The power flickers this past week have caused me so much grief, I just have to comment about them. The Los Alamos Monitor has published a short explanation of most if not all of them in the next edition after the outage. Today the Sunday edition has a longer, front page, above the fold, article about a general problem with something called the RL 115KV line. I am curious what RL stands for. The article implies that Public Service Company of New Mexico (PNM) has something to do with it.
I think part of the general problem is the short-sighted thinking twenty to forty years ago. Then the emphasis was on burying electric and phone lines, eventually cable TV lines, too. I don't think there was any technical reason. There used to be the opinion that lightning would cause fewer outages, and phone linepersons have told me that woodpeckers do damage to overhead phone wires. No, the reason was aesthetics, just plain opinion about what is ugly and what is not so ugly.
Now, the burying could have been done in conduits. But it was cheaper to use direct-bury cable. In some high-density areas, the phone lines are in conduits. Brittle conduits susceptible to water intrusion that may be worse than spotty moisture for direct-bury cables, but some areas do have conduits none-the-less. But using conduits for electric wires only began more recently, maybe by the year 2000, maybe even later.
So now we need expensive trenching or horizontal boring to do it over with conduit this time. And with trenching we use short lengths of conduit with joints that will probably let water leak in, so that is not good, either.
Then there is the absence of the Ojo Line Extension. Another casualty of opinion about aesthetics.
Sigh.
I think OLE should be built, including dozens, maybe hundreds, of fibers along it. I think overhead utilities where direct-buried ones exist should be considered. I think high-density, commercial areas should have utility tunnels, which would also be storm sewers, where all gas, water, electric, communication and other utility connections can be maintained and replaced without digging or boring.
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Will a return to circuit switching happen?
Ah, I still have a chance to get at least one July post into this blog. I have thought about lots of topics, but skipped actually writing any comments about them, in the past six or ten weeks. I have been busy, but's that's no excuse.
I ran across an item in a college alumni magazine that mentioned something about Internet2, in support of the Large Hadron Collider world grid, or whatever that large consortium working on the data from CERN (European Center for Nuclear Research, words for the acronym come out in the French order, though, since it's in the French-speaking part of Switzerland) calls their collection of networks and computers. Turns out they're setting up temporary 10 Gigabit connections on demand, sometimes only for several minutes, for large file transfers, then shutting down that route. Sounds like circuit switching for point-to-point packet networking to me.
Maybe packet switching, or TCP/IP, just doesn't scale very well much beyond 10 Gigabit backbones?? Multiple 10 Gb connections might not work well with packet switching??
I ran across an item in a college alumni magazine that mentioned something about Internet2, in support of the Large Hadron Collider world grid, or whatever that large consortium working on the data from CERN (European Center for Nuclear Research, words for the acronym come out in the French order, though, since it's in the French-speaking part of Switzerland) calls their collection of networks and computers. Turns out they're setting up temporary 10 Gigabit connections on demand, sometimes only for several minutes, for large file transfers, then shutting down that route. Sounds like circuit switching for point-to-point packet networking to me.
Maybe packet switching, or TCP/IP, just doesn't scale very well much beyond 10 Gigabit backbones?? Multiple 10 Gb connections might not work well with packet switching??
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Town Meeting regarding Qwest QMOE
Tomorrow (Wednesday, June 18, 2008) from 2 to 4 PM, at the Los Alamos Public Schools administration school board meeting room, Dean Obermeyer has scheduled a "town meeting" for Qwest to present their product QMOE and the possibility of making it available in Los Alamos.
The e-mail that Dean sent May 21 (and Kevin Holsapple of the Los Alamos Commerce and Development Corporation forwarded minutes later) has further details.
The e-mail that Dean sent May 21 (and Kevin Holsapple of the Los Alamos Commerce and Development Corporation forwarded minutes later) has further details.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
meeting with Andrew Cohill in Santa Fe today
I should have posted this last night when I received it, because now the lead time is so short maybe nobody will see it in time, but read Richard Lowenberg's announcement of an open discussion with Andrew Cohill at the new Santa Fe Complex, 632 Agua Fria, this afternoon from 2:30 to 4:00. Also mentioned is another session they plan to have in Albuquerque Friday.
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Citylink seals a deal with Albuquerque
Thanks to Richard Lowenberg on the 1st-mile list for the news that the Albuquerque City Council has approved an agreement with Citylink. And thanks to John Osmon for the clarification that the agreement grants Albuquerque city and schools access to fiber, not free internet bandwidth. And thanks to Gary Gomes for the link to a draft of the franchise agreement. Maybe I should wait for a few more shoes to drop on 1st-mile, but, no, I'm posting this now.
Sunday, May 4, 2008
May flowers
Warmer weather has had some problems staying around, but at least it has returned for another year. Winter moisture was good and we have an absence of trees due to the Cerro Grande fire eight years ago. I hope that lowers our risk of another fire. Seems to me May 4 was the day that was 93 degrees F and the National Park Service lit Cerro Grande.
The ground has been thawed for nearly two months, and working outside sometimes doesn't involve shivering. I drilled a hole under my backyard last weekend. I need to enlarge it a little soon so the 2-inch conduit I intend to put in it will fit. The hole is 16 feet long and I spent about 4 hours drilling, so I averaged 15 minutes per foot. When LA Commnet hired Albuquerque Drilling in 2005, they sometimes went 10 feet per minute. Maybe it's worth using equipment that costs tens of thousands of dollars instead of scrimping on much more manual tools that total only a couple of thousand dollars. In a cramped space, though, the big stuff is just too big to fit.
Since last weekend I set up two more wireless links to test how well they work. They are supposed to be about six times as fast, and they do seem to be reliably four times as fast, as what we've been using for about 4 years.
I waited on both projects until the colder days of early April were past. I have some trips to take this summer for family events and a college reunion in September, but between those I hope to use the warm weather to expand internet capacity.
I like warm weather. Once I fill the trenches in my backyard, I would even welcome some rain.
The ground has been thawed for nearly two months, and working outside sometimes doesn't involve shivering. I drilled a hole under my backyard last weekend. I need to enlarge it a little soon so the 2-inch conduit I intend to put in it will fit. The hole is 16 feet long and I spent about 4 hours drilling, so I averaged 15 minutes per foot. When LA Commnet hired Albuquerque Drilling in 2005, they sometimes went 10 feet per minute. Maybe it's worth using equipment that costs tens of thousands of dollars instead of scrimping on much more manual tools that total only a couple of thousand dollars. In a cramped space, though, the big stuff is just too big to fit.
Since last weekend I set up two more wireless links to test how well they work. They are supposed to be about six times as fast, and they do seem to be reliably four times as fast, as what we've been using for about 4 years.
I waited on both projects until the colder days of early April were past. I have some trips to take this summer for family events and a college reunion in September, but between those I hope to use the warm weather to expand internet capacity.
I like warm weather. Once I fill the trenches in my backyard, I would even welcome some rain.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
tewacom.com
Sunday's Monitor had an ad from tewacom.com, as wide as the full Monitor page and probably the bottom quarter or third of the page.
I just checked the tewacom.com web site, and this is a company based on San Ildefonso Pueblo RUS (Rural Utility Service) grant funds from the US Department of Agriculture. They are using Motorola Canopy 900 MHz wireless hardware. They offer $24.95 per month 512 Kbits, $59.95 2 Mbits and $99.95 over 2 Mbits service, including pretty much throughout Los Alamos County's populated areas.
I just checked the tewacom.com web site, and this is a company based on San Ildefonso Pueblo RUS (Rural Utility Service) grant funds from the US Department of Agriculture. They are using Motorola Canopy 900 MHz wireless hardware. They offer $24.95 per month 512 Kbits, $59.95 2 Mbits and $99.95 over 2 Mbits service, including pretty much throughout Los Alamos County's populated areas.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Where's the Enthusiasm?
I realize that the few who have visited this blog in the six weeks or so that it has been around lose interest in the blog itself when my posting interval stretches out to six or seven days.
But ...
