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The Internet Education Communications IT

NYC's Educational Dark Fiber Network 101

Posted by timothy from the you-only-use-10-percent dept.
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."
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NYC's Educational Dark Fiber Network More

NYC's Educational Dark Fiber Network

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  • Say No More (Score:5, Funny)

    by CleverNickedName ( 644160 ) on Tuesday December 14, 2004 @08:46AM (#11080398) Journal
    intends to be largely used for video streaming.

    *Wink wink*

  • ffs... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 14, 2004 @08:46AM (#11080400)
    "and intends to be largely used for video streaming"

    is intended to be

    bloody yanks

    • Re:ffs... (Score:1, Insightful)

      by FrYGuY101 ( 770432 )
      bloody yanks
      I'm sorry, but I fail to connect the grammatical error with the statement 'bloody yanks'. Mangling the language occurs on both sides of the pond, you know.
    • ...and yet a new fiber backbone network off previously layed fibre sailed straight past.

      s/off/from/

      Perhaps the terrible command of English is why the story poster wished to remain anonymous.

    • This goes far beyond Americanization of English. Note the imaginary word "layed" in place of "lain". Just because a person reads slashdot doesn't mean that they can write worth a damn.

      If only the slashdot editors had any kind of real claim to that title, then they might actual edit stories, instead of just filtering them.

  • A lot of this? (Score:4, Funny)

    by StevenHenderson ( 806391 ) <[stevehenderson] [at] [gmail.com]> on Tuesday December 14, 2004 @08:53AM (#11080415)
    A group of educational leaders in New York City has created a new fiber backbone network off previously layed but unused fiber.

    How many instances of this are there across the US/world? Unused fiber? Find some for me!

    • Re:A lot of this? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Jouser ( 243992 ) on Tuesday December 14, 2004 @08:58AM (#11080434) Homepage
      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 [osc.edu] which was largely built from dark fiber.

      • Re:A lot of this? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by kenelbow ( 791517 )
        The main reason for a glut of dark fiber is not actually the dot-com bust, contrary to popular belief. The main reason is the use of Dense Wave Division Multiplexing (DWDM). This allows A LOT more data to be sent over the same pipe as before, thus rendering the majority of that fiber useless. Don't get me wrong, the dot-com bust had a MAJOR impact on the use of fiber, but it wasn't the main factor in the dark fiber glut.

        • Re:A lot of this? (Score:2, Interesting)

          by tohlan ( 51442 )
          I think it is more likely that DWDM equipment allows fiber someone already owns to be used more efficiently. I don't know of any company that gets rid of fiber they have because they put DWDM on a couple of strands. Its like saying that there are more video games on the market because we all have more free time now days. Sure, DWDM lets you cram more data down a particular strand of fiber, but the need for capacity is increasing too, and laying new fiber is very expensive (especially transoceanic fiber).
          • I didn't say that they got rid of fiber, or maybe I didn't make myself clear. DWDM didn't cause anyone to get rid of fiber, it just means that there is a lot of UNUSED fiber. There is an enormous potential for bandwidth that was brought about by DWDM, but the expense is whats holding it back. The problem is that there will always be limited fund, thus limited bandwidth.

      • Re:A lot of this? (Score:5, Informative)

        by Rasta Prefect ( 250915 ) on Tuesday December 14, 2004 @10:36AM (#11081053)
        Since the dot-com bust, all the fiber became unlit and hence dark fiber.

        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.

      • First dark matter...
        Then came dark energy...
        Now, the third and final installment...DUNH DUNH DUNH...

        DARK FIBER!!!

    • an AWFUL lot of this (Score:3, Insightful)

      by RMH101 ( 636144 )
      most of the cost of running fiber anywhere is backhoe. once you've dug a trench, the cost implications for adding double the amount of fiber/cable you actually need is negligible - so you put loads in to allow for future expansion. this extra fiber just sits there until it's needed, or until other fiber breaks and is swapped over to the spare capacity...
    • Ya know... in the US we have slower bandwidth than most of the other tech countries of the world. It's not for lack of the fiber being there. It's more controls on the speeds so when they increase it a little we compare it to ourselves not what else is out there.

