Re: [Starlink] [Rpm] On FiWi

Re: [Starlink] [Rpm] On FiWi

[David Fernández]

Hi Dave,

Telefonica achieved considerable gains in efficiency dismantling the
copper network (85% gains in energy efficiency).

Read here: https://www.xataka.com/empresas-y-economia/paso-cobre-adsl-a-fibra-ha-sido-beneficioso-para-todos-especialmente-para-telefonica

Regards,

David

> Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2023 09:38:03 -0700
> From: Dave Taht <dave.taht@gmail.com>
> To: Mike Puchol <mike@starlink.sx>
> Cc: Dave Taht via Starlink <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>, Rpm
> 	<rpm@lists.bufferbloat.net>,  libreqos
> 	<libreqos@lists.bufferbloat.net>, bloat <bloat@lists.bufferbloat.net>
> Subject: Re: [Starlink] [Rpm]  On FiWi
> Message-ID:
> 	<CAA93jw6EWH19Jo-pUJMX7QCi=GfHD8iWTDKCcRY=0tEOe4Vt1Q@mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
> This is a pretty neat box:
>
> https://mikrotik.com/product/netpower_lite_7r
>
> What are the compelling arguments for fiber vs copper, again?
>
>
> On Tue, Mar 14, 2023 at 4:10 AM Mike Puchol via Rpm <
> rpm@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>
>> Hi Bob,
>>
>> You hit on a set of very valid points, which I'll complement with my views
>> on where the industry (the bit of it that affects WISPs) is heading, and
>> what I saw at the MWC in Barcelona. Love the FiWi term :-)
>>
>> I have seen the vendors that supply WISPs, such as Ubiquiti, Cambium, and
>> Mimosa, but also newer entrants such as Tarana, increase the performance
>> and on-paper specs of their equipment. My examples below are centered on
>> the African market, if you operate in Europe or the US, where you can
>> charge customers a higher install fee, or even charge them a break-up fee
>> if they don't return equipment, the economics work.
>>
>> Where currently a ~$500 sector radio could serve ~60 endpoints, at a cost
>> of ~$50 per endpoint (I use this term in place of ODU/CPE, the antenna
>> that
>> you mount on the roof), and supply ~2.5 Mbps CIR per endpoint, the
>> evolution is now a ~$2,000+ sector radio, a $200 endpoint, capability for
>> ~150 endpoints per sector, and ~25 Mbps CIR per endpoint.
>>
>> If every customer a WISP installs represents, say, $100 CAPEX at install
>> time ($50 for the antenna + cabling, router, etc), and you charge a $30
>> install fee, you have $70 to recover, and you recover from the monthly
>> contribution the customer makes. If the contribution after OPEX is, say,
>> $10, it takes you 7 months to recover the full install cost. Not bad,
>> doable even in low-income markets.
>>
>> Fast-forward to the next-generation version. Now, the CAPEX at install is
>> $250, you need to recover $220, and it will take you 22 months, which is
>> above the usual 18 months that investors look for.
>>
>> The focus, thereby, has to be the lever that has the largest effect on the
>> unit economics - which is the per-customer cost. I have drawn what my
>> ideal
>> FiWi network would look like:
>>
>>
>>
>> Taking you through this - we start with a 1-port, low-cost EPON OLT (or
>> you could go for 2, 4, 8 ports as you add capacity). This OLT has capacity
>> for 64 ONUs on its single port. Instead of connecting the typical fiber
>> infrastructure with kilometers of cables which break, require maintenance,
>> etc. we insert an EPON to Ethernet converter (I added "magic" because
>> these
>> don't exist AFAIK).
>>
>> This converter allows us to connect our $2k sector radio, and serve the
>> $200 endpoints (ODUs) over wireless point-to-multipoint up to 10km away.
>> Each ODU then has a reverse converter, which gives us EPON again.
>>
>> Once we are back on EPON, we can insert splitters, for example,
>> pre-connectorized outdoor 1:16 boxes. Every customer install now involves
>> a
>> 100 meter roll of pre-connectorized 2-core drop cable, and a $20 EPON ONU.
>>
>> Using this deployment method, we could connect up to 16 customers to a
>> single $200 endpoint, so the enpoint CAPEX per customer is now $12.5. Add
>> the ONU, cable, etc. and we have a per-install CAPEX of $82.5 (assuming
>> the
>> same $50 of extras we had before), and an even shorter break-even. In
>> addition, as the endpoints support higher capacity, we can provision at
>> least the same, if not more, capacity per customer.
>>
>> Other advantages: the $200 ODU is no longer customer equipment and CAPEX,
>> but network equipment, and as such, can operate under a longer break-even
>> timeline, and be financed by infrastructure PE funds, for example. As a
>> result, churn has a much lower financial impact on the operator.
>>
>> The main reason why this wouldn't work today is that EPON, as we know, is
>> synchronous, and requires the OLT to orchestrate the amount of time each
>> ONU can transmit, and when. Having wireless hops and media conversions
>> will
>> introduce latencies which can break down the communications (e.g. one ONU
>> may transmit, get delayed on the radio link, and end up overlapping
>> another
>> ONU that transmitted on the next slot). Thus, either the "magic" box needs
>> to account for this, or an new hybrid EPON-wireless protocol developed.
>>
>> My main point here: the industry is moving away from the unconnected. All
>> the claims I heard and saw at MWC about "connecting the unconnected" had
>> zero resonance with the financial drivers that the unconnected really
>> operate under, on top of IT literacy, digital skills, devices, power...
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Mike
>> On Mar 14, 2023 at 05:27 +0100, rjmcmahon via Starlink <
>> starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>, wrote:
>>
>> To change the topic - curious to thoughts on FiWi.
>>
>> Imagine a world with no copper cable called FiWi (Fiber,VCSEL/CMOS
>> Radios, Antennas) and which is point to point inside a building
>> connected to virtualized APs fiber hops away. Each remote radio head
>> (RRH) would consume 5W or less and only when active. No need for things
>> like zigbee, or meshes, or threads as each radio has a fiber connection
>> via Corning's actifi or equivalent. Eliminate the AP/Client power
>> imbalance. Plastics also can house smoke or other sensors.
>>
>> Some reminders from Paul Baran in 1994 (and from David Reed)
>>
>> o) Shorter range rf transceivers connected to fiber could produce a
>> significant improvement - - tremendous improvement, really.
>> o) a mixture of terrestrial links plus shorter range radio links has the
>> effect of increasing by orders and orders of magnitude the amount of
>> frequency spectrum that can be made available.
>> o) By authorizing high power to support a few users to reach slightly
>> longer distances we deprive ourselves of the opportunity to serve the
>> many.
>> o) Communications systems can be built with 10dB ratio
>> o) Digital transmission when properly done allows a small signal to
>> noise ratio to be used successfully to retrieve an error free signal.
>> o) And, never forget, any transmission capacity not used is wasted
>> forever, like water over the dam. Not using such techniques represent
>> lost opportunity.
>>
>> And on waveguides:
>>
>> o) "Fiber transmission loss is ~0.5dB/km for single mode fiber,
>> independent of modulation"
>> o) “Copper cables and PCB traces are very frequency dependent. At
>> 100Gb/s, the loss is in dB/inch."
>> o) "Free space: the power density of the radio waves decreases with the
>> square of distance from the transmitting antenna due to spreading of the
>> electromagnetic energy in space according to the inverse square law"
>>
>> The sunk costs & long-lived parts of FiWi are the fiber and the CPE
>> plastics & antennas, as CMOS radios+ & fiber/laser, e.g. VCSEL could be
>> pluggable, allowing for field upgrades. Just like swapping out SFP in a
>> data center.
>>
>> This approach basically drives out WiFi latency by eliminating shared
>> queues and increases capacity by orders of magnitude by leveraging 10dB
>> in the spatial dimension, all of which is achieved by a physical design.
>> Just place enough RRHs as needed (similar to a pop up sprinkler in an
>> irrigation system.)
>>
>> Start and build this for an MDU and the value of the building improves.
>> Sadly, there seems no way to capture that value other than over long
>> term use. It doesn't matter whether the leader of the HOA tries to
>> capture the value or if a last mile provider tries. The value remains
>> sunk or hidden with nothing on the asset side of the balance sheet.
>> We've got a CAPEX spend that has to be made up via "OPEX returns" over
>> years.
>>
>> But the asset is there.
>>
>> How do we do this?
>>
>> Bob
>> _______________________________________________
>> Starlink mailing list
>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Rpm mailing list
>> Rpm@lists.bufferbloat.net
>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/rpm
>>
>
>
> --
> Come Heckle Mar 6-9 at: https://www.understandinglatency.com
> <https://www.understandinglatency.com/Dave>/
> Dave Täht CEO, TekLibre, LLC
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>
> Subject: Digest Footer
>
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> End of Starlink Digest, Vol 24, Issue 39
> ****************************************
>

[Starlink] GPON vs Active Fiber Ethernet

[Dave Taht]

On Fri, Mar 17, 2023 at 9:54 AM David Fernández via Starlink
<starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>
> Hi Dave,
>
> Telefonica achieved considerable gains in efficiency dismantling the
> copper network (85% gains in energy efficiency).
>
> Read here: https://www.xataka.com/empresas-y-economia/paso-cobre-adsl-a-fibra-ha-sido-beneficioso-para-todos-especialmente-para-telefonica

I am not prepared to make a coherent argument (although I enjoy them),
but I look at the serialization delay of gpon of 250us and other
potential multiplexing problems, and go, "yuck". It really, really,
really is the RTT that dominates the performance of all our networking
technologies, and no matter how much bandwidth you have, nearly every
per-sub tech I know of has a floor above 250us today. Multiple hops of
mmwave are particularly bad here.

Modern active fiber ethernet is 10000x quicker (nanoseconds!), very
standardized, increasingly low power (with a ton of bang for the
buck/gbit), with gear available everywhere that "just works",
leveraging the past decade of rapid development in the data center,
with USED 1Gbit SFPs going into trashbins everywhere.

... while gpon is, if anything, more proprietary than cable, the gear,
more expensive, and did I mention the latency?