If we can't get a dialog going here (meaning the readers have to show enough interest to post a comment, or at least tell somebody else who will comment to read the blog), I think that means there really isn't much interest in improving internet access in Los Alamos.
That the County should not waste its time even thinking about building a fiber network.
That I should not waste my money and time buying a wireless link to Albuquerque to bypass Qwest's overpriced circuits.
That we Los Alamos citizens will let LANL have the only decent (and for LANL, per-capita it's still pretty sub-standard for large-urban America, and way behind Japan, South Korea and the like) internet access outside Albuquerque (and Albuquerque is still pretty sub-standard compared to, say, Denver, Phoenix, San Antonio, Dallas, probably Salt Lake City, etc.) in New Mexico.
Come on, pipe up, get the word out, or we're sunk.
But ...
If we can't get a dialog going here (meaning the readers have to show enough interest to post a comment, or at least tell somebody else who will comment to read the blog), I think that means there really isn't much interest in improving internet access in Los Alamos.
That the County should not waste its time even thinking about building a fiber network.
That I should not waste my money and time buying a wireless link to Albuquerque to bypass Qwest's overpriced circuits.
That we Los Alamos citizens will let LANL have the only decent (and for LANL, per-capita it's still pretty sub-standard for large-urban America, and way behind Japan, South Korea and the like) internet access outside Albuquerque (and Albuquerque is still pretty sub-standard compared to, say, Denver, Phoenix, San Antonio, Dallas, probably Salt Lake City, etc.) in New Mexico.
Come on, pipe up, get the word out, or we're sunk.
Friday, April 11, 2008
Business Week's Keith Epstein on 4/11/08 C-SPAN Washington Journal
This is about some of the internet stuff that goes on that probably isn't advancing the cause of well and good on our planet.
E-spionage.
"The New E-spionage Threat," that's the Business Week cover story this week. Mostly it's about an e-mail that arrived at Booz Allen, supposedly about fighter aircraft for India. But that e-mail was probably really from mainland China. It contained a program that does keystroke logging and sends the results to a host in 3322.org, a China domain. And another program that subverts passwords in the recipient's Microsoft Access databases. As the article goes on to expose other anecdotes, the emphasis remains on China. I think maybe China is just the tip of the iceberg. Consider what's going on between US companies doing industrial espionage on each other. Also consider the botnets that at a minimum harvest addresses to use as targets for spam. All those are facts of life on the internet, but then again they present puzzles to be solved, too. I'm sure many in Los Alamos are thinking about those puzzles and solutions.
Links:
C-SPAN
Epstein appearance video
Business Week
Business Week E-spionage article
Business Week podcast (mp3) about the E-spionage story, beginning with the theme from the Dr. No James Bond movie
I noticed as I watched the C-SPAN appearance over the web (I saw it live over satellite, too) that one caller mentioned something he called "the minnow and barksdale" incident. That second time, I thought, "what did he mean by minnow?" Well, I think he meant Minot, which I think is pronounced my-not, not me-know, the North Dakota city and Air Force base. I guess he had read about it, and hadn't heard someone talk about the story. Barksdale is an Air Force base in Arkansas, and the incident was about nuclear weapons in a B-52 that were not the usual empty shells and were armed, unbeknownst to the B-52's crew and I guess a very serious violation of Air Force policies.
There are lots of links in the Business Week article, too, plus reader comments.
Isn't it amazing how well C-SPAN has packaged the video of Epstein's appearance? The Business Week mp3 is pretty amazing, too, compared to what we had pre-internet.
E-spionage.
"The New E-spionage Threat," that's the Business Week cover story this week. Mostly it's about an e-mail that arrived at Booz Allen, supposedly about fighter aircraft for India. But that e-mail was probably really from mainland China. It contained a program that does keystroke logging and sends the results to a host in 3322.org, a China domain. And another program that subverts passwords in the recipient's Microsoft Access databases. As the article goes on to expose other anecdotes, the emphasis remains on China. I think maybe China is just the tip of the iceberg. Consider what's going on between US companies doing industrial espionage on each other. Also consider the botnets that at a minimum harvest addresses to use as targets for spam. All those are facts of life on the internet, but then again they present puzzles to be solved, too. I'm sure many in Los Alamos are thinking about those puzzles and solutions.
Links:
C-SPAN
Epstein appearance video
Business Week
Business Week E-spionage article
Business Week podcast (mp3) about the E-spionage story, beginning with the theme from the Dr. No James Bond movie
I noticed as I watched the C-SPAN appearance over the web (I saw it live over satellite, too) that one caller mentioned something he called "the minnow and barksdale" incident. That second time, I thought, "what did he mean by minnow?" Well, I think he meant Minot, which I think is pronounced my-not, not me-know, the North Dakota city and Air Force base. I guess he had read about it, and hadn't heard someone talk about the story. Barksdale is an Air Force base in Arkansas, and the incident was about nuclear weapons in a B-52 that were not the usual empty shells and were armed, unbeknownst to the B-52's crew and I guess a very serious violation of Air Force policies.
There are lots of links in the Business Week article, too, plus reader comments.
Isn't it amazing how well C-SPAN has packaged the video of Epstein's appearance? The Business Week mp3 is pretty amazing, too, compared to what we had pre-internet.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Educause: Blueprint for Big Broadband
Someone forwarded a copy of Educause's "A Blueprint for Big Broadband" to me today. It is a whitepaper, and 74 pages long. I also see criticism that the report's target of 100 Mbits/sec is aiming too low. I agree, 100 Mbits/sec is too low a target.
Monday, April 7, 2008
Who cares about internet, and in what ways?
Where in your scheme of priorities might internet fit? Maybe you like the good old days with communication face-to-face? By letters sent via the Post Office? Phone calls? Telegrams? Maybe you rate God, family, job in that order, and any communication at all has to be about those and only in ways that existed before, say, 1970?
Maybe you find e-mail with family or friends useful, but the cheapest dial-up, say juno.com, is plenty fast for you, the main idea is to minimize expense? Are your kids sending you photos and movies of your grandchildren as attachments and dial-up is just too slow?
Maybe you run a business and could sell your wares using the internet? Advertise, for instance? Run your own catalog with current inventory updated with every order arrival and sale? Could you find something to special order for a customer using the internet? Could you communicate with your suppliers using the internet? Could you file government forms using the internet?
Maybe you're a health care practitioner and you could communicate with patients using the internet? Learn new developments via the internet? Research diagnoses via the internet? See images such as X-Rays, CAT, MRI, just video of the patient, maybe to see symptoms or just the facial expression as the patient talks? How about creating and accessing records using the internet?
Do you have an office job where you're mostly dealing with a computer, entering data, writing journal articles, books, articles and the like? Programming? Could you convince your boss to let you do that at home most of the time? Maybe you can't work at home because the rest of the family would distract you? How about teaming with some neighbors to have a neighborhood telecommuter work center?
Would you find a college lecture as a sound file, or a video file, useful? How about if you could exchange e-mail with, or video-conference with, the lecturer or a teaching assistant? Or if you teach or create courses yourself, could you publish them using the internet?
Do you own a car? Do you drive much? Could you drive less if you had internet, particularly faster internet? Have you considered that for much less than the price of a new car, quite a bit less than the price of a reliable used car, you could install conduit from your residence or business to two or three adjacent neighbors? That if everybody did that, really, really fast internet connections within town would be practically free? And if every town did that, fast connections within the state, within the nation, globally, would be pretty inexpensive? It's probably less than the cost of gas, insurance and maintenance of your car for a year, to put in that conduit that will serve you and your neighbors as long as the lifetime of that car, probably longer.
Are you a banker, but you only make loans for real estate or cars? Did you ever consider financing computers or conduit to the neighbors? How about loans on tools that help install that conduit? How about loans on network equipment for neighborhoods?
Are you an investor? Could you use the internet to help you manage your investments?
Do you travel? Would the internet help you arrange your trips? Do you know about mapquest, maps.google.com (including streetview for dozens of cities,) Google Earth and the like?
Do you vote? Would you know more about candidates and ballot questions if you used the internet to study?