      Glad to see someone using some of it for somethign productive.
    • At times during the bubble, for every used fibre there were 100 dark ones.
      The material of the fibre isnt the cost factor, its the electronics driving them. So its easy to just dump a whole bunch instead a single one into the ground and buy the trancievers years later...
    • The same thing [fivecolleges.edu] is happening in western Massachusetts to connect The Five Colleges (Amherst College [amherst.edu], Hampshire College [hampshire.edu], Mount Holyoke [mtholyoke.edu], Smith [smith.edu], and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst [umass.edu]).

    • Re:A lot of this? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by b00le ( 714402 )
      Here in Rome (that's in Italy for any Republicans who might be reading /. ...) there a lots of little blue corrugated plastic tubes sticking out of the pavement of my district with plastic bath plugs and bits of string closing them off. Of course most of these plugs have been pulled off, so you can see that the tubes are empty. I have been told - but cannot confirm - that these were intended to carry fibre optic cables in some abandoned enterprise. Since the hard work has been done it seems a pity not to us
    • Unfortunately, most of the huge chunks of unlit fibers are business fiascos. An example was Enron Broadband; they had HUGE chunks of fiber, but between city pairs which were almost useless.

      Dark, uncommited fiber between useful places is more scarce. While there was a big surplus back in late 2000, a lot of that has been eaten up by increased demand. Cable and telcos have a lot of metro fiber which got laid (stop smirking) in the late 90's and is starting to get lit up for things like video on demand - all
    • I'm sure they're all over, but nobody is going to share the secret.

      Sharing video must be a threat to national security [slashdot.org] too!

  • Space, bandwidth, and digging holes. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RealProgrammer ( 723725 ) on Tuesday December 14, 2004 @08:54AM (#11080419) Homepage Journal
    From TFPDF:
    • Our (and Cornell's) affiliated hospital, NewYork-Presbyterian, has a significantly larger leased ATM infrastructure at DS-3 and OC-3 rates interconnecting about a dozen buildings. We were separately and collectively paying a lot for bandwidth in Manhattan.

      • 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.

  • wit the summary (Score:4, Funny)

    by dq5 studios ( 682179 ) on Tuesday December 14, 2004 @08:56AM (#11080421) Homepage
    intends to be largely used for video streaming.
    You misspelled sharing.

  • CUNY? (Score:3, Funny)

    by wackysootroom ( 243310 ) on Tuesday December 14, 2004 @08:58AM (#11080429) Homepage
    I misread that one at first. The first thoughts that come running through me are that first /. puts the word scrotum on the front page and now this?
    • CUNY = City University of New York

      There are tons of these colleges under the CUNY system. My brother is currently attending one of them, La Guardia Community College.

  • can anyone explain (Score:4, Funny)

    by spectrokid ( 660550 ) on Tuesday December 14, 2004 @09:03AM (#11080451) Homepage
    what kind of video gets streamed from a natural history museum to a hospital? More seriously, here in Denmark, the electricity companies want to get in on the game, but nobady really knows where all that fiber got dumped during the bubble. One company ordered fiber along a road, and then found out there was already dark fiber: the company they asked to dig the trenches had also dug the previous ones. If it was me, I would have kept my mouth shut, but then again...
    • Maybe the hospital and the museum shouldn't be connected by the Internet, either? They're connected because they both generate and consume bandwidth, and they're people - they will communicate with each other if they can. We build networks for people, not data - and these people are researchers, inventing the future. In five years, look back at what video they did stream, and learn - that's this community's specialty.
    • I don't know about the museum but I do know that hospitals sometimes stream live feeds from operations. That's one possible use. Since this is in some way connected to education a network like this could probably be used to give classes by streaming them to the students. A sufficiently high resolution image would be needed (how else would they make out what their professor is cutting in) so a big pipe would probably come in handy.

  • The speed of dark (Score:5, Informative)

    by Matey-O ( 518004 ) <michaeljohnmiller@mSPAMsSPAMnSPAM.com> on Tuesday December 14, 2004 @09:13AM (#11080475) Homepage Journal
    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.

