[160337] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Is Google Fiber a model for Municipal Networks?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Masataka Ohta)
Mon Feb 4 12:04:33 2013
Date: Tue, 05 Feb 2013 02:03:52 +0900
From: Masataka Ohta <mohta@necom830.hpcl.titech.ac.jp>
To: nanog@nanog.org
In-Reply-To: <CAMrdfRywLg436b1dUPN=+HJzu=gdPTKxb-yNbGK9j3kDUkVZgw@mail.gmail.com>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
Scott Helms wrote:
> Here is the architecture document:
> http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/research.google.com/en/us/pubs/archive/36936.pdf
The document, seemingly, does not address drop cable cost
difference.
It does not address L1 unbundling with WDM-PON, which
requires fiber patch panel identical to that required
for SS, either.
As for power consumption at CO, all the transmitters do not
have to have power consuming LDs but can just have modulators
to modulate light from a shared light source, which has already
happened with QSFP+:
http://www.luxtera.com/faqs/
How do you generate light in silicon?
Actually, we don't. Silicon is a bad material to try and
build lasers in. Some silicon lasers have been demonstrated,
but these are completely impractical. As it turns out there's
no need to build a silicon laser: lasers are already very
inexpensive (remember, there's already one in every PC
- inside the CD/DVD player). The challenge has been finding
an inexpensive way to attach the lasers to silicon. Solving
this problem, and the related one of inexpensively attaching
optical fibers to silicon, is a key piece of Luxtera's
intellectual property. We think of a laser as being just
like a DC power supply – only it provides a steady stream of
photons rather than electrons.
Masataka Ohta
