[Chlug] Network Coffs!

[Scott McLachlan]

Hi...

I have another project in mind.

 

What I propose is this...

Forget wireless... forget xDSL... go ethernet to the entire community!!!

Springville, UTAH have rolledout to 5000 residents homes and small business a 10/100 network!!!

Coffs Harbour is the right size, with the right mix of business and residential broadband users to make this possible.

Working under the same ethos as 'The Back Fence Project'

 

Quote:

"

In 1998, a group of experienced network engineers and technologists allied

with the residents of a small rural town in Utah to comprehensively solve the

last mile problem by wiring their neighborhood via an effort dubbed "The Back

Fence Project". Drawing upon the powerful combination of in-depth technical

expertise and grassroots community interest, the implementation team

developed rugged Ethernet-based technologies and strung wires around the

neighborhood, connecting users' computers together and to the Internet at 10

Mbps. In just three months, there was overwhelming demand to take the

project to the rest of the city. "

 

These guys then got paid to roll it out in another city, thus starting a whole new industry...

" 

Over the next two years, development of both the technology and its market

potential moved ahead while the first city of 5000 homes in Springville, Utah

was wired. A year later, the SwitchPoint technology was rolled out to another

Utah town of 5000 homes, American Fork, to provide residents and small

businesses with a 100 Mbps, full-duplex connection between each other and

to the Internet. Both cities became laboratories for new applications that take

advantage of the fully bi-directional and peer-to-peer capabilities of the

SwitchPoint technology, including a Blockbuster/Enron Movies-On-Demand

trial in 2001 to more than 500 subscribers."

 

They developed a heat tollerant, ruggedised swich system that can either be buried in telecom pits, or strung from he poles much like the present phone lines. Every 8 or so homes down a street has one of these devices, that then allows 10/100mb to an ethernet socket in the house. They are doing a rollout in LA this year with all 1Gbps switches, with OcFi backbone. 

 

The system works like this...

 

Central switching network in comms centre. Internet comes in (suggest a 10mb backbone to sprint or comindico). Then OcFi is run out to several key switches in the neighbourhood (OcFi can run much further distances).