/me dons flame retardant suit

>
> Regards,
>
> David
>
> > Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2023 09:38:03 -0700
> > From: Dave Taht <dave.taht@gmail.com>
> > To: Mike Puchol <mike@starlink.sx>
> > Cc: Dave Taht via Starlink <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>, Rpm
> >       <rpm@lists.bufferbloat.net>,  libreqos
> >       <libreqos@lists.bufferbloat.net>, bloat <bloat@lists.bufferbloat.net>
> > Subject: Re: [Starlink] [Rpm]  On FiWi
> > Message-ID:
> >       <CAA93jw6EWH19Jo-pUJMX7QCi=GfHD8iWTDKCcRY=0tEOe4Vt1Q@mail.gmail.com>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
> >
> > This is a pretty neat box:
> >
> > https://mikrotik.com/product/netpower_lite_7r
> >
> > What are the compelling arguments for fiber vs copper, again?
> >
> >
> > On Tue, Mar 14, 2023 at 4:10 AM Mike Puchol via Rpm <
> > rpm@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
> >
> >> Hi Bob,
> >>
> >> You hit on a set of very valid points, which I'll complement with my views
> >> on where the industry (the bit of it that affects WISPs) is heading, and
> >> what I saw at the MWC in Barcelona. Love the FiWi term :-)
> >>
> >> I have seen the vendors that supply WISPs, such as Ubiquiti, Cambium, and
> >> Mimosa, but also newer entrants such as Tarana, increase the performance
> >> and on-paper specs of their equipment. My examples below are centered on
> >> the African market, if you operate in Europe or the US, where you can
> >> charge customers a higher install fee, or even charge them a break-up fee
> >> if they don't return equipment, the economics work.
> >>
> >> Where currently a ~$500 sector radio could serve ~60 endpoints, at a cost
> >> of ~$50 per endpoint (I use this term in place of ODU/CPE, the antenna
> >> that
> >> you mount on the roof), and supply ~2.5 Mbps CIR per endpoint, the
> >> evolution is now a ~$2,000+ sector radio, a $200 endpoint, capability for
> >> ~150 endpoints per sector, and ~25 Mbps CIR per endpoint.
> >>
> >> If every customer a WISP installs represents, say, $100 CAPEX at install
> >> time ($50 for the antenna + cabling, router, etc), and you charge a $30
> >> install fee, you have $70 to recover, and you recover from the monthly
> >> contribution the customer makes. If the contribution after OPEX is, say,
> >> $10, it takes you 7 months to recover the full install cost. Not bad,
> >> doable even in low-income markets.
> >>
> >> Fast-forward to the next-generation version. Now, the CAPEX at install is
> >> $250, you need to recover $220, and it will take you 22 months, which is
> >> above the usual 18 months that investors look for.
> >>
> >> The focus, thereby, has to be the lever that has the largest effect on the
> >> unit economics - which is the per-customer cost. I have drawn what my
> >> ideal
> >> FiWi network would look like:
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> Taking you through this - we start with a 1-port, low-cost EPON OLT (or
> >> you could go for 2, 4, 8 ports as you add capacity). This OLT has capacity
> >> for 64 ONUs on its single port. Instead of connecting the typical fiber
> >> infrastructure with kilometers of cables which break, require maintenance,
> >> etc. we insert an EPON to Ethernet converter (I added "magic" because
> >> these
> >> don't exist AFAIK).
> >>
> >> This converter allows us to connect our $2k sector radio, and serve the
> >> $200 endpoints (ODUs) over wireless point-to-multipoint up to 10km away.
> >> Each ODU then has a reverse converter, which gives us EPON again.
> >>
> >> Once we are back on EPON, we can insert splitters, for example,
> >> pre-connectorized outdoor 1:16 boxes. Every customer install now involves
> >> a
> >> 100 meter roll of pre-connectorized 2-core drop cable, and a $20 EPON ONU.
> >>
> >> Using this deployment method, we could connect up to 16 customers to a
> >> single $200 endpoint, so the enpoint CAPEX per customer is now $12.5. Add
> >> the ONU, cable, etc. and we have a per-install CAPEX of $82.5 (assuming
> >> the
> >> same $50 of extras we had before), and an even shorter break-even. In
> >> addition, as the endpoints support higher capacity, we can provision at
> >> least the same, if not more, capacity per customer.
> >>
> >> Other advantages: the $200 ODU is no longer customer equipment and CAPEX,
> >> but network equipment, and as such, can operate under a longer break-even
> >> timeline, and be financed by infrastructure PE funds, for example. As a
> >> result, churn has a much lower financial impact on the operator.
> >>
> >> The main reason why this wouldn't work today is that EPON, as we know, is
> >> synchronous, and requires the OLT to orchestrate the amount of time each
> >> ONU can transmit, and when. Having wireless hops and media conversions
> >> will
> >> introduce latencies which can break down the communications (e.g. one ONU
> >> may transmit, get delayed on the radio link, and end up overlapping
> >> another
> >> ONU that transmitted on the next slot). Thus, either the "magic" box needs
> >> to account for this, or an new hybrid EPON-wireless protocol developed.
> >>
> >> My main point here: the industry is moving away from the unconnected. All
> >> the claims I heard and saw at MWC about "connecting the unconnected" had
> >> zero resonance with the financial drivers that the unconnected really
> >> operate under, on top of IT literacy, digital skills, devices, power...
> >>
> >> Best,
> >>
> >> Mike
> >> On Mar 14, 2023 at 05:27 +0100, rjmcmahon via Starlink <
> >> starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>, wrote:
> >>
> >> To change the topic - curious to thoughts on FiWi.
> >>
> >> Imagine a world with no copper cable called FiWi (Fiber,VCSEL/CMOS
> >> Radios, Antennas) and which is point to point inside a building
> >> connected to virtualized APs fiber hops away. Each remote radio head
> >> (RRH) would consume 5W or less and only when active. No need for things
> >> like zigbee, or meshes, or threads as each radio has a fiber connection
> >> via Corning's actifi or equivalent. Eliminate the AP/Client power
> >> imbalance. Plastics also can house smoke or other sensors.
> >>
> >> Some reminders from Paul Baran in 1994 (and from David Reed)
> >>
> >> o) Shorter range rf transceivers connected to fiber could produce a
> >> significant improvement - - tremendous improvement, really.
> >> o) a mixture of terrestrial links plus shorter range radio links has the
> >> effect of increasing by orders and orders of magnitude the amount of
> >> frequency spectrum that can be made available.
> >> o) By authorizing high power to support a few users to reach slightly
> >> longer distances we deprive ourselves of the opportunity to serve the
> >> many.
> >> o) Communications systems can be built with 10dB ratio
> >> o) Digital transmission when properly done allows a small signal to
> >> noise ratio to be used successfully to retrieve an error free signal.
> >> o) And, never forget, any transmission capacity not used is wasted
> >> forever, like water over the dam. Not using such techniques represent
> >> lost opportunity.
> >>
> >> And on waveguides:
> >>
> >> o) "Fiber transmission loss is ~0.5dB/km for single mode fiber,
> >> independent of modulation"
> >> o) “Copper cables and PCB traces are very frequency dependent. At
> >> 100Gb/s, the loss is in dB/inch."
> >> o) "Free space: the power density of the radio waves decreases with the
> >> square of distance from the transmitting antenna due to spreading of the
> >> electromagnetic energy in space according to the inverse square law"
> >>
> >> The sunk costs & long-lived parts of FiWi are the fiber and the CPE
> >> plastics & antennas, as CMOS radios+ & fiber/laser, e.g. VCSEL could be
> >> pluggable, allowing for field upgrades. Just like swapping out SFP in a
> >> data center.
> >>
> >> This approach basically drives out WiFi latency by eliminating shared
> >> queues and increases capacity by orders of magnitude by leveraging 10dB
> >> in the spatial dimension, all of which is achieved by a physical design.
> >> Just place enough RRHs as needed (similar to a pop up sprinkler in an
> >> irrigation system.)
> >>
> >> Start and build this for an MDU and the value of the building improves.
> >> Sadly, there seems no way to capture that value other than over long
> >> term use. It doesn't matter whether the leader of the HOA tries to
> >> capture the value or if a last mile provider tries. The value remains
> >> sunk or hidden with nothing on the asset side of the balance sheet.
> >> We've got a CAPEX spend that has to be made up via "OPEX returns" over
> >> years.
> >>
> >> But the asset is there.
> >>
> >> How do we do this?
> >>
> >> Bob
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Starlink mailing list
> >> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> >> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Rpm mailing list
> >> Rpm@lists.bufferbloat.net
> >> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/rpm
> >>
> >
> >
> > --
> > Come Heckle Mar 6-9 at: https://www.understandinglatency.com
> > <https://www.understandinglatency.com/Dave>/
> > Dave Täht CEO, TekLibre, LLC
> > -------------- next part --------------
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> > Type: image/png
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> > URL:
> > <https://lists.bufferbloat.net/pipermail/starlink/attachments/20230317/c9c62be3/attachment.png>
> >
> > ------------------------------
> >
> > Subject: Digest Footer
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Starlink mailing list
> > Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> > https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------
> >
> > End of Starlink Digest, Vol 24, Issue 39
> > ****************************************
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink



-- 
Come Heckle Mar 6-9 at: https://www.understandinglatency.com/
Dave Täht CEO, TekLibre, LLC

Re: [Starlink] GPON vs Active Fiber Ethernet

[Sebastian Moeller]

Hi Dave,


> On Mar 17, 2023, at 18:05, Dave Taht via Starlink <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
> 
> On Fri, Mar 17, 2023 at 9:54 AM David Fernández via Starlink
> <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>> 
>> Hi Dave,
>> 
>> Telefonica achieved considerable gains in efficiency dismantling the
>> copper network (85% gains in energy efficiency).
>> 
>> Read here: https://www.xataka.com/empresas-y-economia/paso-cobre-adsl-a-fibra-ha-sido-beneficioso-para-todos-especialmente-para-telefonica
> 
> I am not prepared to make a coherent argument (although I enjoy them),
> but I look at the serialization delay of gpon of 250us and other

	GPON has no strict 250µs serialization delay, it uses time slots of 250µs... for its accounting... that is IMHO the timescale for the grant-request cycle and considerably below what DOCSIS gets away with today.

> potential multiplexing problems,

	For downstream the OLT simply encrypts with the target ONT's key and "broadcasts it to all ONTs that are listening on the PON-tree. For upstream we have a rather typical request grant scheme like in DOCSIS where the OLT assigns transmit slots to the ONT's so these do not step on each other (the ONTs as far as I can tell can not see/hear each other's transmissions so the OLT needs to arbitrate.)


> and go, "yuck". It really, really,
> really is the RTT that dominates the performance of all our networking
> technologies, and no matter how much bandwidth you have, nearly every
> per-sub tech I know of has a floor above 250us today. Multiple hops of
> mmwave are particularly bad here.

	I would assume that the actual delay from sending a request to sending the first bit is probably more than one cycle, so the access delay is likely >> 250µs, compared to other delays this still seems to be quite fine to me... (DSL operate with a 4 KHz "clock" as well, but without request-grant since the last mile is not directly shared*)


*) Vectoring bring in a certain fate sharing, but still does not bring request grant delays.


> Modern active fiber ethernet is 10000x quicker (nanoseconds!), very
> standardized, increasingly low power (with a ton of bang for the
> buck/gbit), with gear available everywhere that "just works",
> leveraging the past decade of rapid development in the data center,
> with USED 1Gbit SFPs going into trashbins everywhere.
> 
> ... while gpon is, if anything, more proprietary than cable, the gear,
> more expensive, and did I mention the latency?
> 
> /me dons flame retardant suit

	No need, I am not a PON fan, but given its cost benefits (power and central office space, a single OLT port can terminate anywhere from 64 (GPON) to 128 (XGSPON) ONTs**, and finally regulatory control***) that is what we are going to get, and honestly it could be worse.

	I am not sure GPON is more expensive than cable stuff, it seems less proprietary than DOCSIS (which is CableLabs or nothing) and is described in ITU standards. I think there is an open source OLT software stack (voltha?) so this looks not that bad compared to what I know about DOCSIS... and latency wise it smokes DOCSIS... heck look at low-latency docsis instead of tackling the elephant in the room the slow request-grant cycling they essentially added L4S... (they also propose a slight speed-up of the grant mechanism IIRC, but nothing close to 250µs epochs).

Regards
	Sebastian



**) The big incumbent over here mosty aims for <= 32 users on an OLT port...
***) An ISP operating PONs can no really be forced to rent out dark fibers to competitors, with a PON realistic worst case is having to offer some sort of bitstream access where the original ISP is still tightly in control. As enduser I do not think this to be a good outcome, yet it seems to factor in technology decisions ISPs make. E.g. deutsche glasfaser started with AON but mostly switched to PON for new build outs.


