. FML Even as late as 1996 the school's computers still hadn't moved onto Windows 3.1!

Leaving Cert course required.

dubhthach

While doing some reading about the Tuam Development plan (thanks to the "NRA must be stopped" thread) I found the following little titbit:

The proposed Tuam Drainage Scheme - a 2 year project costing €28
million will replace the existing water mains network, leading to reduced
leakage and increased security of the water supply
The project will provide for the following services -
• 32kms of water mains;
• 16kms of sewers;
• a new reservoir and stormwater tank to service the town;
• 10 km of broadband ducting;
• 10km of gas main;
• ESB/Eircom ducting
• The contracts also include the reinstatement of footpaths on a
phased street by street approach.

This is important as Tuam wasn't one of the Towns in County Galway to get a Metropolitan Area Network built (Galway, Cliftden, Athenry, Loughrea, Ballinasloe). It also shows a Local authority actually thinking ahead for once and using the opportunity presented by laying new water mains to also put in Ducting and Gas mains

http://www.galway.ie/en/Services/Planning/DevelopmentPlans/preDraftPlans/Microsoft%20Word%20-%20FINAL%20Final.pdf

bealtine

dubhthach wrote: »

It also shows a Local authority actually thinking ahead for once and using the opportunity presented by laying new water mains to also put in Ducting and Gas mains

Could this be something to do with IrelandOffline's activities?
It sure looks like IoffL have raised awareness of the importance of providing ducting in all infrastructure projects


http://irelandoffline.org/2010/10/irelandoffline-have-quietly-been-working-on-a-plan/

dubhthach

bealtine wrote: »

Could this be something to do with IrelandOffline's activities?
It sure looks like IoffL have raised awareness of the importance of providing ducting in all infrastructure projects


http://irelandoffline.org/2010/10/irelandoffline-have-quietly-been-working-on-a-plan/

Could be the case. Though Galway CoCo have been working on their own private network (originally via wireless) for years so as to reduce their costs. I recall the summer I spent in there in 2003 they were using ISDN lines to connect all their offices together (ouch) though they had start using Licensed wireless spectrum. One of projects there were working on was using the water-towers in the county to link the different offices via wireless. More bandwidth and considerably less cost then ISDN at the time!

Of course then the government started providing funding for the MAN's. As the county councils own the MAN ducting they get high-speed internet connection for their resources (Offices/Libraries/Fire stations) for reasonable price. Tuam obviously didn't get a MAN so it make sense for Galway CoCo to put in the Ducting themselves while they are replacing water mains/sewers. Also if the M17/M18 is built it will have ducts in it (like the current M6 does)

ei.sdraob

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Interesting and useful tool showing what is connected to what in Internet terms from Hurricane Electric

http://bgp.he.net/

Here are some of the major Irish Networks and their peers

http://bgp.he.net/AS5466#_asinfo (eircom)
http://bgp.he.net/AS2110#_asinfo (bt)
http://bgp.he.net/AS6830#_asinfo (upc)
http://bgp.he.net/AS15502#_asinfo (vodafone)
http://bgp.he.net/AS21327#_asinfo (3)
http://bgp.he.net/AS13280#_asinfo (o2)
http://bgp.he.net/AS31122#_asinfo (digiweb)
http://bgp.he.net/AS39093#_asinfo (westnet)
http://bgp.he.net/AS44212#_asinfo (net1)
http://bgp.he.net/AS48142#_asinfo (permanet)

dont forget airwire one of few ISPs offering ipv6 as well now

dubhthach

I see with Election coming up that Labour have revealed it's plans for a "Digital Ireland"
http://siliconrepublic.com/comms/item/20164-labour-reveals-its-digital/

Some highlights

• Pave the way for a new company, NetCo, which would begin the roll out of Ireland’s next-generation broadband
• Develop a broadband rating system for every property being sold or rented
• Encourage investment in next-generation broadband by facilitating the appropriate regulatory culture
  
  “Labour believes that if we are to build a smart economy, then a high-quality broadband system has to be the foundation to it. We are entering an era where many goods will never be manufactured or packaged in a traditional way; the manufacturing of the future will be carried out in an online setting."
  
  “Our plans today provide a blueprint for building that foundation."

I'm assuming this "NetCo" would take into possession all state owned Fibre assets and provide the infrastructure that other companies can sell their products across. Personally I'd prefer if it was called Éirnet but that name might be tainted due to association with Eircom

--Edit--

Whoops didn't see the new thread from Tremelo, probably best to continue discussion there:

Sponge Bob

The Different Fibre to the ( wherever) options nicely shown by Zyxel



Source http://www.zyxel.fr/publications/f/GUIDE%20FTTX%202010.pdf

dubhthach

Celtix Connect have gotten the go ahead from the relevant Gov Departments to start construsction of their subsea cable from East Point (landing site at Bull wall) to Wales. This quite important as it helps provide better connectivity into Ireland.

http://celtixconnect.com/site/?page_id=37
http://siliconrepublic.com/comms/item/20834-celtixconnect-gets-go-ahead/

It hooks into a redudant network linking Hollyhead and Manchester which was built for the Welsh assembly.

Sponge Bob

I am not sure if the Geo Networks fibre on the same Dublin - Holyhead route was covered. It is due to go live around the same time as Celtix Connect. They got the foreshore licence sooner than Celtix Connect I hear despite their applying for it after them. This was supposed to be an Eirgrid fibre but Geo cut a deal with Eirgrid from Clonshaugh across to Holyhead.

http://www.geo-uk.net/fibre-solutions/ireland

http://www.geo-uk.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/UK-Ireland-datasheet.pdf

Geo will sell dark fibre if you wish and so will Celtix connect.

dubhthach

I see 3 has signed a €38 million contract with BT to provide Fibre infrastructure to over 1,000 sites currently in use and a further 200 new sites.

http://siliconrepublic.com/comms/item/21659-threes-38m-contract-with/

What's driving this obviously is the move to LTE which is the next mobile standard. That and data hungry devices like Smartphones and tablets with sim cards.

The good thing about this of course is that if 3 are providing Fibre links to basestations in small towns this gives BT a foothold in that small town. eg. it's alot cheaper for businesses to then get a fibre drop from BT as they are piggy-backing off the backhaul put in to support the 3 basestation.

lucernarian

Many of three's sites are not the most accessible and even €38 million may be streched thin if it's to supply all 1000 sites with fibre. The silly SiliconRepublic article says that it will "support" the existing sites along with 200 new sites. To what extent fibre will replace microwave links is not clear to me.

Three's investment in substantial backhaul won't have much effect unless they also buy the spectrum to take advantage of LTE. The top speeds of the latest versions of 3G technology used in Ireland are not much less efficient than LTE and LTE will only make a noticeable difference if the operators get to use 10MHz or 20MHz spectrum blocks per base station instead of the current 5MHz.

If the current 1800MHz spectrum was reused for LTE on top of the 800MHz digital dividend and the 2100MHz original 3G spectrum then LTE will offer decent connectivity albeit still not near the consistency and quality of UPC's offerings.

But we need ComReg to coordinate that:rolleyes: