[OPLIN 4cast] OPLIN 4Cast #293: Google Fiber and GPON

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OPLIN 4Cast

OPLIN 4Cast #293: Google Fiber and GPON
August 1st, 2012

OK, no doubt about it, the Google Fiber project in Kansas City is pretty 
cool 
<http://techland.time.com/2012/07/27/five-cool-things-about-google-fiber-and-one-not-so-cool-thing/>. 
So cool that there's a ton of articles on the Internet about it right 
now. So why talk about it again in the /4cast/? Because there's some 
cool technical stuff going on in the background that few of the news 
articles have mentioned. Google is essentially putting dedicated fiber 
strands in every customer's house, which is different from the current 
Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON 
<http://www.alcatel-lucent.com/technology/gpon/>) technology used by 
many telcos to provide shared, on-demand, high-speed Internet service to 
homes.

  * Dan O'Connell: FTTH not just a Verizon thing
    <http://www.cable360.net/ct/sections/columns/bullpen/47967.html>
    (interview with Cable360) "Various FTTH [fiber to the home]
    technology solutions present alternatives in this regard on such
    issues as building out shared vs. dedicated plant, offering gigabit
    capacity today vs. something less now until gigabit service levels
    are demanded to support common applications and so forth. Providers
    also have to weigh the pros and cons of maintaining active
    electronics in the field vs. operating a passive network, /vis a
    vis/ the services or bandwidth capabilities those respective
    solutions may allow them to deliver, and the operational
    considerations of supporting those respective designs."
  * The future requires fiber
    <http://policyblog.verizon.com/BlogPost/786/TheFutureRequiresFiber.aspx>
    (Verizon PolicyBlog/John Czwartacki) "With a GPON architecture,
    Verizon's FiOS speed is only a matter of demand. If consumers
    demanded faster, we could deliver faster. And soon enough, they
    will. With innovators like Google joining us in our propagation of
    ultra fast broadband, it's only a matter of time when some American
    developer creates an application that requires the use of one gig or
    more of bandwidth."
  * Google Fiber - Less Filling (cost) Tastes Great (more bandwidth)?
    <http://kaplowtech.blogspot.com/2012/07/google-fiber-less-filling-cost-tastes.html>
    (Technology Directions by Wesley Kaplow) "Any service, virtually no
    matter the technology, has aggregation points. With GPON technology
    the concentration point is at the Optical Line Termination equipment
    (OLT). [...] Also at the OLT is the amount of uplink bandwidth from
    the OLT to the Internet. In general there are one to four 10Gbps
    uplink connections. So, in the best case there are 40Gbps to spread
    over the hundreds of customers connected to the OLT."
  * A construction update
    <http://googlefiberblog.blogspot.com/2012/04/construction-update.html>
    (Google Fiber Blog/John Toccalino) "As you can see, we'll be routing
    fiber connection into Kansas City, KS and Kansas City, MO through
    several equipment aggregator huts, aka 'Google Fiber Huts.' From the
    Google Fiber Huts, the fiber cables will travel along utility poles
    into neighborhoods and homes. The benefit of this model is simple:
    every home that has Google Fiber service will have their very own
    fiber-optic cable that directly connects all the way back to the
    Internet backbone."

*/OPLIN fact:/*

Somewhat like Google on a bigger scale, the statewide OPLIN network 
provides dedicated, symmetric circuits capable of either Fast Ethernet 
(100Mbps) or Gigabit Ethernet to most libraries. To control costs, 
however, we also carefully watch the demand from the library and ask the 
telco to restrict each connection - and their bill - to the amount of 
bandwidth the library actually needs.
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