P.S.: One thing I always thought great about any kind of AON is that direct traffic to my neighbors would never have to leave the local switch, but that is not how ISPs over here operate, all links are terminated somewhere semi-centrally (incumbent ~900 places, my ISP ~9 places) and any traffic will only cross over at that central site anyway.

> 
>> 
>> Regards,
>> 
>> David
>> 
>>> Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2023 09:38:03 -0700
>>> From: Dave Taht <dave.taht@gmail.com>
>>> To: Mike Puchol <mike@starlink.sx>
>>> Cc: Dave Taht via Starlink <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>, Rpm
>>>      <rpm@lists.bufferbloat.net>,  libreqos
>>>      <libreqos@lists.bufferbloat.net>, bloat <bloat@lists.bufferbloat.net>
>>> Subject: Re: [Starlink] [Rpm]  On FiWi
>>> Message-ID:
>>>      <CAA93jw6EWH19Jo-pUJMX7QCi=GfHD8iWTDKCcRY=0tEOe4Vt1Q@mail.gmail.com>
>>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>>> 
>>> This is a pretty neat box:
>>> 
>>> https://mikrotik.com/product/netpower_lite_7r
>>> 
>>> What are the compelling arguments for fiber vs copper, again?
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Tue, Mar 14, 2023 at 4:10 AM Mike Puchol via Rpm <
>>> rpm@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Hi Bob,
>>>> 
>>>> You hit on a set of very valid points, which I'll complement with my views
>>>> on where the industry (the bit of it that affects WISPs) is heading, and
>>>> what I saw at the MWC in Barcelona. Love the FiWi term :-)
>>>> 
>>>> I have seen the vendors that supply WISPs, such as Ubiquiti, Cambium, and
>>>> Mimosa, but also newer entrants such as Tarana, increase the performance
>>>> and on-paper specs of their equipment. My examples below are centered on
>>>> the African market, if you operate in Europe or the US, where you can
>>>> charge customers a higher install fee, or even charge them a break-up fee
>>>> if they don't return equipment, the economics work.
>>>> 
>>>> Where currently a ~$500 sector radio could serve ~60 endpoints, at a cost
>>>> of ~$50 per endpoint (I use this term in place of ODU/CPE, the antenna
>>>> that
>>>> you mount on the roof), and supply ~2.5 Mbps CIR per endpoint, the
>>>> evolution is now a ~$2,000+ sector radio, a $200 endpoint, capability for
>>>> ~150 endpoints per sector, and ~25 Mbps CIR per endpoint.
>>>> 
>>>> If every customer a WISP installs represents, say, $100 CAPEX at install
>>>> time ($50 for the antenna + cabling, router, etc), and you charge a $30
>>>> install fee, you have $70 to recover, and you recover from the monthly
>>>> contribution the customer makes. If the contribution after OPEX is, say,
>>>> $10, it takes you 7 months to recover the full install cost. Not bad,
>>>> doable even in low-income markets.
>>>> 
>>>> Fast-forward to the next-generation version. Now, the CAPEX at install is
>>>> $250, you need to recover $220, and it will take you 22 months, which is
>>>> above the usual 18 months that investors look for.
>>>> 
>>>> The focus, thereby, has to be the lever that has the largest effect on the
>>>> unit economics - which is the per-customer cost. I have drawn what my
>>>> ideal
>>>> FiWi network would look like:
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> Taking you through this - we start with a 1-port, low-cost EPON OLT (or
>>>> you could go for 2, 4, 8 ports as you add capacity). This OLT has capacity
>>>> for 64 ONUs on its single port. Instead of connecting the typical fiber
>>>> infrastructure with kilometers of cables which break, require maintenance,
>>>> etc. we insert an EPON to Ethernet converter (I added "magic" because
>>>> these
>>>> don't exist AFAIK).
>>>> 
>>>> This converter allows us to connect our $2k sector radio, and serve the
>>>> $200 endpoints (ODUs) over wireless point-to-multipoint up to 10km away.
>>>> Each ODU then has a reverse converter, which gives us EPON again.
>>>> 
>>>> Once we are back on EPON, we can insert splitters, for example,
>>>> pre-connectorized outdoor 1:16 boxes. Every customer install now involves
>>>> a
>>>> 100 meter roll of pre-connectorized 2-core drop cable, and a $20 EPON ONU.
>>>> 
>>>> Using this deployment method, we could connect up to 16 customers to a
>>>> single $200 endpoint, so the enpoint CAPEX per customer is now $12.5. Add
>>>> the ONU, cable, etc. and we have a per-install CAPEX of $82.5 (assuming
>>>> the
>>>> same $50 of extras we had before), and an even shorter break-even. In
>>>> addition, as the endpoints support higher capacity, we can provision at
>>>> least the same, if not more, capacity per customer.
>>>> 
>>>> Other advantages: the $200 ODU is no longer customer equipment and CAPEX,
>>>> but network equipment, and as such, can operate under a longer break-even
>>>> timeline, and be financed by infrastructure PE funds, for example. As a
>>>> result, churn has a much lower financial impact on the operator.
>>>> 
>>>> The main reason why this wouldn't work today is that EPON, as we know, is
>>>> synchronous, and requires the OLT to orchestrate the amount of time each
>>>> ONU can transmit, and when. Having wireless hops and media conversions
>>>> will
>>>> introduce latencies which can break down the communications (e.g. one ONU
>>>> may transmit, get delayed on the radio link, and end up overlapping
>>>> another
>>>> ONU that transmitted on the next slot). Thus, either the "magic" box needs
>>>> to account for this, or an new hybrid EPON-wireless protocol developed.
>>>> 
>>>> My main point here: the industry is moving away from the unconnected. All
>>>> the claims I heard and saw at MWC about "connecting the unconnected" had
>>>> zero resonance with the financial drivers that the unconnected really
>>>> operate under, on top of IT literacy, digital skills, devices, power...
>>>> 
>>>> Best,
>>>> 
>>>> Mike
>>>> On Mar 14, 2023 at 05:27 +0100, rjmcmahon via Starlink <
>>>> starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>, wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> To change the topic - curious to thoughts on FiWi.
>>>> 
>>>> Imagine a world with no copper cable called FiWi (Fiber,VCSEL/CMOS
>>>> Radios, Antennas) and which is point to point inside a building
>>>> connected to virtualized APs fiber hops away. Each remote radio head
>>>> (RRH) would consume 5W or less and only when active. No need for things
>>>> like zigbee, or meshes, or threads as each radio has a fiber connection
>>>> via Corning's actifi or equivalent. Eliminate the AP/Client power
>>>> imbalance. Plastics also can house smoke or other sensors.
>>>> 
>>>> Some reminders from Paul Baran in 1994 (and from David Reed)
>>>> 
>>>> o) Shorter range rf transceivers connected to fiber could produce a
>>>> significant improvement - - tremendous improvement, really.
>>>> o) a mixture of terrestrial links plus shorter range radio links has the
>>>> effect of increasing by orders and orders of magnitude the amount of
>>>> frequency spectrum that can be made available.
>>>> o) By authorizing high power to support a few users to reach slightly
>>>> longer distances we deprive ourselves of the opportunity to serve the
>>>> many.
>>>> o) Communications systems can be built with 10dB ratio
>>>> o) Digital transmission when properly done allows a small signal to
>>>> noise ratio to be used successfully to retrieve an error free signal.
>>>> o) And, never forget, any transmission capacity not used is wasted
>>>> forever, like water over the dam. Not using such techniques represent
>>>> lost opportunity.
>>>> 
>>>> And on waveguides:
>>>> 
>>>> o) "Fiber transmission loss is ~0.5dB/km for single mode fiber,
>>>> independent of modulation"
>>>> o) “Copper cables and PCB traces are very frequency dependent. At
>>>> 100Gb/s, the loss is in dB/inch."
>>>> o) "Free space: the power density of the radio waves decreases with the
>>>> square of distance from the transmitting antenna due to spreading of the
>>>> electromagnetic energy in space according to the inverse square law"
>>>> 
>>>> The sunk costs & long-lived parts of FiWi are the fiber and the CPE
>>>> plastics & antennas, as CMOS radios+ & fiber/laser, e.g. VCSEL could be
>>>> pluggable, allowing for field upgrades. Just like swapping out SFP in a
>>>> data center.
>>>> 
>>>> This approach basically drives out WiFi latency by eliminating shared
>>>> queues and increases capacity by orders of magnitude by leveraging 10dB
>>>> in the spatial dimension, all of which is achieved by a physical design.
>>>> Just place enough RRHs as needed (similar to a pop up sprinkler in an
>>>> irrigation system.)
>>>> 
>>>> Start and build this for an MDU and the value of the building improves.
>>>> Sadly, there seems no way to capture that value other than over long
>>>> term use. It doesn't matter whether the leader of the HOA tries to
>>>> capture the value or if a last mile provider tries. The value remains
>>>> sunk or hidden with nothing on the asset side of the balance sheet.
>>>> We've got a CAPEX spend that has to be made up via "OPEX returns" over
>>>> years.
>>>> 
>>>> But the asset is there.
>>>> 
>>>> How do we do this?
>>>> 
>>>> Bob
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Starlink mailing list
>>>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>>>> 
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Rpm mailing list
>>>> Rpm@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/rpm
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> --
>>> Come Heckle Mar 6-9 at: https://www.understandinglatency.com
>>> <https://www.understandinglatency.com/Dave>/
>>> Dave Täht CEO, TekLibre, LLC
>>> -------------- next part --------------
>>> An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
>>> URL:
>>> <https://lists.bufferbloat.net/pipermail/starlink/attachments/20230317/c9c62be3/attachment.html>
>>> -------------- next part --------------
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>>> URL:
>>> <https://lists.bufferbloat.net/pipermail/starlink/attachments/20230317/c9c62be3/attachment.png>
>>> 
>>> ------------------------------
>>> 
>>> Subject: Digest Footer
>>> 
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Starlink mailing list
>>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>>> 
>>> 
>>> ------------------------------
>>> 
>>> End of Starlink Digest, Vol 24, Issue 39
>>> ****************************************
>>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> Starlink mailing list
>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Come Heckle Mar 6-9 at: https://www.understandinglatency.com/
> Dave Täht CEO, TekLibre, LLC
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink

Re: [Starlink] [LibreQoS] GPON vs Active Fiber Ethernet

[dan]

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per copper vs gpon.  There are a lot of parts to this but I think it's safe
to say that any *DSL product is inferior to ethernet or gpon so aren't part
of the conversation.   We're really talking ethernet vs *GPON here.  No
other fiber options are widespread and viable for most.  I don't want to
play both sides here so I'm just talking pros on 'ethernet'.  not
'copper'... but also copper.

Ethernet lives on copper or fiber.
Copper 'last meter' is cheap, CHEAPER than any fiber product.  Copper is
cheaper until you hit 100m and then fiber wins.
Ethernet is near wire speed *routed* on a number of modern and
weather resistant outdoor products.
Backhauling on multi-strand fiber eliminates one primary negative with
copper in that cost over 100m number.
There's likely some wash in having fiber to the home and the cost of
termination and ONUs vs PoE injectors in home pushing up to powered
switches.
Pro for powered switch is that routing option.  Dramatically easier (as in,
it's actually possible) to build rings and meshy routed networks on
ethernet allowing for much more backhoe-fade safe networks.   While not as
future proof as fiber strands to the door, it's capable of 1G, 2.5G today
and really 10G for the most part though there is a lack of hardware with
those ports so leave that up in the air.  XGSPON wins the max per port
speed here, but that same network with active ethernet over fiber backhauls
and copper can EASILY do 100G on the backhaul and 2.5G/port and even go
hybrid with mostly copper last meter and some active fiber off 10,40,100G
ports when profitable.