How about just using the internet to make your bill paying more convenient and reliable?
Are you a government worker? Maybe your IT department is busting a gut to help you get something useful from computers and internet? Maybe, though, you're frustrating the efforts of others to expand internet access -- stop that!
Are you afraid technology will eliminate your job? Could you learn to do something else, perhaps using technology? Would that be worse than doing something a machine or somebody in Asia could do?
What are you waiting for? Somebody who will say, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you?"
Maybe you find e-mail with family or friends useful, but the cheapest dial-up, say juno.com, is plenty fast for you, the main idea is to minimize expense? Are your kids sending you photos and movies of your grandchildren as attachments and dial-up is just too slow?
Maybe you run a business and could sell your wares using the internet? Advertise, for instance? Run your own catalog with current inventory updated with every order arrival and sale? Could you find something to special order for a customer using the internet? Could you communicate with your suppliers using the internet? Could you file government forms using the internet?
Maybe you're a health care practitioner and you could communicate with patients using the internet? Learn new developments via the internet? Research diagnoses via the internet? See images such as X-Rays, CAT, MRI, just video of the patient, maybe to see symptoms or just the facial expression as the patient talks? How about creating and accessing records using the internet?
Do you have an office job where you're mostly dealing with a computer, entering data, writing journal articles, books, articles and the like? Programming? Could you convince your boss to let you do that at home most of the time? Maybe you can't work at home because the rest of the family would distract you? How about teaming with some neighbors to have a neighborhood telecommuter work center?
Would you find a college lecture as a sound file, or a video file, useful? How about if you could exchange e-mail with, or video-conference with, the lecturer or a teaching assistant? Or if you teach or create courses yourself, could you publish them using the internet?
Do you own a car? Do you drive much? Could you drive less if you had internet, particularly faster internet? Have you considered that for much less than the price of a new car, quite a bit less than the price of a reliable used car, you could install conduit from your residence or business to two or three adjacent neighbors? That if everybody did that, really, really fast internet connections within town would be practically free? And if every town did that, fast connections within the state, within the nation, globally, would be pretty inexpensive? It's probably less than the cost of gas, insurance and maintenance of your car for a year, to put in that conduit that will serve you and your neighbors as long as the lifetime of that car, probably longer.
Are you a banker, but you only make loans for real estate or cars? Did you ever consider financing computers or conduit to the neighbors? How about loans on tools that help install that conduit? How about loans on network equipment for neighborhoods?
Are you an investor? Could you use the internet to help you manage your investments?
Do you travel? Would the internet help you arrange your trips? Do you know about mapquest, maps.google.com (including streetview for dozens of cities,) Google Earth and the like?
Do you vote? Would you know more about candidates and ballot questions if you used the internet to study?
How about just using the internet to make your bill paying more convenient and reliable?
Are you a government worker? Maybe your IT department is busting a gut to help you get something useful from computers and internet? Maybe, though, you're frustrating the efforts of others to expand internet access -- stop that!
Are you afraid technology will eliminate your job? Could you learn to do something else, perhaps using technology? Would that be worse than doing something a machine or somebody in Asia could do?
What are you waiting for? Somebody who will say, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you?"
NM 502 pipe laying east of Rio Grande
I happened to venture to at least Pojoaque a couple of times in recent weeks, and I noticed some construction activity on the south side of NM 502 east of the Rio. The last trip, which I think was March 29, there were two HDD (Horizontal Directional Drilling) rigs. The pipe is white, probably threaded steel, so I suspect it is a water line. Maybe the San Ildefonso Pueblo is involved, since it is so close to there. Maybe it is the Santa Fe Buckman diversion project. Evidently that has been big news in Santa Fe for months if not years, but I first heard anything about it just a week or two ago. I wonder if whoever is doing the project realizes they could have pulled HDPE (high density polyethylene) conduit with that white pipe and have a place to put fiber, too.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Thu March 27, 2007 Monitor letter by TJ Taub
I don't know TJ. I think she sells real estate with Los Alamos Properties, a realty business. Her letter recommends a campaign to educate us about the value of broadband here in Los Alamos, and wider participation, specifically local business, medical and educational sectors, in Los Alamos County's discussion.
Why don't we have dozens of people clamoring for faster, better, cheaper internet, at least as big a contingent as the Performing Arts Center campaign was?
Why don't we have dozens of people clamoring for faster, better, cheaper internet, at least as big a contingent as the Performing Arts Center campaign was?
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
The Biggest Problem, and Two Ways to Approach Solving It
The biggest problem is the price of getting internet traffic between Los Alamos and Albuquerque. That price is too high. The monopoly vendor for it is Qwest. We really need to solve that problem first.
First, several large Los Alamos customers need to co-operate and order one big connection and share it. The biggest of those customers is LANL, and all the rest are by comparison insignificant. So we should all encourage LANL to do the right thing in this case. We smaller customers should unite much sooner than the behemoth federal government can even decide what to do, in the meantime.
Second, we should find a way to add an alternative to Qwest. Perhaps a commercial bandwidth provider could extend their own fiber to Los Alamos, maybe some already have extended to Santa Fe. Or we should pool our resources and buy our own fiber installation to at least Santa Fe, perhaps all the way to Albuquerque. Personally, I am seriously considering a wireless link between Albuquerque and Los Alamos. It looks to me like we could have 300 Megabits on 5-year 7% loan payments for what Qwest charges for 9 Megabits (6 bonded T-1 circuits).
First, several large Los Alamos customers need to co-operate and order one big connection and share it. The biggest of those customers is LANL, and all the rest are by comparison insignificant. So we should all encourage LANL to do the right thing in this case. We smaller customers should unite much sooner than the behemoth federal government can even decide what to do, in the meantime.
Second, we should find a way to add an alternative to Qwest. Perhaps a commercial bandwidth provider could extend their own fiber to Los Alamos, maybe some already have extended to Santa Fe. Or we should pool our resources and buy our own fiber installation to at least Santa Fe, perhaps all the way to Albuquerque. Personally, I am seriously considering a wireless link between Albuquerque and Los Alamos. It looks to me like we could have 300 Megabits on 5-year 7% loan payments for what Qwest charges for 9 Megabits (6 bonded T-1 circuits).
List of Future Topics
Six days have passed since my last post. That can't be good. I do have lots of material, though. Here are the items I added to a note to myself so far.
traffic: good, bad and ugly
bad traffic unblocked: spam, 419, id theft, botnets, scans
good traffic blocked: protests against injustice, freedom fighter communication
one person's bad traffic is another person's good traffic
good traffic delayed because bad traffic wastes resources, causes congestion, or is just plain a denial-of-service attack
QOS = quality of service, give preference to such as voice, take preference from such as long downloads
P2P
IP, patents, copyright
bittorrent
kazaa, limewire, bearshare
CALEA Law Enforcement
PCI Payment Card Industry security rules
Truth in advertising
bits is not necessarily bits, then bytes just confuse us, or vice versa
Truth, Secrets, Partial Truth and Lies
Microsoft
windows security bugs, botnet bait, Vista attempt to fix made a big mess
excess traffic for updates
Office (starting with Basic for Apple/Commodore/Atari/etc) tendency to mix data and instructions
Cisco
Juniper
PacketFront?
Open Source
tools, servers, LAMP - Linux/BSD, Apache, MySQL, Perl/Python/PHP
Digital Convergence
Triple Play, phone, TV, internet -- just internet covers that
Digital Divide
Generation Gap
network management, instrumentation
SOHO/residential router problems
10 Mbits half duplex autonegotiate
forwarding packet storms
No IPV6
IPV6
diversity (tpc term,) redundant paths
CDN
akamai, limelight, nyud.net:8090 coral coralcdn.org
LANL
ESnet mandate by federal government
#Design-nine, Blacksburg, VA and Andrew Cohill
# www.designnine.com, ./staff/cohill.html,
# library/docs/handouts/D9_case_studies.pdf (Waterloo vs. Cedar Falls, IA)
fiber equipment
3-or-more-port bridge for loop
PON, B-PON, GE-PON, Fujitsu? in Lincoln City, OR
instruments, OTDR, fusion splicer, light source - power meter, fiber identifier
PON - passive optical network
commodity equipment - so far, *not* PON, but active power equipment
used to be 10 Mbit, not 100, now 1 Gbit, not 10 Gbit
PON standard is asymmetric, slower upload than download
Japan moving from B-PON to GE-PON (gigabit ethernet)
active means copper power wires (see power backup)
excavation, trenching, drilling, trenchless technology, sub-surface utility engineering (Underground Focus,) robotic gopher, pedestal, splice closure,
equipment cabinet/rack/box
call before you dig, nmonecall
GPR, magnetic-field locators
little beaver, underwunder
pneumatic mole
sewer as conduit, citylink
overhead distribution
wireless, interference, especially 802.11b/g, unlicensed vs. icensed
wifi
proprietary
wimax
cell phone companies
municipal projects failure rate
internet cafes, airport hot spots
government outside county
state General Services provision, osogrande vs. qwest
universities/stategov/munigovs NM Gigapop, lambdarail/internet2
corruption
Santa Fe schools IT manager, Sandoval County - alleged, no convictions yet
county
franchise
# Milder committee - Spivak, Uptown, Utilities - Robert (Buck) Monday
# ?some third study before 2004 -- Cohill - PacketFront?
Feb 17, 2004 council meeting at courtroom
http://files.losalamosnm.us/cco/CouncilMinutes/2004%20Minutes/021704min.pdf
Brunetti-DEC contract, http://communityfiber.blogspot.com/2004_04_04_communityfiber_archive.html
peering exchange
IXNM
local
locality
power backup
UPS, batteries, generator, solar for non-wired spot (ridge-top repeater)
financing installation (rent vs. own)
government: bond, loan guarantee or tax credit
traffic: good, bad and ugly
bad traffic unblocked: spam, 419, id theft, botnets, scans
good traffic blocked: protests against injustice, freedom fighter communication
one person's bad traffic is another person's good traffic
good traffic delayed because bad traffic wastes resources, causes congestion, or is just plain a denial-of-service attack
QOS = quality of service, give preference to such as voice, take preference from such as long downloads
P2P
IP, patents, copyright
bittorrent
kazaa, limewire, bearshare
CALEA Law Enforcement
PCI Payment Card Industry security rules
Truth in advertising
bits is not necessarily bits, then bytes just confuse us, or vice versa
Truth, Secrets, Partial Truth and Lies
Microsoft
windows security bugs, botnet bait, Vista attempt to fix made a big mess
excess traffic for updates
Office (starting with Basic for Apple/Commodore/Atari/etc) tendency to mix data and instructions
Cisco
Juniper
PacketFront?
Open Source
tools, servers, LAMP - Linux/BSD, Apache, MySQL, Perl/Python/PHP
Digital Convergence
Triple Play, phone, TV, internet -- just internet covers that
Digital Divide
Generation Gap
network management, instrumentation
SOHO/residential router problems
10 Mbits half duplex autonegotiate
forwarding packet storms
No IPV6
IPV6
diversity (tpc term,) redundant paths
CDN
akamai, limelight, nyud.net:8090 coral coralcdn.org
LANL
ESnet mandate by federal government
#Design-nine, Blacksburg, VA and Andrew Cohill
# www.designnine.com, ./staff/cohill.html,
# library/docs/handouts/D9_case_studies.pdf (Waterloo vs. Cedar Falls, IA)
fiber equipment
3-or-more-port bridge for loop
PON, B-PON, GE-PON, Fujitsu? in Lincoln City, OR
instruments, OTDR, fusion splicer, light source - power meter, fiber identifier
PON - passive optical network
commodity equipment - so far, *not* PON, but active power equipment
used to be 10 Mbit, not 100, now 1 Gbit, not 10 Gbit
PON standard is asymmetric, slower upload than download
Japan moving from B-PON to GE-PON (gigabit ethernet)
active means copper power wires (see power backup)
excavation, trenching, drilling, trenchless technology, sub-surface utility engineering (Underground Focus,) robotic gopher, pedestal, splice closure,
equipment cabinet/rack/box
call before you dig, nmonecall
GPR, magnetic-field locators
little beaver, underwunder
pneumatic mole
sewer as conduit, citylink
overhead distribution
wireless, interference, especially 802.11b/g, unlicensed vs. icensed
wifi
proprietary
wimax
cell phone companies
municipal projects failure rate
internet cafes, airport hot spots
government outside county
state General Services provision, osogrande vs. qwest
universities/stategov/munigovs NM Gigapop, lambdarail/internet2
corruption
Santa Fe schools IT manager, Sandoval County - alleged, no convictions yet
county
franchise
# Milder committee - Spivak, Uptown, Utilities - Robert (Buck) Monday
# ?some third study before 2004 -- Cohill - PacketFront?
Feb 17, 2004 council meeting at courtroom
http://files.losalamosnm.us/cco/CouncilMinutes/2004%20Minutes/021704min.pdf
Brunetti-DEC contract, http://communityfiber.blogspot.com/2004_04_04_communityfiber_archive.html
peering exchange
IXNM
local
locality
power backup
UPS, batteries, generator, solar for non-wired spot (ridge-top repeater)
financing installation (rent vs. own)
government: bond, loan guarantee or tax credit
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Utilities Department report
The February 26, 2008 Los Alamos County Council meeting (pdf of agenda) had a discussion of the Utilities Department report on fiber. Eventually, minutes of that meeting should show up on the index of 2008 Council meeting minutes, but currently February 12 is the newest. Other items at that meeting have attachments on the internet, but the Utilities fiber report does not, currently. There is video of that part of the meeting on PAC-8, see PAC-8's video on demand page and select part 2 of the February 26, 2008 meeting. A transcript of the presentation and discussion would be good to have.
Note that the minutes of the January 16, 2008 Board of Public Utilities meeting (pdf) also included a presentation by the Utilities Department regarding fiber. Mr. Monday was more pessimistic about the financial impact of a fiber project at that time than he was at the Council meeting later.
Note that the minutes of the January 16, 2008 Board of Public Utilities meeting (pdf) also included a presentation by the Utilities Department regarding fiber. Mr. Monday was more pessimistic about the financial impact of a fiber project at that time than he was at the Council meeting later.
Blacksburg, VA, Andrew Cohill and DesignNine
The 1st-mile web site I mentioned in the previous post and my phone conversation with Richard Lowenberg led me to look up DesignNine and Andrew Cohill.
Richard said that Andrew was involved with one of the past Los Alamos County fiber consulting episodes. Perhaps that was the one that involved PacketFront. Andrew certainly was involved with fiber internet in Blacksburg, Virginia.
The DesignNine web site has a Resources link where I found a number of one-page handouts as pdf files. One I'll highlight here is the Case Studies (pdf) one that compares Waterloo and Cedar Falls in Iowa. Although Cedar Falls is smaller, it managed to attract new industry at a faster rate, and DesignNine is hinting that fiber is a major part of that. On the other hand, Waterloo has lots of the John Deere one-company town aspect that it shares with the national laboratory influence on Los Alamos.
I encourage everyone to see what DesignNine and the references it provides have to say.
Richard said that Andrew was involved with one of the past Los Alamos County fiber consulting episodes. Perhaps that was the one that involved PacketFront. Andrew certainly was involved with fiber internet in Blacksburg, Virginia.
The DesignNine web site has a Resources link where I found a number of one-page handouts as pdf files. One I'll highlight here is the Case Studies (pdf) one that compares Waterloo and Cedar Falls in Iowa. Although Cedar Falls is smaller, it managed to attract new industry at a faster rate, and DesignNine is hinting that fiber is a major part of that. On the other hand, Waterloo has lots of the John Deere one-company town aspect that it shares with the national laboratory influence on Los Alamos.
I encourage everyone to see what DesignNine and the references it provides have to say.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
1st-mile.com
I got an e-mail today from Richard Lowenberg of Santa Fe, formerly of Davis, California and Telluride, Colorado. We had a nice chat on the phone. Check his web site at www.1st-mile.com. I like this open network idea.
Friday, March 14, 2008
btno post: Fiber poor diet
Thanks so much, Jim Rickman, for the mention on your btno blog.
I guess it's just human nature. Fiberlanm drew only a single comment other than my own. That is overwhelmed by the number of comments the Fiber poor diet post on btno drew. My answer to the single comment is that I'm not sure whether 2.9 cents per minute for long distance on voice telephone has any relationship at all to fiber, or internet, except that long distance is a competitive market, while, in contrast, internet between Los Alamos and other locations is a Qwest monopoly.
I subscribe to the nanog mailing list and a message on that last Friday complained that it's outrageous that 20 Megabits of bandwidth in China costs $3400 per month. Well, in Los Alamos, the best price I can find is about $4000. (Well, 45 Megabits is only about $400 more than that, but then there's another big jump to, say, 46 Megabits.) This is not for a home DSL or cable connection, this is for an ISP (Internet Service Provider) connection that is dedicated, symmetric and has an SLA (Service Level Agreement) that guarantees refunds for downtime if it exceeds mere minutes per month. In some ways, China is more primitive than the farthest outpost of rural America, but at least it has cheaper internet prices than Los Alamos.
In northern Virginia, internet is about $12 per Megabit per month, or $240 per month for 20 Megabits, and even in Albuquerque it can be $35 ($700 for 20,) but, no, Los Alamos, you're not Virginia.
If we meekly allow Qwest and Comcast to continue business as usual, the ratio will continue to be starkly adverse. If we get our County government to build an internet project, we might see more reasonable monthly prices and much greater capability, but it will cost needless millions in taxes.
I appreciate what faster, higher capacity internet can do. Those of us who share that view should invest in our own piece of it. We should do it with fiber. We should also inform those who think internet is some passing fad or a luxury how utterly wonderful internet is, so they will join us. The County government should do two things:
1. get out of the way of citizen owned and installed local fiber;
2. finance private (see below) installation of fiber to neighboring cities, including between the townsite and White Rock.
By neighboring cities, I mean Santa Fe, Espanola, Cochiti and probably Cuba. Pueblos such as San Ildefonso and non-native villages such as El Rancho should be included on the way, and should be encouraged to participate in the financing, too.
By private installation of fiber between cities, I mean we would set up a co-operative which would charge for fiber use according to the cost of it on an amortization schedule, and including an option that a fiber user can buy dark fiber outright and just pay for maintenance of that dark fiber as maintenance events happen. The maintenance fee could be an estimate with a refund after a year when the estimate exceeded expenses, something of that nature.
I think we only have two problems to solve:
a. get the price for packet transit between Los Alamos and the rest of the world down to a reasonable level;
b. stop renting from the Qwests of the world, we should own our infrastructure, not rent it.
I guess it's just human nature. Fiberlanm drew only a single comment other than my own. That is overwhelmed by the number of comments the Fiber poor diet post on btno drew. My answer to the single comment is that I'm not sure whether 2.9 cents per minute for long distance on voice telephone has any relationship at all to fiber, or internet, except that long distance is a competitive market, while, in contrast, internet between Los Alamos and other locations is a Qwest monopoly.
I subscribe to the nanog mailing list and a message on that last Friday complained that it's outrageous that 20 Megabits of bandwidth in China costs $3400 per month. Well, in Los Alamos, the best price I can find is about $4000. (Well, 45 Megabits is only about $400 more than that, but then there's another big jump to, say, 46 Megabits.) This is not for a home DSL or cable connection, this is for an ISP (Internet Service Provider) connection that is dedicated, symmetric and has an SLA (Service Level Agreement) that guarantees refunds for downtime if it exceeds mere minutes per month. In some ways, China is more primitive than the farthest outpost of rural America, but at least it has cheaper internet prices than Los Alamos.
In northern Virginia, internet is about $12 per Megabit per month, or $240 per month for 20 Megabits, and even in Albuquerque it can be $35 ($700 for 20,) but, no, Los Alamos, you're not Virginia.
If we meekly allow Qwest and Comcast to continue business as usual, the ratio will continue to be starkly adverse. If we get our County government to build an internet project, we might see more reasonable monthly prices and much greater capability, but it will cost needless millions in taxes.
I appreciate what faster, higher capacity internet can do. Those of us who share that view should invest in our own piece of it. We should do it with fiber. We should also inform those who think internet is some passing fad or a luxury how utterly wonderful internet is, so they will join us. The County government should do two things:
1. get out of the way of citizen owned and installed local fiber;
2. finance private (see below) installation of fiber to neighboring cities, including between the townsite and White Rock.
By neighboring cities, I mean Santa Fe, Espanola, Cochiti and probably Cuba. Pueblos such as San Ildefonso and non-native villages such as El Rancho should be included on the way, and should be encouraged to participate in the financing, too.
By private installation of fiber between cities, I mean we would set up a co-operative which would charge for fiber use according to the cost of it on an amortization schedule, and including an option that a fiber user can buy dark fiber outright and just pay for maintenance of that dark fiber as maintenance events happen. The maintenance fee could be an estimate with a refund after a year when the estimate exceeded expenses, something of that nature.
I think we only have two problems to solve:
a. get the price for packet transit between Los Alamos and the rest of the world down to a reasonable level;
b. stop renting from the Qwests of the world, we should own our infrastructure, not rent it.
Saturday, March 1, 2008
February 9, 2000 comments, an overview (repeat)
I don't know whether to put this first or last. I think I'll put it first, then after I post the pieces, I'll convert it to links and repeat it as last, also. Basically, this is a Table of Contents for the over three pages of printed comments I wrote over eight years ago. And the conclusion was so short, I'll just include it here.
I've been thinking about whether I should add new posts to discuss my self-criticisms, and I've decided that instead I will add comments to my own posts to do that.
County (involvement, and non-involvement: when will we cooperate?)
Media (prefer fiber)
Lower Latency
tpc (Qwest)
Locality
Usage-based Pricing
Conclusion
So I'll keep looking for a solution. Obviously, I'm not the only one with a problem. Let's cooperate on a solution.
I've been thinking about whether I should add new posts to discuss my self-criticisms, and I've decided that instead I will add comments to my own posts to do that.
County (involvement, and non-involvement: when will we cooperate?)
Media (prefer fiber)
Lower Latency
tpc (Qwest)
Locality
Usage-based Pricing
Conclusion
So I'll keep looking for a solution. Obviously, I'm not the only one with a problem. Let's cooperate on a solution.
Usage-Based Pricing
[note: this was the second half of the Locality paragraph -- redhardhat]
We need to share that expense, and share it fairly. Some practices that are going on are not wise, such as web pages that have continuing connections to refresh advertisement animations, which are congesting networks. Usage-based pricing must eventually happen, because flat-rate pricing is not fair. With flat-rate pricing, there is no incentive to stop wasting expensive bandwidth on unwise practices.
We need to share that expense, and share it fairly. Some practices that are going on are not wise, such as web pages that have continuing connections to refresh advertisement animations, which are congesting networks. Usage-based pricing must eventually happen, because flat-rate pricing is not fair. With flat-rate pricing, there is no incentive to stop wasting expensive bandwidth on unwise practices.
Locality
The structure of the Internet should have high local bandwidth, and locality of connections should be encouraged. Multicast should be used for audio and video distribution, otherwise we will clog our bandwidth with multiple copies of the same streams, or programs. External connections have to have sufficient bandwidth, and be able to keep latency low, too, and that's expensive. Some of the expense of external connections has to percolate up to the backbone of the global internet, with value added infrastructure at each level extracting its share to pay for the equipment.
