[TriLUG] OT: solar wireless mesh router

[Magnus]

Kevin J. wrote:
> Very good point about disconnecting last mile from carrier, but who
> has the money/ability to pay for an interface in that last mile
> connection? It's not like DSL where you could install a DSLAM and
> hook up thousands of customers. Fiber will bring a whole new level to
> the game.

You don't need a switch port for every house like you do with Ethernet.

Just sort of thinking out loud here but you could run a dual FDDI ring
topology.  Run both rings up to the house, and in the DMARC box have an
embedded bridge from the FDDI network to ethernet.  Customer never sees
the fiber. They just get an RJ45 jack in the half of the DMARC box that
they have access to.  Off-the-shelf $50 router used with cable or DSL
service would work fine with that today if you were using IPv4.  Not so
sure that would be true if you were using IPv6.

So each ring would support a certain max number of customers, and have a
peer point into a regional concentrator.  The regional concentrators
themselves are maybe on a SONET fabric peering with one another.

I think the costs of something like this could be kept down pretty well.
 FDDI isn't the fastest tech out there but it is cheap and it is robust
and scalable.  200Mbps to the house is not too shabby for futureproofing
for awhile (200Mbps when both rings in the pair are up... 100Mbps when
there is a break in one of the rings)

FDDI is sort of a cheap but robust answer.  SONET or something else
might be better.  That's sort of getting outside of my realm of
experience though so I can't speak to that.