It's not all roses, but there are real world scenarios where a methodical
buildout of ethernet can be a better choice especially if we're talking
about maximum performance.

I don't want to lean too heavily on mikrotik here, lots of people aren't in
love with them, but they are definitely pushing boundaries here.
https://mikrotik.com/product/crs504_4xq_out
4x100G switch, outdoor grade, supports 4x breakout cables so can do 4x4x25G
or 2x100G feeds + 2x4x25 or 2x4x10G on a Marvell Prestera switch (presents
as individual interfaces).  XGSPON can't touch it.  Heck, you could do
remote XGSPON with a TIBIT port if you really wanted to, or feed an
Netpower 7R units with 10Gbps each and get reverse PoE to power everything.

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Re: [Starlink] [Rpm] On FiWi

[rjmcmahon]

>> I'm curious as to why the detectors have to be replaced every 10
>> years.
> 
> Dust, grease from cooking oil vapors, insects, mold, etc. accumulate,
> and it's so expensive to clean those little sensors, and there is so
> much liability associated with them, that it's cheaper to replace the
> head every 10 years. Electrolytic capacitors have a limited lifetime
> and that is also a good reason to replace the device.
> 
> The basic sensor architecture is photoelectric, the older ones used an
> americium pelllet that detected gas ionization which was changed by
> the presence of smoke. The half-life on the americium ones is at least
> 400 years (there is more than one isotope, that's the shortest-life
> one).

Thanks for this. That makes sense. I do think the FiWi transceivers & 
sensors need to be pluggable & detect failures, particularly early on 
due to infant mortality.

"Infant mortality is a special equipment failure mode that shows the 
probability of failure being highest when the equipment is first 
started, but reduces as time goes on. Eventually, the probability of 
failure levels off after time."

https://www.upkeep.com/blog/infant-mortality-equipment-failure#:~:text=Infant%20mortality%20is%20a%20special,failure%20levels%20off%20after%20time.

Also curious about thermal imaging inside a building - what sensor tech 
to use and at what cost? The Bronx fire occurred because poor people in 
public housing don't have access to electric heat pumps & used a space 
heater instead. It's very sad we as a society do this, i.e. make sure 
rich people can drive Teslas with heat pumps but only provide the worst 
type of heating to children from families that aren't so fortunate.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/10/us/nyc-bronx-apartment-fire-monday/index.html

"A malfunctioning electric space heater in a bedroom was the source of 
an apartment building fire Sunday in the Bronx that killed 17 people, 
including 8 children, making it one of the worst fires in the city’s 
history, New York Mayor Eric Adams said Monday."

Bob

Re: [Starlink] [Rpm] On FiWi

[Bruce Perens]

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On Fri, Mar 17, 2023 at 1:57 PM rjmcmahon <rjmcmahon@rjmcmahon.com> wrote:

> I'm curious as to why the detectors have to be replaced every 10 years.


Dust, grease from cooking oil vapors, insects, mold, etc. accumulate, and
it's so expensive to clean those little sensors, and there is so much
liability associated with them, that it's cheaper to replace the head every
10 years. Electrolytic capacitors have a limited lifetime and that is also
a good reason to replace the device.

The basic sensor architecture is photoelectric, the older ones used an
americium pelllet that detected gas ionization which was changed by the
presence of smoke. The half-life on the americium ones is at least 400
years (there is more than one isotope, that's the shortest-life one).

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Re: [Starlink] [Rpm] On FiWi

[rjmcmahon]

I'm curious as to why the detectors have to be replaced every 10 years. 
Regardless, modern sensors could give a thermal map of the entire 
complex 24x7x365. Fire officials would have a better set of eyes when 
they showed up as the sensor system & network could provide thermals as 
a time series.

Also, another "killer app" for Boston is digital image correlation & the 
cameras monitor stresses and strains on historic buildings valued at 
about $10M each. And that's undervalued because they're really 
irreplaceable. Similar for some in the Netherladns. Monitoring the 
groundwater with samples every 4 mos is ok - better to monitor the 
structure itself 24x7x365.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/digital-image-correlation
https://www.bostongroundwater.org/

Bob

On 2023-03-17 13:37, Bruce Perens wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 17, 2023 at 12:19 PM rjmcmahon via Starlink
> <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:You’ll hardly ever have to
> deal with the annoying
> 
>> “chirping” that occurs when a battery-powered smoke detector
>> begins to
>> go dead, and your entire family will be alerted in the event that a
>> fire
>> does occur since hardwire smoke detectors can be interconnected.
> 
> Off-topic, but the sensors in these hardwired units expire after 10
> years, and they start beeping. The batteries in modern battery-powered
> units with wireless links expire after 10 years, along with the rest
> of the unit, and they start beeping.
> 
> There are exceptions, the first-generation Nest was pretty bad.

Re: [Starlink] [Rpm] On FiWi

[Bruce Perens]

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On Fri, Mar 17, 2023 at 12:19 PM rjmcmahon via Starlink <
starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:You’ll hardly ever have to deal with
the annoying

> “chirping” that occurs when a battery-powered smoke detector begins to
> go dead, and your entire family will be alerted in the event that a fire
> does occur since hardwire smoke detectors can be interconnected.
>

Off-topic, but the sensors in these hardwired units expire after 10 years,
and they start beeping. The batteries in modern battery-powered units with
wireless links expire after 10 years, along with the rest of the unit, and
they start beeping.
There are exceptions, the first-generation Nest was pretty bad.

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Re: [Starlink] [Rpm] On FiWi

[rjmcmahon]

I think the low-power transceiver (or RRH) and fiber fronthaul is doable 
within the next 5 years. The difficult part to me seems the virtual APs 
that could service 12-256 RRHs including security monitoring & customer 
privacy.

Is there a VMWARE NSX approach to reducing the O&M costs by at least 1/2 
for the FiWi head end systems?

For power: My approach to the Boston historic neighborhood where my kids 
now live would be AC wired CPE treated as critical, life support 
infrastructure. But better may be to do as modern garage door openers 
and have standard AC charge a battery so one can operate even during 
power outages.

https://www.rsandrews.com/blog/hardwired-battery-powered-smoke-alarms-you/

Our Recommendation: Hardwired Smoke Alarms
Hardwired smoke alarms, while they require slightly more work upfront, 
are the clear choice if you’re considering replacing your home’s smoke 
alarm system. You’ll hardly ever have to deal with the annoying 
“chirping” that occurs when a battery-powered smoke detector begins to 
go dead, and your entire family will be alerted in the event that a fire 
does occur since hardwire smoke detectors can be interconnected.

Bob
> Hi Dave,
> 
> 
> 
>> On Mar 17, 2023, at 17:38, Dave Taht via Starlink 
>> <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>> 
>> This is a pretty neat box:
>> 
>> https://mikrotik.com/product/netpower_lite_7r
>> 
>> What are the compelling arguments for fiber vs copper, again?
> 
> 	As far as I can tell:
> 
> Copper:
> 	can carry electric power
> 
> Fiber-PON:
> 	much farther reach even without amplifiers (10 Km, 20 Km, ...
> depending on loss budget)
> 	cheaper operation (less active power needed by the headend/OLT)
> 	less space need than all active alternatives (AON, copper ethernet)
> 	likely only robust passive components in the field
> 	Existing upgrade path for 25G and 50G is on the horizon over the same
> PON infrastructure
> 	mostly resistant to RF ingress along the path (as long as a direct
> lightning hit does not melt the glas ;) )
> 
> Fiber-Ethernet:
> 	like fiber-PON but
> 	no density advantage (needs 1 port per end device)
> 	even wider upgrade paths
> 
> 
> I guess it really depends on how important "carry electric power" is
> to you ;) feeding these from the client side is pretty cool for
> consenting adults, but I would prefer not having to pay the electric
> bill for my ISPs active gear in the field outside the CPE/ONT...
> 
> Regards
> 	Sebastian
> 
> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Tue, Mar 14, 2023 at 4:10 AM Mike Puchol via Rpm 
>> <rpm@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>> Hi Bob,
>> 
>> You hit on a set of very valid points, which I'll complement with my 
>> views on where the industry (the bit of it that affects WISPs) is 
>> heading, and what I saw at the MWC in Barcelona. Love the FiWi term 
>> :-)
>> 
>> I have seen the vendors that supply WISPs, such as Ubiquiti, Cambium, 
>> and Mimosa, but also newer entrants such as Tarana, increase the 
>> performance and on-paper specs of their equipment. My examples below 
>> are centered on the African market, if you operate in Europe or the 
>> US, where you can charge customers a higher install fee, or even 
>> charge them a break-up fee if they don't return equipment, the 
>> economics work.
>> 
>> Where currently a ~$500 sector radio could serve ~60 endpoints, at a 
>> cost of ~$50 per endpoint (I use this term in place of ODU/CPE, the 
>> antenna that you mount on the roof), and supply ~2.5 Mbps CIR per 
>> endpoint, the evolution is now a ~$2,000+ sector radio, a $200 
>> endpoint, capability for ~150 endpoints per sector, and ~25 Mbps CIR 
>> per endpoint.
>> 
>> If every customer a WISP installs represents, say, $100 CAPEX at 
>> install time ($50 for the antenna + cabling, router, etc), and you 
>> charge a $30 install fee, you have $70 to recover, and you recover 
>> from the monthly contribution the customer makes. If the contribution 
>> after OPEX is, say, $10, it takes you 7 months to recover the full 
>> install cost. Not bad, doable even in low-income markets.
>> 
>> Fast-forward to the next-generation version. Now, the CAPEX at install 
>> is $250, you need to recover $220, and it will take you 22 months, 
>> which is above the usual 18 months that investors look for.
>> 
>> The focus, thereby, has to be the lever that has the largest effect on 
>> the unit economics - which is the per-customer cost. I have drawn what 
>> my ideal FiWi network would look like:
>> 
>> 
>> <Hybrid EPON-Wireless network.png>
>> Taking you through this - we start with a 1-port, low-cost EPON OLT 
>> (or you could go for 2, 4, 8 ports as you add capacity). This OLT has 
>> capacity for 64 ONUs on its single port. Instead of connecting the 
>> typical fiber infrastructure with kilometers of cables which break, 
>> require maintenance, etc. we insert an EPON to Ethernet converter (I 
>> added "magic" because these don't exist AFAIK).
>> 
>> This converter allows us to connect our $2k sector radio, and serve 
>> the $200 endpoints (ODUs) over wireless point-to-multipoint up to 10km 
>> away. Each ODU then has a reverse converter, which gives us EPON 
>> again.
>> 
>> Once we are back on EPON, we can insert splitters, for example, 
>> pre-connectorized outdoor 1:16 boxes. Every customer install now 
>> involves a 100 meter roll of pre-connectorized 2-core drop cable, and 
>> a $20 EPON ONU.
>> 
>> Using this deployment method, we could connect up to 16 customers to a 
>> single $200 endpoint, so the enpoint CAPEX per customer is now $12.5. 
>> Add the ONU, cable, etc. and we have a per-install CAPEX of $82.5 
>> (assuming the same $50 of extras we had before), and an even shorter 
>> break-even. In addition, as the endpoints support higher capacity, we 
>> can provision at least the same, if not more, capacity per customer.
>> 
>> Other advantages: the $200 ODU is no longer customer equipment and 
>> CAPEX, but network equipment, and as such, can operate under a longer 
>> break-even timeline, and be financed by infrastructure PE funds, for 
>> example. As a result, churn has a much lower financial impact on the 
>> operator.
>> 
>> The main reason why this wouldn't work today is that EPON, as we know, 
>> is synchronous, and requires the OLT to orchestrate the amount of time 
>> each ONU can transmit, and when. Having wireless hops and media 
>> conversions will introduce latencies which can break down the 
>> communications (e.g. one ONU may transmit, get delayed on the radio 
>> link, and end up overlapping another ONU that transmitted on the next 
>> slot). Thus, either the "magic" box needs to account for this, or an 
>> new hybrid EPON-wireless protocol developed.
>> 
>> My main point here: the industry is moving away from the unconnected. 
>> All the claims I heard and saw at MWC about "connecting the 
>> unconnected" had zero resonance with the financial drivers that the 
>> unconnected really operate under, on top of IT literacy, digital 
>> skills, devices, power...
>> 
>> Best,
>> 
>> Mike
>> On Mar 14, 2023 at 05:27 +0100, rjmcmahon via Starlink 
>> <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>, wrote:
>>> To change the topic - curious to thoughts on FiWi.
>>> 
>>> Imagine a world with no copper cable called FiWi (Fiber,VCSEL/CMOS
>>> Radios, Antennas) and which is point to point inside a building
>>> connected to virtualized APs fiber hops away. Each remote radio head
>>> (RRH) would consume 5W or less and only when active. No need for 
>>> things
>>> like zigbee, or meshes, or threads as each radio has a fiber 
>>> connection
>>> via Corning's actifi or equivalent. Eliminate the AP/Client power
>>> imbalance. Plastics also can house smoke or other sensors.
>>> 
>>> Some reminders from Paul Baran in 1994 (and from David Reed)
>>> 
>>> o) Shorter range rf transceivers connected to fiber could produce a
>>> significant improvement - - tremendous improvement, really.
>>> o) a mixture of terrestrial links plus shorter range radio links has 
>>> the
>>> effect of increasing by orders and orders of magnitude the amount of
>>> frequency spectrum that can be made available.
>>> o) By authorizing high power to support a few users to reach slightly
>>> longer distances we deprive ourselves of the opportunity to serve the
>>> many.
>>> o) Communications systems can be built with 10dB ratio
>>> o) Digital transmission when properly done allows a small signal to
>>> noise ratio to be used successfully to retrieve an error free signal.
>>> o) And, never forget, any transmission capacity not used is wasted
>>> forever, like water over the dam. Not using such techniques represent
>>> lost opportunity.
>>> 
>>> And on waveguides:
>>> 
>>> o) "Fiber transmission loss is ~0.5dB/km for single mode fiber,
>>> independent of modulation"
>>> o) “Copper cables and PCB traces are very frequency dependent. At
>>> 100Gb/s, the loss is in dB/inch."
>>> o) "Free space: the power density of the radio waves decreases with 
>>> the
>>> square of distance from the transmitting antenna due to spreading of 
>>> the
>>> electromagnetic energy in space according to the inverse square law"
>>> 
>>> The sunk costs & long-lived parts of FiWi are the fiber and the CPE
>>> plastics & antennas, as CMOS radios+ & fiber/laser, e.g. VCSEL could 
>>> be
>>> pluggable, allowing for field upgrades. Just like swapping out SFP in 
>>> a
>>> data center.
>>> 
>>> This approach basically drives out WiFi latency by eliminating shared
>>> queues and increases capacity by orders of magnitude by leveraging 
>>> 10dB
>>> in the spatial dimension, all of which is achieved by a physical 
>>> design.
>>> Just place enough RRHs as needed (similar to a pop up sprinkler in an
>>> irrigation system.)
>>> 
>>> Start and build this for an MDU and the value of the building 
>>> improves.
>>> Sadly, there seems no way to capture that value other than over long
>>> term use. It doesn't matter whether the leader of the HOA tries to
>>> capture the value or if a last mile provider tries. The value remains
>>> sunk or hidden with nothing on the asset side of the balance sheet.
>>> We've got a CAPEX spend that has to be made up via "OPEX returns" 
>>> over
>>> years.
>>> 
>>> But the asset is there.
>>> 
>>> How do we do this?
>>> 
>>> Bob
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Starlink mailing list
>>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>> _______________________________________________
>> Rpm mailing list
>> Rpm@lists.bufferbloat.net
>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/rpm
>> 
>> 
>> --
>> Come Heckle Mar 6-9 at: https://www.understandinglatency.com/
>> Dave Täht CEO, TekLibre, LLC
>> _______________________________________________
>> Starlink mailing list
>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Rpm mailing list
> Rpm@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/rpm