[note: Usage-Based Pricing was the second half of this paragraph -- redhardhat]
[note: Usage-Based Pricing was the second half of this paragraph -- redhardhat]
tpc (Qwest)
[note: tpc means "the phone company" -- redhardhat]
U S West, just as the other RBOCs (Regional Bell Operating Companies) do, is fighting to get permission to offer long distance and in general escape regulation, claiming to have big financial losses adding data infrastructure. At the same time, it refuses to offer other services that make more sense for the infrastructure it owns, such as "dark copper" for DSL using customer-owned equipment. It also spends considerable sums of money on telemarketing high-margin "extended" services, such as call waiting and voice messaging. In a competitive environment, a local voice telephone service would probably offer such things free, or charge per event based on the few pennies per month all such services actually cost for a typical customer. The state of New Mexico has its unique problems with U S West, but probably every one of the other 12 states does, too. U S West also handles nearly all its customer contact in interstate fashion, trying to avoid the jurisdiction of any single state, and for the most part federal jurisdiction, too. Of the original 7 RBOCs after Judge Greene's 1982 decision, SBC (Southwestern Bell, Texas to Missouri) bought Pacific Telesys (California,) Bell Atlantic (Virginia to Pennsylvania and New Jersey) bought Nynex (New York and New England,) and Ameritech (around Chicago) wants to merge in with SBC, too. So now there are 5, or 4. AT&T, the national survivor in the break-up, bought TCI (Tele-Communications,) the largest cable TV company. And U S West is being purchased by Qwest.
Judge Greene died a couple of weeks ago. We should respect the departed, but he should have split the AT&T local phone companies into 3 national companies instead of 7 regional ones. That way, large cities would have immediately had competition in local phone service, and eventually even communities down to the size of Los Alamos and smaller would have gotten competition. Competition in long distance has worked. Calls that used to be \$1.50 per minute are now routinely 30 cents, 15 cents, a dime, even 7 or 5 cents per minute. All my long distance is 9 cents per minute with no monthly fee or minimum, even calling card ones are 9 cents with just a 40 cents per call fee added. What has worked for the long distance business needs to be unleashed on the local telecommunications business. We need local competition in phone services, both voice and data. Eventually we need voice service to be via data. We need to leave the current structure of the RBOCs behind. Currently they can cross-subsidize several businesses that have nothing to do with providing wire or fiber from central offices to customer premises (or between central offices.)
The entity that owns the right to have telecommunications cables that cross everybody's property should be in no other business. Too many games with cross-subsidization and discrimination are played the way things are now.
I have my own tale of woe in dealing with U S West. I'm trying to get ``dark copper'' to run Lucent DSL equipment between my home and two other locations. I placed an order on August 31, 1999. U S West has been using tactics of delay, obfuscate and pleading ignorance, and haven't delivered this order yet. I call that DOPI, as in dopey (delay, obfuscate and plead ignorance.) They say, from Phoenix over the phone,
[U S West] We can't do it.
[Dale] You mean you won't do it, obviously you can.
[U S West] No, we can't.
[Dale] Please put that in writing, in a letter to me.
[U S West] Our management has forbidden us to put any of this in writing.
[Dale] I'll just need to make an audio recording of you saying it then.
[U S West] I won't repeat it for an audio recording.
[Dale] This is really getting weird.
I think U S West has what we need, they just won't sell, or even rent, it to us. Of course, they always rent everything, they never sell anything. Selling would be too fair.
U S West, just as the other RBOCs (Regional Bell Operating Companies) do, is fighting to get permission to offer long distance and in general escape regulation, claiming to have big financial losses adding data infrastructure. At the same time, it refuses to offer other services that make more sense for the infrastructure it owns, such as "dark copper" for DSL using customer-owned equipment. It also spends considerable sums of money on telemarketing high-margin "extended" services, such as call waiting and voice messaging. In a competitive environment, a local voice telephone service would probably offer such things free, or charge per event based on the few pennies per month all such services actually cost for a typical customer. The state of New Mexico has its unique problems with U S West, but probably every one of the other 12 states does, too. U S West also handles nearly all its customer contact in interstate fashion, trying to avoid the jurisdiction of any single state, and for the most part federal jurisdiction, too. Of the original 7 RBOCs after Judge Greene's 1982 decision, SBC (Southwestern Bell, Texas to Missouri) bought Pacific Telesys (California,) Bell Atlantic (Virginia to Pennsylvania and New Jersey) bought Nynex (New York and New England,) and Ameritech (around Chicago) wants to merge in with SBC, too. So now there are 5, or 4. AT&T, the national survivor in the break-up, bought TCI (Tele-Communications,) the largest cable TV company. And U S West is being purchased by Qwest.
Judge Greene died a couple of weeks ago. We should respect the departed, but he should have split the AT&T local phone companies into 3 national companies instead of 7 regional ones. That way, large cities would have immediately had competition in local phone service, and eventually even communities down to the size of Los Alamos and smaller would have gotten competition. Competition in long distance has worked. Calls that used to be \$1.50 per minute are now routinely 30 cents, 15 cents, a dime, even 7 or 5 cents per minute. All my long distance is 9 cents per minute with no monthly fee or minimum, even calling card ones are 9 cents with just a 40 cents per call fee added. What has worked for the long distance business needs to be unleashed on the local telecommunications business. We need local competition in phone services, both voice and data. Eventually we need voice service to be via data. We need to leave the current structure of the RBOCs behind. Currently they can cross-subsidize several businesses that have nothing to do with providing wire or fiber from central offices to customer premises (or between central offices.)
· U S West is in the Internet Service Provider business, competing with customers one layer down such as New Mexico Technet and its for-profit division Oso Grande Technologies and two layers or more with customers such as Southwest Cyber Port and Route 66 Internet.But not interstate long distance. Thank goodness, so far, for that last impediment to them harrassing us more than they already do.
· U S West is in the business of publishing directories.
· U S West runs a web site, and sells advertisements on it. There may be several U S West web sites operated this way.
· U S West is in the cable television business (they bought Continental Cablevision.)
· U S West is in the business of voice mail, competing with customers who run answering services.
· U S West is in the business of enhanced services by the dozen such as caller id, three way calling, call forwarding, call waiting, various call blocking features, camp on busy, 800 service, 900 service, on and on.
The entity that owns the right to have telecommunications cables that cross everybody's property should be in no other business. Too many games with cross-subsidization and discrimination are played the way things are now.
I have my own tale of woe in dealing with U S West. I'm trying to get ``dark copper'' to run Lucent DSL equipment between my home and two other locations. I placed an order on August 31, 1999. U S West has been using tactics of delay, obfuscate and pleading ignorance, and haven't delivered this order yet. I call that DOPI, as in dopey (delay, obfuscate and plead ignorance.) They say, from Phoenix over the phone,
[U S West] We can't do it.
[Dale] You mean you won't do it, obviously you can.
[U S West] No, we can't.
[Dale] Please put that in writing, in a letter to me.
[U S West] Our management has forbidden us to put any of this in writing.
[Dale] I'll just need to make an audio recording of you saying it then.
[U S West] I won't repeat it for an audio recording.
[Dale] This is really getting weird.
I think U S West has what we need, they just won't sell, or even rent, it to us. Of course, they always rent everything, they never sell anything. Selling would be too fair.
Lower Latency
Not only is higher bandwidth a goal, but also lower latency. Interactive use of the Internet, such as commands to and responses from remote systems, suffers when latency increases due to too many "hops" or due to congestion in any of the "hops" along the path the command and response traffic takes. In practice, we find that non-interactive traffic can cause interactive traffic to become frustratingly slow. The technical solutions proposed to help minimize this problem involve policy-based routing, also known as "Quality of Service."
Media (prefer fiber)
Long term, fiber to the home (and the business or public facility) should be the goal. One connection at each building or area, be it a home, business, church, library, stadium, hospital, whatever, can handle all communications needs for it, be the needs voice, video, audio, data, whatever. A copper connection, even coaxial cable, just has too many disadvantages compared with fiber for handling that single connection.
Short term, wireless is a possibility. The chief problem with wireless, besides distance, is trees in the way of a line-of-sight path between antennas. The way to get over trees is towers. Some people think towers are ugly. Trenches are pretty ugly, too, as well as safety hazards, and cost. We have to have poles for street lights, we can't just hang the street lights from the sky, so why not put communications media (wire or fiber) on those poles again? Media buried underground are, in general, more secure from most hazards, except backhoes and ditch witches digging more trenches. If we do bury something underground, it should be conduit, pipes to contain wire or fiber media, not directly bury the media itself. And bury multiple conduits, so one pipe's media can be active while the media in another pipe is being replaced.