  • In other news... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by FJ ( 18034 ) on Tuesday December 14, 2004 @09:20AM (#11080503)
    Accoring to news.com [news.com], a small town in Louisiana is waiting for telephone [com.com] service to be installed.

    Yep. Life is fair.

    • "John Ray, who shoots deer and squirrels from his front porch and cooks up batches of fragrant gumbo"

      You never know, they might have whacked a Bellsouth technician or two and not realized it. There could be a damn good reason that they don't have phone service out there. :P
      • You never know, they might have whacked a Bellsouth technician or two and not realized it.


        Spoken like someone who has (a) never been outside a city's beltway and (b) never even held a gun (let alone shot one) in his life. Maybe you should do a little quiet research before you start throwing around such ignorant statements about other people's lives.
    • Kevin F. Curtin, a spokesman for BellSouth, said that Mink had been unclaimed territory but that the utility was complying with a state order to annex Mink into its service area, at a cost of $700,000--or about $46,000 per customer. The communications industry contributes to a national Universal Service Fund that underwrites uneconomical service in sparsely populated areas, but it has yet to be activated in Louisiana, said Curtin, leaving BellSouth stuck with the tab. But the Louisiana Public Service Commis
      • It can't possibly cost more than a couple hundred grand. Less than 1/3 what the article quotes. BellSouth is just being assinine about it.

        Why do you think it would be cheaper? You sound like the kind of jackass I sometimes have to work for who complains that "all you did was hook up some wires" when I bill him for 3 hours work at $85/hr. Have you ever strung cabling? Set up a CO? Installed any utilities through public rights-of-way? There's more to it than you think, and skilled labor isn't cheap.

        I see

        • Why do you think it would be cheaper? You sound like the kind of jackass I sometimes have to work for who complains that "all you did was hook up some wires" when I bill him for 3 hours work at $85/hr. Have you ever strung cabling? Set up a CO? Installed any utilities through public rights-of-way? There's more to it than you think, and skilled labor isn't cheap.

          Seeing how they don't even have phone service, I'd like to know how you're going to get the internet connectivity out to them to start up this wond
          • You're a telco monkey? Congratulations on screwing people out of $85 an hour - you should be proud.

            Work costs money, and that's the prevailing rate for telecom work. You think that $85 goes straight into my pocket? After insurance, taxes, payroll, etc., I'm doing well if I see $20 of that.

            And you've bassackwards what I said, and then just cocked it all up. There would be one wireless connection to a neighboring town. The antenna on the local end would feed into a switch and distribute telephone over nor

  • Same thing here! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Sfing_ter ( 99478 ) on Tuesday December 14, 2004 @10:19AM (#11080892) Homepage Journal
    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?

  • VPNet Anyone? (Score:2, Informative)

    by CyberDave ( 79582 )
    VPNet, Spokane, WA: The Virtual Possibilities Network.

    Built from dark fiber once owned by Avista Utilities before they spun off the telecom stuff and, specifically, the fiber to Columbia Fiber Solutions. (Also includes a couple of leased OC-3 lines.) Been in planning for a couple of years and back in September had the ceremonial launch and press event. It's all gigabit networking between the core routers in each node (except for the aforementioned OC-3 lines). Connects all the major educational instituti

  • Dark Fiber Maps? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Mr.Sharpy ( 472377 ) on Tuesday December 14, 2004 @10:47AM (#11081151)
    Does anybody know of any resources or maps concerning the location and availability of dark fiber? I am sure there is a great deal of it laying out there along the roadside, in the sewers, and under the sidewalks just waiting for an application. Unfortunately, it's a pain in the ass to find out who owns what, and who to contact in your area. Some maps or perhaps a dark fiber market would be nice. Any suggestions?
  • that makes the MPAA and RIAA wet themselves.