Re: [Starlink] [Rpm] On FiWi

[Sebastian Moeller]

Hi Dave,



> On Mar 17, 2023, at 17:38, Dave Taht via Starlink <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
> 
> This is a pretty neat box:
> 
> https://mikrotik.com/product/netpower_lite_7r
> 
> What are the compelling arguments for fiber vs copper, again?

	As far as I can tell:

Copper: 
	can carry electric power

Fiber-PON: 
	much farther reach even without amplifiers (10 Km, 20 Km, ... depending on loss budget)
	cheaper operation (less active power needed by the headend/OLT)
	less space need than all active alternatives (AON, copper ethernet)
	likely only robust passive components in the field
	Existing upgrade path for 25G and 50G is on the horizon over the same PON infrastructure
	mostly resistant to RF ingress along the path (as long as a direct lightning hit does not melt the glas ;) )

Fiber-Ethernet: 
	like fiber-PON but 
	no density advantage (needs 1 port per end device)
	even wider upgrade paths


I guess it really depends on how important "carry electric power" is to you ;) feeding these from the client side is pretty cool for consenting adults, but I would prefer not having to pay the electric bill for my ISPs active gear in the field outside the CPE/ONT...

Regards
	Sebastian


> 
> 
> On Tue, Mar 14, 2023 at 4:10 AM Mike Puchol via Rpm <rpm@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
> Hi Bob,
> 
> You hit on a set of very valid points, which I'll complement with my views on where the industry (the bit of it that affects WISPs) is heading, and what I saw at the MWC in Barcelona. Love the FiWi term :-)
> 
> I have seen the vendors that supply WISPs, such as Ubiquiti, Cambium, and Mimosa, but also newer entrants such as Tarana, increase the performance and on-paper specs of their equipment. My examples below are centered on the African market, if you operate in Europe or the US, where you can charge customers a higher install fee, or even charge them a break-up fee if they don't return equipment, the economics work.
> 
> Where currently a ~$500 sector radio could serve ~60 endpoints, at a cost of ~$50 per endpoint (I use this term in place of ODU/CPE, the antenna that you mount on the roof), and supply ~2.5 Mbps CIR per endpoint, the evolution is now a ~$2,000+ sector radio, a $200 endpoint, capability for ~150 endpoints per sector, and ~25 Mbps CIR per endpoint.
> 
> If every customer a WISP installs represents, say, $100 CAPEX at install time ($50 for the antenna + cabling, router, etc), and you charge a $30 install fee, you have $70 to recover, and you recover from the monthly contribution the customer makes. If the contribution after OPEX is, say, $10, it takes you 7 months to recover the full install cost. Not bad, doable even in low-income markets.
> 
> Fast-forward to the next-generation version. Now, the CAPEX at install is $250, you need to recover $220, and it will take you 22 months, which is above the usual 18 months that investors look for.
> 
> The focus, thereby, has to be the lever that has the largest effect on the unit economics - which is the per-customer cost. I have drawn what my ideal FiWi network would look like:
> 
> 
> <Hybrid EPON-Wireless network.png>
> Taking you through this - we start with a 1-port, low-cost EPON OLT (or you could go for 2, 4, 8 ports as you add capacity). This OLT has capacity for 64 ONUs on its single port. Instead of connecting the typical fiber infrastructure with kilometers of cables which break, require maintenance, etc. we insert an EPON to Ethernet converter (I added "magic" because these don't exist AFAIK).
> 
> This converter allows us to connect our $2k sector radio, and serve the $200 endpoints (ODUs) over wireless point-to-multipoint up to 10km away. Each ODU then has a reverse converter, which gives us EPON again.
> 
> Once we are back on EPON, we can insert splitters, for example, pre-connectorized outdoor 1:16 boxes. Every customer install now involves a 100 meter roll of pre-connectorized 2-core drop cable, and a $20 EPON ONU. 
> 
> Using this deployment method, we could connect up to 16 customers to a single $200 endpoint, so the enpoint CAPEX per customer is now $12.5. Add the ONU, cable, etc. and we have a per-install CAPEX of $82.5 (assuming the same $50 of extras we had before), and an even shorter break-even. In addition, as the endpoints support higher capacity, we can provision at least the same, if not more, capacity per customer.
> 
> Other advantages: the $200 ODU is no longer customer equipment and CAPEX, but network equipment, and as such, can operate under a longer break-even timeline, and be financed by infrastructure PE funds, for example. As a result, churn has a much lower financial impact on the operator.
> 
> The main reason why this wouldn't work today is that EPON, as we know, is synchronous, and requires the OLT to orchestrate the amount of time each ONU can transmit, and when. Having wireless hops and media conversions will introduce latencies which can break down the communications (e.g. one ONU may transmit, get delayed on the radio link, and end up overlapping another ONU that transmitted on the next slot). Thus, either the "magic" box needs to account for this, or an new hybrid EPON-wireless protocol developed.
> 
> My main point here: the industry is moving away from the unconnected. All the claims I heard and saw at MWC about "connecting the unconnected" had zero resonance with the financial drivers that the unconnected really operate under, on top of IT literacy, digital skills, devices, power...
> 
> Best,
> 
> Mike
> On Mar 14, 2023 at 05:27 +0100, rjmcmahon via Starlink <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>, wrote:
>> To change the topic - curious to thoughts on FiWi.
>> 
>> Imagine a world with no copper cable called FiWi (Fiber,VCSEL/CMOS
>> Radios, Antennas) and which is point to point inside a building
>> connected to virtualized APs fiber hops away. Each remote radio head
>> (RRH) would consume 5W or less and only when active. No need for things
>> like zigbee, or meshes, or threads as each radio has a fiber connection
>> via Corning's actifi or equivalent. Eliminate the AP/Client power
>> imbalance. Plastics also can house smoke or other sensors.
>> 
>> Some reminders from Paul Baran in 1994 (and from David Reed)
>> 
>> o) Shorter range rf transceivers connected to fiber could produce a
>> significant improvement - - tremendous improvement, really.
>> o) a mixture of terrestrial links plus shorter range radio links has the
>> effect of increasing by orders and orders of magnitude the amount of
>> frequency spectrum that can be made available.
>> o) By authorizing high power to support a few users to reach slightly
>> longer distances we deprive ourselves of the opportunity to serve the
>> many.
>> o) Communications systems can be built with 10dB ratio
>> o) Digital transmission when properly done allows a small signal to
>> noise ratio to be used successfully to retrieve an error free signal.
>> o) And, never forget, any transmission capacity not used is wasted
>> forever, like water over the dam. Not using such techniques represent
>> lost opportunity.
>> 
>> And on waveguides:
>> 
>> o) "Fiber transmission loss is ~0.5dB/km for single mode fiber,
>> independent of modulation"
>> o) “Copper cables and PCB traces are very frequency dependent. At
>> 100Gb/s, the loss is in dB/inch."
>> o) "Free space: the power density of the radio waves decreases with the
>> square of distance from the transmitting antenna due to spreading of the
>> electromagnetic energy in space according to the inverse square law"
>> 
>> The sunk costs & long-lived parts of FiWi are the fiber and the CPE
>> plastics & antennas, as CMOS radios+ & fiber/laser, e.g. VCSEL could be
>> pluggable, allowing for field upgrades. Just like swapping out SFP in a
>> data center.
>> 
>> This approach basically drives out WiFi latency by eliminating shared
>> queues and increases capacity by orders of magnitude by leveraging 10dB
>> in the spatial dimension, all of which is achieved by a physical design.
>> Just place enough RRHs as needed (similar to a pop up sprinkler in an
>> irrigation system.)
>> 
>> Start and build this for an MDU and the value of the building improves.
>> Sadly, there seems no way to capture that value other than over long
>> term use. It doesn't matter whether the leader of the HOA tries to
>> capture the value or if a last mile provider tries. The value remains
>> sunk or hidden with nothing on the asset side of the balance sheet.
>> We've got a CAPEX spend that has to be made up via "OPEX returns" over
>> years.
>> 
>> But the asset is there.
>> 
>> How do we do this?
>> 
>> Bob
>> _______________________________________________
>> Starlink mailing list
>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
> _______________________________________________
> Rpm mailing list
> Rpm@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/rpm
> 
> 
> -- 
> Come Heckle Mar 6-9 at: https://www.understandinglatency.com/ 
> Dave Täht CEO, TekLibre, LLC
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink

Re: [Starlink] [Rpm] On FiWi

[Mike Puchol]

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A four-port EPON OLT with modules goes for $500, serves up to 256 customers.