DSL (Digital Subscriber Loop) can use current twisted-pair phone wires. U S West seems antagonistic to renting wires to use for DSL, though. Perhaps too many DSL circuits in a bundle of wires will cause interference among the DSL circuits. Not with voice circuits, though.
Wireless links can be owned instead of rented. The radios are expensive, but prices are dropping. If a radio lasts long enough, both in the sense that it doesn't fail and in the sense that it stays up-to-date with the price and speed of newer models of radios, it can be cheaper than wires or fiber. Fiber, or even coaxial cable, could have higher bandwidth than wireless, though. Reliability of a wireless link can be decreased by weather or other natural phenomena, especially wind and the growth of trees. Too many wireless links in a small area can result in interference among the links.
There are a few other problems with media on poles. A phone installer tells me media on poles attract woodpeckers which make holes in the outer layer, and water gets in and disrupts the quality of signals on the media. A letter to the Monitor several weeks ago was a complaint that Adelphia has not removed CATV cables from a pole in their backyard. A letter in Tuesday's, February 8, 2000, Monitor was a complaint that there are too many towers for antennas cropping up around town, and that they're just plain ugly. I don't know why people think such things are ugly. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. They should be grateful they aren't blind, it seems to me.
Short term, wireless is a possibility. The chief problem with wireless, besides distance, is trees in the way of a line-of-sight path between antennas. The way to get over trees is towers. Some people think towers are ugly. Trenches are pretty ugly, too, as well as safety hazards, and cost. We have to have poles for street lights, we can't just hang the street lights from the sky, so why not put communications media (wire or fiber) on those poles again? Media buried underground are, in general, more secure from most hazards, except backhoes and ditch witches digging more trenches. If we do bury something underground, it should be conduit, pipes to contain wire or fiber media, not directly bury the media itself. And bury multiple conduits, so one pipe's media can be active while the media in another pipe is being replaced.
DSL (Digital Subscriber Loop) can use current twisted-pair phone wires. U S West seems antagonistic to renting wires to use for DSL, though. Perhaps too many DSL circuits in a bundle of wires will cause interference among the DSL circuits. Not with voice circuits, though.
Wireless links can be owned instead of rented. The radios are expensive, but prices are dropping. If a radio lasts long enough, both in the sense that it doesn't fail and in the sense that it stays up-to-date with the price and speed of newer models of radios, it can be cheaper than wires or fiber. Fiber, or even coaxial cable, could have higher bandwidth than wireless, though. Reliability of a wireless link can be decreased by weather or other natural phenomena, especially wind and the growth of trees. Too many wireless links in a small area can result in interference among the links.
There are a few other problems with media on poles. A phone installer tells me media on poles attract woodpeckers which make holes in the outer layer, and water gets in and disrupts the quality of signals on the media. A letter to the Monitor several weeks ago was a complaint that Adelphia has not removed CATV cables from a pole in their backyard. A letter in Tuesday's, February 8, 2000, Monitor was a complaint that there are too many towers for antennas cropping up around town, and that they're just plain ugly. I don't know why people think such things are ugly. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. They should be grateful they aren't blind, it seems to me.
County (involvement, and non-involvement: when will we cooperate?)
The County government should not so much subsidize or control data communications infrastructure, as it should get out of the way of private interests installing and maintaining it. For instance, the Police Department antenna tower could be rented out for antenna placement for wireless data radios. Water towers may also be good places to put antennas.
There is a Waltons episode about the mother, Olivia or Livvy, learning to drive. Her son, John-Boy, taught her. Her first trip alone in a car after she received her driver's license was supposed to be a daytime trip. But she wasn't back home by dark. Her husband, John, was discussing the possibilities with their son, John-Boy, on the front porch as the hours after sunset passed.
[John] Did you teach her how to change a flat tire?'
[John-Boy] Well, Daddy, I was planning to.
[John] Son, planning isn't doing.
That scene reminds me so much of Los Alamos the 31 years that I've been here that it brings tears to my eyes. Or raises my blood pressure.
Aside from cable TV and telephone monopolies, chiefly U S West, there is too much competition and not enough cooperation. We have ourselves to blame for that. We all want to be in control of our own destiny, facilities, whatever. But if we all go our own way in getting Internet access, we will all pay more, and get less. We need to openly discuss our budgets and ideas, and do something together. Would somebody already be doing wideband Internet access throughout Los Alamos County, except we have been putting up roadblocks in their way?
There is a Waltons episode about the mother, Olivia or Livvy, learning to drive. Her son, John-Boy, taught her. Her first trip alone in a car after she received her driver's license was supposed to be a daytime trip. But she wasn't back home by dark. Her husband, John, was discussing the possibilities with their son, John-Boy, on the front porch as the hours after sunset passed.
[John] Did you teach her how to change a flat tire?'
[John-Boy] Well, Daddy, I was planning to.
[John] Son, planning isn't doing.
That scene reminds me so much of Los Alamos the 31 years that I've been here that it brings tears to my eyes. Or raises my blood pressure.
Aside from cable TV and telephone monopolies, chiefly U S West, there is too much competition and not enough cooperation. We have ourselves to blame for that. We all want to be in control of our own destiny, facilities, whatever. But if we all go our own way in getting Internet access, we will all pay more, and get less. We need to openly discuss our budgets and ideas, and do something together. Would somebody already be doing wideband Internet access throughout Los Alamos County, except we have been putting up roadblocks in their way?
February 9, 2000 comments, an overview
I don't know whether to put this first or last. I think I'll put it first, then after I post the pieces, I'll convert it to links and repeat it as last, also. Basically, this is a Table of Contents for the over three pages of printed comments I wrote over eight years ago. And the conclusion was so short, I'll just include it here.
I've been thinking about whether I should add new posts to discuss my self-criticisms, and I've decided that instead I will add comments to my own posts to do that.
County (involvement, and non-involvement: when will we cooperate?)
Media (prefer fiber)
Lower Latency
tpc (Qwest)
Locality
Usage-based Pricing
Conclusion
So I'll keep looking for a solution. Obviously, I'm not the only one with a problem. Let's cooperate on a solution.
I've been thinking about whether I should add new posts to discuss my self-criticisms, and I've decided that instead I will add comments to my own posts to do that.
County (involvement, and non-involvement: when will we cooperate?)
Media (prefer fiber)
Lower Latency
tpc (Qwest)
Locality
Usage-based Pricing
Conclusion
So I'll keep looking for a solution. Obviously, I'm not the only one with a problem. Let's cooperate on a solution.
One Thing at a Time
Lest some idea would get lost in a blog post that addresses several separate ideas, I intend to keep each topic separate. There's a problem with that in a blog, though. The most recent post gets so much more attention than previous ones. Even comments about previous posts tend to get added to the newest post, or far fewer visitors to the blog will read those new comments if they are added to the proper previous post. Those two tendencies reinforce each other. And I myself have posted a comment to the wrong post in a blog, and I suppose I could easily post some to the wrong blog. That was one of my first comments I ever posted, but I'm not very confident that I'll never do it again.
Plus, since a blog has a very simple organization of a post and a link to its associated comments, on a page that contains a limited number of posts in reverse chronological order, the flow of ideas gets constricted to a similar model. It's also difficult to find where one left off reading comments to any given post previously. There's probably no solution to any of these bumps on the road, so we'll just have to learn to cope with them. We can re-introduce ideas if it seems important to do that, and certainly the hyperlink capability of the web will help with that.
What I'm getting set to post next comes from comments I printed for a meeting of the Utility Board with a report from the Spivak consultant, dated February 9, 2000. Wow, before the Cerro Grande fire, just about exactly three months before. It was a little over three printed pages. But since it addresses many topics, I'm going to split it up and try to get posts from it that will be fairly close to this OTaaT idea. Wish me luck.
