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I'm a customer of the very best US ISP (sonic.net) in San Francisco. We had a major power outage affecting a quarter of the city, including my home. Everything
by NelsonMinar 3y ago
I'm a customer of the very best US ISP (sonic.net) in San Francisco. We had a major power outage affecting a quarter of the city, including my home. Everything went down. Except my sonic.net fiber ISP. I asked the CEO how that worked and he responded
> Our network is a “passive optical network” in the outside plant - the cabinets on poles just house optical splitters - no electronics.
Yes, apparently it's glass all the way from San Francisco to San Jose. I'm assuming they aren't using this power over fiber trick either but it's neat to think they could, at least for limited power needs.
https://twitter.com/dane/status/1190054557667053568 https://twitter.com/dane/status/1190054557667053568
- error503 3y agoI'd be surprised if an urban PON deployment was passive over such a long distance. It's theoretically possible, but the economics generally don't make sense, since each fibre strand can only support 32-64 customers each without supporting equipment, and that 60km strand of fibre in a dense metro is worth more than those customers can generally generate on their own. Usually it makes more sense to aggregate the customers onto some higher speed / more redundant backhaul within say 5-10km. More likely the OLTs are housed in a nearby-ish CO / datacentre with provision for running on backup power indefinitely, but not all the way in another city.