To serve same amount you need 36 netPowers, at $140 each, total CAPEX $5,000.

What you then spend on PON splitters you also spend on PoE injectors for the netPower, and drop cable is cheaper than Ethernet (at least if you want it to send power further than 10 meters… no CCA allowed).

It’s not so clear-cut, each can fit a certain deployment scenario, so I would never argue in antagonistic terms.

Best,

Mike
On Mar 17, 2023 at 17:38 +0100, Dave Taht <dave.taht@gmail.com>, wrote:
> This is a pretty neat box:
>
> https://mikrotik.com/product/netpower_lite_7r
>
> What are the compelling arguments for fiber vs copper, again?
>
>
> > On Tue, Mar 14, 2023 at 4:10 AM Mike Puchol via Rpm <rpm@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
> > > Hi Bob,
> > >
> > > You hit on a set of very valid points, which I'll complement with my views on where the industry (the bit of it that affects WISPs) is heading, and what I saw at the MWC in Barcelona. Love the FiWi term :-)
> > >
> > > I have seen the vendors that supply WISPs, such as Ubiquiti, Cambium, and Mimosa, but also newer entrants such as Tarana, increase the performance and on-paper specs of their equipment. My examples below are centered on the African market, if you operate in Europe or the US, where you can charge customers a higher install fee, or even charge them a break-up fee if they don't return equipment, the economics work.
> > >
> > > Where currently a ~$500 sector radio could serve ~60 endpoints, at a cost of ~$50 per endpoint (I use this term in place of ODU/CPE, the antenna that you mount on the roof), and supply ~2.5 Mbps CIR per endpoint, the evolution is now a ~$2,000+ sector radio, a $200 endpoint, capability for ~150 endpoints per sector, and ~25 Mbps CIR per endpoint.
> > >
> > > If every customer a WISP installs represents, say, $100 CAPEX at install time ($50 for the antenna + cabling, router, etc), and you charge a $30 install fee, you have $70 to recover, and you recover from the monthly contribution the customer makes. If the contribution after OPEX is, say, $10, it takes you 7 months to recover the full install cost. Not bad, doable even in low-income markets.
> > >
> > > Fast-forward to the next-generation version. Now, the CAPEX at install is $250, you need to recover $220, and it will take you 22 months, which is above the usual 18 months that investors look for.
> > >
> > > The focus, thereby, has to be the lever that has the largest effect on the unit economics - which is the per-customer cost. I have drawn what my ideal FiWi network would look like:
> > >
> > >
> > > <Hybrid EPON-Wireless network.png>
> > > Taking you through this - we start with a 1-port, low-cost EPON OLT (or you could go for 2, 4, 8 ports as you add capacity). This OLT has capacity for 64 ONUs on its single port. Instead of connecting the typical fiber infrastructure with kilometers of cables which break, require maintenance, etc. we insert an EPON to Ethernet converter (I added "magic" because these don't exist AFAIK).
> > >
> > > This converter allows us to connect our $2k sector radio, and serve the $200 endpoints (ODUs) over wireless point-to-multipoint up to 10km away. Each ODU then has a reverse converter, which gives us EPON again.
> > >
> > > Once we are back on EPON, we can insert splitters, for example, pre-connectorized outdoor 1:16 boxes. Every customer install now involves a 100 meter roll of pre-connectorized 2-core drop cable, and a $20 EPON ONU.
> > >
> > > Using this deployment method, we could connect up to 16 customers to a single $200 endpoint, so the enpoint CAPEX per customer is now $12.5. Add the ONU, cable, etc. and we have a per-install CAPEX of $82.5 (assuming the same $50 of extras we had before), and an even shorter break-even. In addition, as the endpoints support higher capacity, we can provision at least the same, if not more, capacity per customer.
> > >
> > > Other advantages: the $200 ODU is no longer customer equipment and CAPEX, but network equipment, and as such, can operate under a longer break-even timeline, and be financed by infrastructure PE funds, for example. As a result, churn has a much lower financial impact on the operator.
> > >
> > > The main reason why this wouldn't work today is that EPON, as we know, is synchronous, and requires the OLT to orchestrate the amount of time each ONU can transmit, and when. Having wireless hops and media conversions will introduce latencies which can break down the communications (e.g. one ONU may transmit, get delayed on the radio link, and end up overlapping another ONU that transmitted on the next slot). Thus, either the "magic" box needs to account for this, or an new hybrid EPON-wireless protocol developed.
> > >
> > > My main point here: the industry is moving away from the unconnected. All the claims I heard and saw at MWC about "connecting the unconnected" had zero resonance with the financial drivers that the unconnected really operate under, on top of IT literacy, digital skills, devices, power...
> > >
> > > Best,
> > >
> > > Mike
> > > On Mar 14, 2023 at 05:27 +0100, rjmcmahon via Starlink <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>, wrote:
> > > > To change the topic - curious to thoughts on FiWi.
> > > >
> > > > Imagine a world with no copper cable called FiWi (Fiber,VCSEL/CMOS
> > > > Radios, Antennas) and which is point to point inside a building
> > > > connected to virtualized APs fiber hops away. Each remote radio head
> > > > (RRH) would consume 5W or less and only when active. No need for things
> > > > like zigbee, or meshes, or threads as each radio has a fiber connection
> > > > via Corning's actifi or equivalent. Eliminate the AP/Client power
> > > > imbalance. Plastics also can house smoke or other sensors.
> > > >
> > > > Some reminders from Paul Baran in 1994 (and from David Reed)
> > > >
> > > > o) Shorter range rf transceivers connected to fiber could produce a
> > > > significant improvement - - tremendous improvement, really.
> > > > o) a mixture of terrestrial links plus shorter range radio links has the
> > > > effect of increasing by orders and orders of magnitude the amount of
> > > > frequency spectrum that can be made available.
> > > > o) By authorizing high power to support a few users to reach slightly
> > > > longer distances we deprive ourselves of the opportunity to serve the
> > > > many.
> > > > o) Communications systems can be built with 10dB ratio
> > > > o) Digital transmission when properly done allows a small signal to
> > > > noise ratio to be used successfully to retrieve an error free signal.
> > > > o) And, never forget, any transmission capacity not used is wasted
> > > > forever, like water over the dam. Not using such techniques represent
> > > > lost opportunity.
> > > >
> > > > And on waveguides:
> > > >
> > > > o) "Fiber transmission loss is ~0.5dB/km for single mode fiber,
> > > > independent of modulation"
> > > > o) “Copper cables and PCB traces are very frequency dependent. At
> > > > 100Gb/s, the loss is in dB/inch."
> > > > o) "Free space: the power density of the radio waves decreases with the
> > > > square of distance from the transmitting antenna due to spreading of the
> > > > electromagnetic energy in space according to the inverse square law"
> > > >
> > > > The sunk costs & long-lived parts of FiWi are the fiber and the CPE
> > > > plastics & antennas, as CMOS radios+ & fiber/laser, e.g. VCSEL could be
> > > > pluggable, allowing for field upgrades. Just like swapping out SFP in a
> > > > data center.
> > > >
> > > > This approach basically drives out WiFi latency by eliminating shared
> > > > queues and increases capacity by orders of magnitude by leveraging 10dB
> > > > in the spatial dimension, all of which is achieved by a physical design.
> > > > Just place enough RRHs as needed (similar to a pop up sprinkler in an
> > > > irrigation system.)
> > > >
> > > > Start and build this for an MDU and the value of the building improves.
> > > > Sadly, there seems no way to capture that value other than over long
> > > > term use. It doesn't matter whether the leader of the HOA tries to
> > > > capture the value or if a last mile provider tries. The value remains
> > > > sunk or hidden with nothing on the asset side of the balance sheet.
> > > > We've got a CAPEX spend that has to be made up via "OPEX returns" over
> > > > years.
> > > >
> > > > But the asset is there.
> > > >
> > > > How do we do this?
> > > >
> > > > Bob
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > Starlink mailing list
> > > > Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> > > > https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Rpm mailing list
> > > Rpm@lists.bufferbloat.net
> > > https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/rpm
>
>
> --
> Come Heckle Mar 6-9 at: https://www.understandinglatency.com/
> Dave Täht CEO, TekLibre, LLC

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Re: [Starlink] [Rpm] On FiWi

[Dave Taht]

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This is a pretty neat box:

https://mikrotik.com/product/netpower_lite_7r

What are the compelling arguments for fiber vs copper, again?