    WH00T!
  • Despite the fact that several bidders offered to lease us their unused installed fiber we got a better price, better engineering, and better quality of fiber (SMF28e low water peak) by having brand new fiber installed. I have a map that shows me exactly where my fiber goes. (No, I can't share it with you.)
    • So "dark fiber" is not really the correct word here. BTW, I have NEVER seen the article's definition for dark fiber used before, I have always seen it used to describe the excess unlit fiber that is always installed when someone runs fiber. As many earlier posters pointed out, in most situations (especially long-haul ones that involve digging), the cost of running 100 fibers instead of one is insignificant compared to the cost of digging a hole to install the fiber in.
      • Yes "dark" is the right term. It means no telco is lighting it with their SONET or whatever equipment and then selling me a managed service. We have 20-year rights to several strands of actual glass end-to-end which we can light with whatever we want. We could send morse code by flashlight (torch for the bloody UK poster:-) but instead we chose to start with 10 gigabit Ethernet. I think the term you are looking for describing previsouly laid and unproductive fiber is "distressed assets." ;-)

  • dark fiber (Score:3, Funny)

    by cygnus ( 17101 ) on Tuesday December 14, 2004 @11:56AM (#11081752) Homepage
    is there any indication that the discovery of this so-called 'dark fiber' could change our understanding of if the universe will end in a singularity or endless expansion?
    • 'dark fiber' could change our understanding of if the universe will end in a singularity

      Because we all know we need plenty of dark fiber for re^D^Dsingularity.

  • NYSERnet [nysernet.org] (New York State Educaction and Research network) was the only provider for my school in Rochester, NY. Our packets ended up routed through some awful Sprintlink drop in Washington DC before they went anywhere. That sprintlink drop had all kinds of problems, high latency, bad routing to pretty much everywhere, and would occasionally just stop forwarding packets.

    NYSERnet may be fine for those organizations in NYC, but for upstate, it really sucked.

    They went through some upgrades in the past coupl
    • NYSERNet used to resell Sprintlink service, but that hasn't been the case for a rather long time. At present, the schools in Rochester have connections to multiple commercial ISPs, as well as connections to the NYSERNet research and education backbone. The NYSERNet network connects them to the global R&E infrastructure via Abilene, CA*net 4 and other similar backbones. The NYC dark fiber project is also a NYSERNet activity, but a separate one.

      It is perhaps worth pointing out that NYSERNet never actuall

  • Columbia's Connection sounds surprisingly wimpy (Score:3, Informative)

    by billstewart ( 78916 ) on Tuesday December 14, 2004 @11:59PM (#11089729) Journal
    Columbia's announcement says they've increased their internet connectivity to ~300 Mbps, from their previous 150 Mbps. Seems kind of wimpy - I'd have expected an announcement that says they're running at least gigabit connections to the other participants in the study. Maybe they're doing that and the press release just doesn't mention it? Or did they just start cheap and reuse their existing OC3 cards, while maybe some of the other players have fast connections to each other?

    If you wade through the piles of documentation, it looks like they've got dark fiber routes from each of the participants to racks at a couple of hub locations where they can meet with each other and Nysernet and also crossconnect to other carriers at a carrier-neutral facility. That means they could be running whatever combination they want of DWDM or CWDM, 10 Gig Ether, 1 Gig Ether, or traditional SONET (155 Mbps x 1,4,16,64) depending on how much they want to spend on CPE. I couldn't tell how many fiber pairs they were deploying per customer, but they're using fairly new high-end fiber that supports almost anything. The cheapest way to light up the stuff is with GigE fiber connections, since you can get by with a pretty small router, and cheap cards for short-distance hops, but CWDM is coming down in price (Coarse Wavelength Division Multiplexing doesn't get as many channels per fiber as Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing, but the hardware's a lot cheaper) so you should be able to run multiple GigEs or whatever else you feel like. It looks like hardware costs for the CWDM versions are on the order of $5-10K per FDX GigE channel.

    • If their infrastructure compares anything to the CT Edu. Network, they probably are using OC3 interfaces on their edge routers to the POP but internal GigE within NYSERNET. (CEN uses gigE between routers, and ATM/OC-3 to the actual Internets), so if Columbia is merely talking about capacity out of their ISP, then they may have faster intranet links.

  • I don't understand. What kind of experments are they doing on "The Internet 2"? The design is already set in stone right? So what they have now is a faster network...and?

    From here it just looks like a big toy.

  • Breakfast (Score:2, Funny)

    by Dynamic1 ( 791833 )
    I like a little dark fiber and milk in the morning. Helps me poop.

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