Then I'll cover some of the things I missed, starting with what I got wrong (hmm, did I get anything wrong??,) and things that have come up since. In OTaaT posts. Trouble is, I'll probably blow right past the first page in the process, before much of anybody has read the First Post!
Plus, since a blog has a very simple organization of a post and a link to its associated comments, on a page that contains a limited number of posts in reverse chronological order, the flow of ideas gets constricted to a similar model. It's also difficult to find where one left off reading comments to any given post previously. There's probably no solution to any of these bumps on the road, so we'll just have to learn to cope with them. We can re-introduce ideas if it seems important to do that, and certainly the hyperlink capability of the web will help with that.
What I'm getting set to post next comes from comments I printed for a meeting of the Utility Board with a report from the Spivak consultant, dated February 9, 2000. Wow, before the Cerro Grande fire, just about exactly three months before. It was a little over three printed pages. But since it addresses many topics, I'm going to split it up and try to get posts from it that will be fairly close to this OTaaT idea. Wish me luck.
Then I'll cover some of the things I missed, starting with what I got wrong (hmm, did I get anything wrong??,) and things that have come up since. In OTaaT posts. Trouble is, I'll probably blow right past the first page in the process, before much of anybody has read the First Post!
First Post
Now is the time to get this ball rolling.
I knew when I first saw Mosaic, the web browser from the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC,) that the old ARPAnet (Advanced Research Projects Agency of the United States Department of Defense) and its e-mail, plus remote access and file transfer features, had taken a step that could be similarly significant when compared with Neil Armstrong's "Giant Step for Man." There was an earlier feature, the Wide Area Information System (WAIS,) and it almost showed that promise, but it didn't have pictures, a key part of the web.
After all, blogger.com wouldn't exist, google.com wouldn't exist. There wouldn't be Internet Service Providers (ISPs.) We wouldn't be searching using all those search engines, ordering from Amazon, ebay, and such. We wouldn't be doing banking and payments, watching youtube and revealing personal details on social networking sites. We wouldn't be doing all those good things, if the internet were as dull as dishwater. We wouldn't even be doing bad things like spam, outright crime, denial-of-service (DOS) attacks, if the internet were as dull as dishwater.
Here in Los Alamos, New Mexico, we have debated and dithered over "wideband," Digital Subscriber Loop (DSL,) cable TV delivery of internet, wireless, fiber, buried conduit, overhead utility poles, and such, for over 10 years. To what effect?? Qwest does offer really expensive fiber or DS- or OC- connections. Qwest also offers DSL, which is economical but bottom-end for speed and not available in some areas too distant from certain Qwest facilities. (I think DS- means Digital Signal and OC- Optical Carrier, but only phone company employees, and probably few of them, would care, and they're followed by numbers, like 3, also for DS-, 1, or also for OC-, 12, 48 or 192.) Comcast offers an option or two, probably faster than DSL except when it isn't, but not subject to the distance problem of DSL. However, it is still subject to problems with the physical cable in certain areas.
I work with Radio Shack's local owner, Bill Cabral, to offer fiber service in the Quemazon and Hawk's Landing developments and some downtown business locations and wireless to a few other spots via Bill's company, LA Commnet (Los Alamos Community Network.) Black Rock serves the Research Park building and some wireless customers, mostly in the Rio Grande Valley. Other companies sell Qwest's DSL, notably Virtual Los Alamos locally and several Santa Fe and Albuquerque providers. LANL (Los Alamos National Laboratory) has its deal with Qwest, subject to what the DOE (United States Department of Energy) and its NNSA (National Nuclear Security Administration) allow with their esnet (Energy Sciences) connections, and also provides certain contractors, such as LATA (Los Alamos Technical Associates) with internet access. UNM-LA (University of New Mexico, Los Alamos branch) has some way to communicate with the internet system at the main campus in Albuquerque. The Los Alamos Public Schools have some connection they buy via bids, and get some subsidy from that strange tax on everyone's phone bill, for schools and libraries. Those bids are not solicited locally, it appears to me, by the way. Mesa Public Library used to be part of the county government network, but that changed several years ago. Perhaps they are subsidized by some of that tax, too. But, for most residents and businesses, we continue to debate and dither, either person-to-person with no hope of any concerted action happening as a result, or in formal governmental meetings with, so far, about the same result. The county government has spent tens of thousands of dollars on consultants, resulting in more meetings and a bunch of paper with something printed on it. The county government has installed some of their own fiber, for their own use, plus several wireless links, again for their own use.
The county council at their February 26, 2008 meeting again discussed fiber coordinated with wireless. Maybe a blog, more specialized than Jim Rickman's btno (Bomb Town News Observer,) could contribute to less dithering and more action. Toward that purpose, I'm starting this fiberlanm blog.
I knew when I first saw Mosaic, the web browser from the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC,) that the old ARPAnet (Advanced Research Projects Agency of the United States Department of Defense) and its e-mail, plus remote access and file transfer features, had taken a step that could be similarly significant when compared with Neil Armstrong's "Giant Step for Man." There was an earlier feature, the Wide Area Information System (WAIS,) and it almost showed that promise, but it didn't have pictures, a key part of the web.
After all, blogger.com wouldn't exist, google.com wouldn't exist. There wouldn't be Internet Service Providers (ISPs.) We wouldn't be searching using all those search engines, ordering from Amazon, ebay, and such. We wouldn't be doing banking and payments, watching youtube and revealing personal details on social networking sites. We wouldn't be doing all those good things, if the internet were as dull as dishwater. We wouldn't even be doing bad things like spam, outright crime, denial-of-service (DOS) attacks, if the internet were as dull as dishwater.
Here in Los Alamos, New Mexico, we have debated and dithered over "wideband," Digital Subscriber Loop (DSL,) cable TV delivery of internet, wireless, fiber, buried conduit, overhead utility poles, and such, for over 10 years. To what effect?? Qwest does offer really expensive fiber or DS- or OC- connections. Qwest also offers DSL, which is economical but bottom-end for speed and not available in some areas too distant from certain Qwest facilities. (I think DS- means Digital Signal and OC- Optical Carrier, but only phone company employees, and probably few of them, would care, and they're followed by numbers, like 3, also for DS-, 1, or also for OC-, 12, 48 or 192.) Comcast offers an option or two, probably faster than DSL except when it isn't, but not subject to the distance problem of DSL. However, it is still subject to problems with the physical cable in certain areas.
I work with Radio Shack's local owner, Bill Cabral, to offer fiber service in the Quemazon and Hawk's Landing developments and some downtown business locations and wireless to a few other spots via Bill's company, LA Commnet (Los Alamos Community Network.) Black Rock serves the Research Park building and some wireless customers, mostly in the Rio Grande Valley. Other companies sell Qwest's DSL, notably Virtual Los Alamos locally and several Santa Fe and Albuquerque providers. LANL (Los Alamos National Laboratory) has its deal with Qwest, subject to what the DOE (United States Department of Energy) and its NNSA (National Nuclear Security Administration) allow with their esnet (Energy Sciences) connections, and also provides certain contractors, such as LATA (Los Alamos Technical Associates) with internet access. UNM-LA (University of New Mexico, Los Alamos branch) has some way to communicate with the internet system at the main campus in Albuquerque. The Los Alamos Public Schools have some connection they buy via bids, and get some subsidy from that strange tax on everyone's phone bill, for schools and libraries. Those bids are not solicited locally, it appears to me, by the way. Mesa Public Library used to be part of the county government network, but that changed several years ago. Perhaps they are subsidized by some of that tax, too. But, for most residents and businesses, we continue to debate and dither, either person-to-person with no hope of any concerted action happening as a result, or in formal governmental meetings with, so far, about the same result. The county government has spent tens of thousands of dollars on consultants, resulting in more meetings and a bunch of paper with something printed on it. The county government has installed some of their own fiber, for their own use, plus several wireless links, again for their own use.
The county council at their February 26, 2008 meeting again discussed fiber coordinated with wireless. Maybe a blog, more specialized than Jim Rickman's btno (Bomb Town News Observer,) could contribute to less dithering and more action. Toward that purpose, I'm starting this fiberlanm blog.
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