On Tue, Mar 14, 2023 at 4:10 AM Mike Puchol via Rpm <
rpm@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:

> Hi Bob,
>
> You hit on a set of very valid points, which I'll complement with my views
> on where the industry (the bit of it that affects WISPs) is heading, and
> what I saw at the MWC in Barcelona. Love the FiWi term :-)
>
> I have seen the vendors that supply WISPs, such as Ubiquiti, Cambium, and
> Mimosa, but also newer entrants such as Tarana, increase the performance
> and on-paper specs of their equipment. My examples below are centered on
> the African market, if you operate in Europe or the US, where you can
> charge customers a higher install fee, or even charge them a break-up fee
> if they don't return equipment, the economics work.
>
> Where currently a ~$500 sector radio could serve ~60 endpoints, at a cost
> of ~$50 per endpoint (I use this term in place of ODU/CPE, the antenna that
> you mount on the roof), and supply ~2.5 Mbps CIR per endpoint, the
> evolution is now a ~$2,000+ sector radio, a $200 endpoint, capability for
> ~150 endpoints per sector, and ~25 Mbps CIR per endpoint.
>
> If every customer a WISP installs represents, say, $100 CAPEX at install
> time ($50 for the antenna + cabling, router, etc), and you charge a $30
> install fee, you have $70 to recover, and you recover from the monthly
> contribution the customer makes. If the contribution after OPEX is, say,
> $10, it takes you 7 months to recover the full install cost. Not bad,
> doable even in low-income markets.
>
> Fast-forward to the next-generation version. Now, the CAPEX at install is
> $250, you need to recover $220, and it will take you 22 months, which is
> above the usual 18 months that investors look for.
>
> The focus, thereby, has to be the lever that has the largest effect on the
> unit economics - which is the per-customer cost. I have drawn what my ideal
> FiWi network would look like:
>
>
>
> Taking you through this - we start with a 1-port, low-cost EPON OLT (or
> you could go for 2, 4, 8 ports as you add capacity). This OLT has capacity
> for 64 ONUs on its single port. Instead of connecting the typical fiber
> infrastructure with kilometers of cables which break, require maintenance,
> etc. we insert an EPON to Ethernet converter (I added "magic" because these
> don't exist AFAIK).
>
> This converter allows us to connect our $2k sector radio, and serve the
> $200 endpoints (ODUs) over wireless point-to-multipoint up to 10km away.
> Each ODU then has a reverse converter, which gives us EPON again.
>
> Once we are back on EPON, we can insert splitters, for example,
> pre-connectorized outdoor 1:16 boxes. Every customer install now involves a
> 100 meter roll of pre-connectorized 2-core drop cable, and a $20 EPON ONU.
>
> Using this deployment method, we could connect up to 16 customers to a
> single $200 endpoint, so the enpoint CAPEX per customer is now $12.5. Add
> the ONU, cable, etc. and we have a per-install CAPEX of $82.5 (assuming the
> same $50 of extras we had before), and an even shorter break-even. In
> addition, as the endpoints support higher capacity, we can provision at
> least the same, if not more, capacity per customer.
>
> Other advantages: the $200 ODU is no longer customer equipment and CAPEX,
> but network equipment, and as such, can operate under a longer break-even
> timeline, and be financed by infrastructure PE funds, for example. As a
> result, churn has a much lower financial impact on the operator.
>
> The main reason why this wouldn't work today is that EPON, as we know, is
> synchronous, and requires the OLT to orchestrate the amount of time each
> ONU can transmit, and when. Having wireless hops and media conversions will
> introduce latencies which can break down the communications (e.g. one ONU
> may transmit, get delayed on the radio link, and end up overlapping another
> ONU that transmitted on the next slot). Thus, either the "magic" box needs
> to account for this, or an new hybrid EPON-wireless protocol developed.
>
> My main point here: the industry is moving away from the unconnected. All
> the claims I heard and saw at MWC about "connecting the unconnected" had
> zero resonance with the financial drivers that the unconnected really
> operate under, on top of IT literacy, digital skills, devices, power...
>
> Best,
>
> Mike
> On Mar 14, 2023 at 05:27 +0100, rjmcmahon via Starlink <
> starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>, wrote:
>
> To change the topic - curious to thoughts on FiWi.
>
> Imagine a world with no copper cable called FiWi (Fiber,VCSEL/CMOS
> Radios, Antennas) and which is point to point inside a building
> connected to virtualized APs fiber hops away. Each remote radio head
> (RRH) would consume 5W or less and only when active. No need for things
> like zigbee, or meshes, or threads as each radio has a fiber connection
> via Corning's actifi or equivalent. Eliminate the AP/Client power
> imbalance. Plastics also can house smoke or other sensors.
>
> Some reminders from Paul Baran in 1994 (and from David Reed)
>
> o) Shorter range rf transceivers connected to fiber could produce a
> significant improvement - - tremendous improvement, really.
> o) a mixture of terrestrial links plus shorter range radio links has the
> effect of increasing by orders and orders of magnitude the amount of
> frequency spectrum that can be made available.
> o) By authorizing high power to support a few users to reach slightly
> longer distances we deprive ourselves of the opportunity to serve the
> many.
> o) Communications systems can be built with 10dB ratio
> o) Digital transmission when properly done allows a small signal to
> noise ratio to be used successfully to retrieve an error free signal.
> o) And, never forget, any transmission capacity not used is wasted
> forever, like water over the dam. Not using such techniques represent
> lost opportunity.
>
> And on waveguides:
>
> o) "Fiber transmission loss is ~0.5dB/km for single mode fiber,
> independent of modulation"
> o) “Copper cables and PCB traces are very frequency dependent. At
> 100Gb/s, the loss is in dB/inch."
> o) "Free space: the power density of the radio waves decreases with the
> square of distance from the transmitting antenna due to spreading of the
> electromagnetic energy in space according to the inverse square law"
>
> The sunk costs & long-lived parts of FiWi are the fiber and the CPE
> plastics & antennas, as CMOS radios+ & fiber/laser, e.g. VCSEL could be
> pluggable, allowing for field upgrades. Just like swapping out SFP in a
> data center.
>
> This approach basically drives out WiFi latency by eliminating shared
> queues and increases capacity by orders of magnitude by leveraging 10dB
> in the spatial dimension, all of which is achieved by a physical design.
> Just place enough RRHs as needed (similar to a pop up sprinkler in an
> irrigation system.)
>
> Start and build this for an MDU and the value of the building improves.
> Sadly, there seems no way to capture that value other than over long
> term use. It doesn't matter whether the leader of the HOA tries to
> capture the value or if a last mile provider tries. The value remains
> sunk or hidden with nothing on the asset side of the balance sheet.
> We've got a CAPEX spend that has to be made up via "OPEX returns" over
> years.
>
> But the asset is there.
>
> How do we do this?
>
> Bob
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>
> _______________________________________________
> Rpm mailing list
> Rpm@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/rpm
>


-- 
Come Heckle Mar 6-9 at: https://www.understandinglatency.com
<https://www.understandinglatency.com/Dave>/
Dave Täht CEO, TekLibre, LLC

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Re: [Starlink] [Rpm] On FiWi

[Robert McMahon]

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The ISP could charge per radio head and manage the system from a FiWi head end which they own. Virtualize the APs. Get rid of SoC complexity and costly O&M via simplicity. Eliminate all the incremental engineering that has gone astray, e.g. bloat and over powered APs.

Bob



On Mar 14, 2023, 9:49 AM, at 9:49 AM, Robert McMahon <rjmcmahon@rjmcmahon.com> wrote:
>Hi Mike,
>
>I'm thinking more of fiber to the room. The last few meters are wifi
>everything else is fiber.. Those radios would be a max of 20' from the
>associated STA. Then at phy rates of 2.8Gb/s per spatial stream. The
>common MIMO is 2x2 so each radio head or wifi transceiver supports
>5.6G, no queueing delay. Wholesale is $5 and retail $19.95 per
>pluggable transceiver. Sold at Home Depot next to the irrigation aisle.
>10 per house is $199 and each room gets a dedicated 5.8G phy rate. Need
>more devices in a space? Pick an RRH with more cmos radios. Also, the
>antennas would be patch antenna and fill the room properly. Then plug
>in an optional sensor for fire alerting.
>
>
>A digression. A lot of signal processing engineers have been working on
>TX beam forming. The best beam is fiber. Just do that. It even can turn
>corners and goes exactly to where it's needed at very low energies.
>This is similar to pvc pipes in irrigation systems. They're designed to
>take water to spray heads.
>
>The cost is the cable plant. That's labor more than materials. Similar
>for irrigation, pvc is inexpensive and lasts decades. A return labor
>means use future proof materials, e.g. fiber.
>
>Bob
>
>
>
>On Mar 14, 2023, 4:10 AM, at 4:10 AM, Mike Puchol via Rpm
><rpm@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>>Hi Bob,
>>
>>You hit on a set of very valid points, which I'll complement with my
>>views on where the industry (the bit of it that affects WISPs) is
>>heading, and what I saw at the MWC in Barcelona. Love the FiWi term
>:-)
>>
>>I have seen the vendors that supply WISPs, such as Ubiquiti, Cambium,
>>and Mimosa, but also newer entrants such as Tarana, increase the
>>performance and on-paper specs of their equipment. My examples below
>>are centered on the African market, if you operate in Europe or the
>US,
>>where you can charge customers a higher install fee, or even charge
>>them a break-up fee if they don't return equipment, the economics
>work.
>>
>>Where currently a ~$500 sector radio could serve ~60 endpoints, at a
>>cost of ~$50 per endpoint (I use this term in place of ODU/CPE, the
>>antenna that you mount on the roof), and supply ~2.5 Mbps CIR per
>>endpoint, the evolution is now a ~$2,000+ sector radio, a $200
>>endpoint, capability for ~150 endpoints per sector, and ~25 Mbps CIR
>>per endpoint.
>>
>>If every customer a WISP installs represents, say, $100 CAPEX at
>>install time ($50 for the antenna + cabling, router, etc), and you
>>charge a $30 install fee, you have $70 to recover, and you recover
>from
>>the monthly contribution the customer makes. If the contribution after
>>OPEX is, say, $10, it takes you 7 months to recover the full install
>>cost. Not bad, doable even in low-income markets.
>>
>>Fast-forward to the next-generation version. Now, the CAPEX at install
>>is $250, you need to recover $220, and it will take you 22 months,
>>which is above the usual 18 months that investors look for.
>>
>>The focus, thereby, has to be the lever that has the largest effect on
>>the unit economics - which is the per-customer cost. I have drawn what
>>my ideal FiWi network would look like:
>>
>>
>>
>>Taking you through this - we start with a 1-port, low-cost EPON OLT
>(or
>>you could go for 2, 4, 8 ports as you add capacity). This OLT has
>>capacity for 64 ONUs on its single port. Instead of connecting the
>>typical fiber infrastructure with kilometers of cables which break,
>>require maintenance, etc. we insert an EPON to Ethernet converter (I
>>added "magic" because these don't exist AFAIK).
>>
>>This converter allows us to connect our $2k sector radio, and serve
>the
>>$200 endpoints (ODUs) over wireless point-to-multipoint up to 10km
>>away. Each ODU then has a reverse converter, which gives us EPON
>again.
>>
>>Once we are back on EPON, we can insert splitters, for example,
>>pre-connectorized outdoor 1:16 boxes. Every customer install now
>>involves a 100 meter roll of pre-connectorized 2-core drop cable, and
>a
>>$20 EPON ONU.
>>
>>Using this deployment method, we could connect up to 16 customers to a
>>single $200 endpoint, so the enpoint CAPEX per customer is now $12.5.
>>Add the ONU, cable, etc. and we have a per-install CAPEX of $82.5
>>(assuming the same $50 of extras we had before), and an even shorter
>>break-even. In addition, as the endpoints support higher capacity, we
>>can provision at least the same, if not more, capacity per customer.
>>
>>Other advantages: the $200 ODU is no longer customer equipment and
>>CAPEX, but network equipment, and as such, can operate under a longer
>>break-even timeline, and be financed by infrastructure PE funds, for
>>example. As a result, churn has a much lower financial impact on the
>>operator.
>>
>>The main reason why this wouldn't work today is that EPON, as we know,
>>is synchronous, and requires the OLT to orchestrate the amount of time
>>each ONU can transmit, and when. Having wireless hops and media
>>conversions will introduce latencies which can break down the
>>communications (e.g. one ONU may transmit, get delayed on the radio
>>link, and end up overlapping another ONU that transmitted on the next
>>slot). Thus, either the "magic" box needs to account for this, or an
>>new hybrid EPON-wireless protocol developed.
>>
>>My main point here: the industry is moving away from the unconnected.
>>All the claims I heard and saw at MWC about "connecting the
>>unconnected" had zero resonance with the financial drivers that the
>>unconnected really operate under, on top of IT literacy, digital
>>skills, devices, power...
>>
>>Best,
>>
>>Mike
>>On Mar 14, 2023 at 05:27 +0100, rjmcmahon via Starlink
>><starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>, wrote:
>>> To change the topic - curious to thoughts on FiWi.
>>>
>>> Imagine a world with no copper cable called FiWi (Fiber,VCSEL/CMOS
>>> Radios, Antennas) and which is point to point inside a building
>>> connected to virtualized APs fiber hops away. Each remote radio head
>>> (RRH) would consume 5W or less and only when active. No need for
>>things
>>> like zigbee, or meshes, or threads as each radio has a fiber
>>connection
>>> via Corning's actifi or equivalent. Eliminate the AP/Client power
>>> imbalance. Plastics also can house smoke or other sensors.
>>>
>>> Some reminders from Paul Baran in 1994 (and from David Reed)
>>>
>>> o) Shorter range rf transceivers connected to fiber could produce a
>>> significant improvement - - tremendous improvement, really.
>>> o) a mixture of terrestrial links plus shorter range radio links has
>>the
>>> effect of increasing by orders and orders of magnitude the amount of
>>> frequency spectrum that can be made available.
>>> o) By authorizing high power to support a few users to reach
>slightly
>>> longer distances we deprive ourselves of the opportunity to serve
>the
>>> many.
>>> o) Communications systems can be built with 10dB ratio
>>> o) Digital transmission when properly done allows a small signal to
>>> noise ratio to be used successfully to retrieve an error free
>signal.
>>> o) And, never forget, any transmission capacity not used is wasted
>>> forever, like water over the dam. Not using such techniques
>represent
>>> lost opportunity.
>>>
>>> And on waveguides:
>>>
>>> o) "Fiber transmission loss is ~0.5dB/km for single mode fiber,
>>> independent of modulation"
>>> o) “Copper cables and PCB traces are very frequency dependent. At
>>> 100Gb/s, the loss is in dB/inch."
>>> o) "Free space: the power density of the radio waves decreases with
>>the
>>> square of distance from the transmitting antenna due to spreading of
>>the
>>> electromagnetic energy in space according to the inverse square law"
>>>
>>> The sunk costs & long-lived parts of FiWi are the fiber and the CPE
>>> plastics & antennas, as CMOS radios+ & fiber/laser, e.g. VCSEL could
>>be
>>> pluggable, allowing for field upgrades. Just like swapping out SFP
>in
>>a
>>> data center.
>>>
>>> This approach basically drives out WiFi latency by eliminating
>shared
>>> queues and increases capacity by orders of magnitude by leveraging
>>10dB
>>> in the spatial dimension, all of which is achieved by a physical
>>design.
>>> Just place enough RRHs as needed (similar to a pop up sprinkler in
>an
>>> irrigation system.)
>>>
>>> Start and build this for an MDU and the value of the building
>>improves.
>>> Sadly, there seems no way to capture that value other than over long
>>> term use. It doesn't matter whether the leader of the HOA tries to
>>> capture the value or if a last mile provider tries. The value
>remains
>>> sunk or hidden with nothing on the asset side of the balance sheet.
>>> We've got a CAPEX spend that has to be made up via "OPEX returns"
>>over
>>> years.
>>>
>>> But the asset is there.
>>>
>>> How do we do this?
>>>
>>> Bob
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Starlink mailing list
>>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink

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Re: [Starlink] [Rpm] On FiWi

[Robert McMahon]

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Hi Mike,

I'm thinking more of fiber to the room. The last few meters are wifi everything else is fiber.. Those radios would be a max of 20' from the associated STA. Then at phy rates of 2.8Gb/s per spatial stream. The common MIMO is 2x2 so each radio head or wifi transceiver supports 5.6G, no queueing delay. Wholesale is $5 and retail $19.95 per pluggable transceiver. Sold at Home Depot next to the irrigation aisle. 10 per house is $199 and each room gets a dedicated 5.8G phy rate. Need more devices in a space? Pick an RRH with more cmos radios. Also, the antennas would be patch antenna and fill the room properly. Then plug in an optional sensor for fire alerting.


A digression. A lot of signal processing engineers have been working on TX beam forming. The best beam is fiber. Just do that. It even can turn corners and goes exactly to where it's needed at very low energies. This is similar to pvc pipes in irrigation systems. They're designed to take water to spray heads.

The cost is the cable plant. That's labor more than materials. Similar for irrigation, pvc is inexpensive and lasts decades. A return labor means use future proof materials, e.g. fiber.

Bob



On Mar 14, 2023, 4:10 AM, at 4:10 AM, Mike Puchol via Rpm <rpm@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>Hi Bob,
>
>You hit on a set of very valid points, which I'll complement with my
>views on where the industry (the bit of it that affects WISPs) is
>heading, and what I saw at the MWC in Barcelona. Love the FiWi term :-)
>
>I have seen the vendors that supply WISPs, such as Ubiquiti, Cambium,
>and Mimosa, but also newer entrants such as Tarana, increase the
>performance and on-paper specs of their equipment. My examples below
>are centered on the African market, if you operate in Europe or the US,
>where you can charge customers a higher install fee, or even charge
>them a break-up fee if they don't return equipment, the economics work.
>
>Where currently a ~$500 sector radio could serve ~60 endpoints, at a
>cost of ~$50 per endpoint (I use this term in place of ODU/CPE, the
>antenna that you mount on the roof), and supply ~2.5 Mbps CIR per
>endpoint, the evolution is now a ~$2,000+ sector radio, a $200
>endpoint, capability for ~150 endpoints per sector, and ~25 Mbps CIR
>per endpoint.
>
>If every customer a WISP installs represents, say, $100 CAPEX at
>install time ($50 for the antenna + cabling, router, etc), and you
>charge a $30 install fee, you have $70 to recover, and you recover from
>the monthly contribution the customer makes. If the contribution after
>OPEX is, say, $10, it takes you 7 months to recover the full install
>cost. Not bad, doable even in low-income markets.
>
>Fast-forward to the next-generation version. Now, the CAPEX at install
>is $250, you need to recover $220, and it will take you 22 months,
>which is above the usual 18 months that investors look for.
>
>The focus, thereby, has to be the lever that has the largest effect on
>the unit economics - which is the per-customer cost. I have drawn what
>my ideal FiWi network would look like:
>
>
>
>Taking you through this - we start with a 1-port, low-cost EPON OLT (or
>you could go for 2, 4, 8 ports as you add capacity). This OLT has
>capacity for 64 ONUs on its single port. Instead of connecting the
>typical fiber infrastructure with kilometers of cables which break,
>require maintenance, etc. we insert an EPON to Ethernet converter (I
>added "magic" because these don't exist AFAIK).
>
>This converter allows us to connect our $2k sector radio, and serve the
>$200 endpoints (ODUs) over wireless point-to-multipoint up to 10km
>away. Each ODU then has a reverse converter, which gives us EPON again.
>
>Once we are back on EPON, we can insert splitters, for example,
>pre-connectorized outdoor 1:16 boxes. Every customer install now
>involves a 100 meter roll of pre-connectorized 2-core drop cable, and a
>$20 EPON ONU.
>
>Using this deployment method, we could connect up to 16 customers to a
>single $200 endpoint, so the enpoint CAPEX per customer is now $12.5.
>Add the ONU, cable, etc. and we have a per-install CAPEX of $82.5
>(assuming the same $50 of extras we had before), and an even shorter
>break-even. In addition, as the endpoints support higher capacity, we
>can provision at least the same, if not more, capacity per customer.
>
>Other advantages: the $200 ODU is no longer customer equipment and
>CAPEX, but network equipment, and as such, can operate under a longer
>break-even timeline, and be financed by infrastructure PE funds, for
>example. As a result, churn has a much lower financial impact on the
>operator.
>
>The main reason why this wouldn't work today is that EPON, as we know,
>is synchronous, and requires the OLT to orchestrate the amount of time
>each ONU can transmit, and when. Having wireless hops and media
>conversions will introduce latencies which can break down the
>communications (e.g. one ONU may transmit, get delayed on the radio
>link, and end up overlapping another ONU that transmitted on the next
>slot). Thus, either the "magic" box needs to account for this, or an
>new hybrid EPON-wireless protocol developed.
>
>My main point here: the industry is moving away from the unconnected.
>All the claims I heard and saw at MWC about "connecting the
>unconnected" had zero resonance with the financial drivers that the
>unconnected really operate under, on top of IT literacy, digital
>skills, devices, power...
>
>Best,
>
>Mike
>On Mar 14, 2023 at 05:27 +0100, rjmcmahon via Starlink
><starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>, wrote:
>> To change the topic - curious to thoughts on FiWi.
>>
>> Imagine a world with no copper cable called FiWi (Fiber,VCSEL/CMOS
>> Radios, Antennas) and which is point to point inside a building
>> connected to virtualized APs fiber hops away. Each remote radio head
>> (RRH) would consume 5W or less and only when active. No need for
>things
>> like zigbee, or meshes, or threads as each radio has a fiber
>connection
>> via Corning's actifi or equivalent. Eliminate the AP/Client power
>> imbalance. Plastics also can house smoke or other sensors.
>>
>> Some reminders from Paul Baran in 1994 (and from David Reed)
>>
>> o) Shorter range rf transceivers connected to fiber could produce a
>> significant improvement - - tremendous improvement, really.
>> o) a mixture of terrestrial links plus shorter range radio links has
>the
>> effect of increasing by orders and orders of magnitude the amount of
>> frequency spectrum that can be made available.
>> o) By authorizing high power to support a few users to reach slightly
>> longer distances we deprive ourselves of the opportunity to serve the
>> many.
>> o) Communications systems can be built with 10dB ratio
>> o) Digital transmission when properly done allows a small signal to
>> noise ratio to be used successfully to retrieve an error free signal.
>> o) And, never forget, any transmission capacity not used is wasted
>> forever, like water over the dam. Not using such techniques represent
>> lost opportunity.
>>
>> And on waveguides:
>>
>> o) "Fiber transmission loss is ~0.5dB/km for single mode fiber,
>> independent of modulation"
>> o) “Copper cables and PCB traces are very frequency dependent. At
>> 100Gb/s, the loss is in dB/inch."
>> o) "Free space: the power density of the radio waves decreases with
>the
>> square of distance from the transmitting antenna due to spreading of
>the
>> electromagnetic energy in space according to the inverse square law"
>>
>> The sunk costs & long-lived parts of FiWi are the fiber and the CPE
>> plastics & antennas, as CMOS radios+ & fiber/laser, e.g. VCSEL could
>be
>> pluggable, allowing for field upgrades. Just like swapping out SFP in
>a
>> data center.
>>
>> This approach basically drives out WiFi latency by eliminating shared
>> queues and increases capacity by orders of magnitude by leveraging
>10dB
>> in the spatial dimension, all of which is achieved by a physical
>design.
>> Just place enough RRHs as needed (similar to a pop up sprinkler in an
>> irrigation system.)
>>
>> Start and build this for an MDU and the value of the building
>improves.
>> Sadly, there seems no way to capture that value other than over long
>> term use. It doesn't matter whether the leader of the HOA tries to
>> capture the value or if a last mile provider tries. The value remains
>> sunk or hidden with nothing on the asset side of the balance sheet.
>> We've got a CAPEX spend that has to be made up via "OPEX returns"
>over
>> years.
>>
>> But the asset is there.
>>
>> How do we do this?
>>
>> Bob
>> _______________________________________________
>> Starlink mailing list
>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink

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