JFDI
December 26, 2016 8:06 AM   Subscribe

 
It isn't clear in the story...How does B4RN connect to the backbone, or are they? Where are they getting their base net access? Are they extending off BT lines?
posted by Thorzdad at 8:28 AM on December 26, 2016


It isn’t clear in the story...How does B4RN connect to the backbone, or are they? Where are they getting their base net access? Are they extending off BT lines?

Yeah - this sounds great, but it’s very light on details. I can’t help wondering if those details would make it less great and more “just another company”. Still, exciting & cool initiative on Conder’s part.
posted by Going To Maine at 8:36 AM on December 26, 2016 [1 favorite]


b4rn.org.uk
posted by Going To Maine at 8:37 AM on December 26, 2016 [1 favorite]


The first and most important step is to be outside of the United States where JFDI is against the law thanks to regulatory capture.
posted by srboisvert at 8:44 AM on December 26, 2016 [8 favorites]


How does B4RN connect to the backbone?

From their business plan:
The dark fibre leased from GEO Networks from Quernmore to Telecity Manchester (128Km) is operational with the DWDM equipment installed and configured to support up to 16 wavelengths of 10Gbs each.

The core Juniper MX240 router is also installed at Telecity and we have 6x10GbE ports and 20x1GbE ports available and these can be increased as needed.

One 10GbE port on our router at Telecity is connected to EDGE-IX for peering and we are using the route reflector to enable an open peering policy. A second peering port will be connected shortly to IX-Manchester which is the northern internet exchange for LINX whose primary location is in London’s docklands. We have our IP transit feed in place and it is providing us with a route for all non-peering traffic.
posted by Gyan at 8:54 AM on December 26, 2016 [7 favorites]


Looks like they're using LINX to peer.

I'm suspicious of BT and the prices they charge, since they don't have much competition, but some of the money that goes into installing lines actually goes into, y'know, installing the lines. If the land holder is doing the work themselves (as well as granting themselves access to their own land), then that cost obviously goes down, and farmers are no strangers to DIY.
posted by fragmede at 9:01 AM on December 26, 2016 [4 favorites]


I've got a similar situation here in Nevada County, California. We have some beautiful new long-haul fiber backbone thanks to an Obama initiative. It runs about a mile from my house. I have no way to use that new backbone to get high speed Internet. The AT&T / Comcast duopoly refuses to run any new wires in our rural area.

The good news is I can get decent Internet via a local mom-and-pop WISP. 12Mbps delivered via wireless radio. But it requires line of sight and someone to climb a tree to install the antenna. (The story in the post starts when a tree grew too tall and blocked their own wireless link.) We also have a second local ISP who is planning to run fiber to every individual home, much like in this story. They've gotten some grants and my fingers are crossed but it's a very expensive and ambitious plan.
posted by Nelson at 9:04 AM on December 26, 2016 [5 favorites]


Reminds me of this story from last year, wherein a group of neighbors in Wash St build their own network. JFDI seems to have worked in the US for these people.
posted by dozo at 9:06 AM on December 26, 2016


This all sounds a little familiar to me.

I recently bought a little farm a few hours north of NYC. Last week the broker stopped by to see how things were going. I complained to him that there seemed to be no way for me to get cable/internet service up by me, as TWC says it would require they spend $14,000 to lay cable lines up to the house from the nearest road, and they were not willing to do that.
The broker then told me the story of Alan Gerry, who lives about two miles from my place. He described him as their "local billionaire".

As my broker told it: Apparently back in the day Gerry had invested in a big antenna, or satellite dish, or whatever was used to get TV reception on his home TV. Because his neighbors didn't have good TV reception, or the money to layout for a system like his, he started running cables from his homes set up to their houses and charged them a fee of $5 a month. After slowly expanding his cable laying neighborhood by neighborhood, he turned it into a business and formed Cablevision Industries. From what the broker said, that was the start of cable TV in this country. He eventually sold out to TWC.

The irony of this situation kills me. I still have no cable/internet nor any way to get it.

He also told me the story of how Gerry secretly (via various corporate fronts) bought up nearby Yasgurs farm (site of Woodstock) and the property surrounding it to prevent it from being subdivided and developed, eventually turning it into Bethel Woods Arts Center.
posted by newpotato at 9:08 AM on December 26, 2016 [12 favorites]


There was actually an equivalent movement 100 years ago. Early telephone networks were set up by farmers using barbed wire
posted by blahblahblah at 9:10 AM on December 26, 2016 [6 favorites]


> Her motto, which she repeats often in conversation, is JFDI. Three of those letters stand for Just Do It. The fourth you can work out for yourself.

Farmers. The F is for farmers.
posted by glonous keming at 9:11 AM on December 26, 2016 [11 favorites]


Nelson, perhaps this might be of interest/use to you: http://www.metafilter.com/161494/The-new-New-Deal
posted by Michele in California at 9:30 AM on December 26, 2016


srboisvert: "The first and most important step is to be outside of the United States where JFDI is against the law thanks to regulatory capture."

I pretty much dropped in here to say that, and mention that the local consumer ISPs would probably bog the project down with legal actions to boot.

A few years back, I was preparing an proposal (more an idea) to encourage the town I live in to drop some free WiFi downtown (as a suggestion to boost downtown as a place to spend time and have a hopefully beneficial effect on downtown local business). However, this was right when the city of Philadelphia was sued by one of the big ISPs for doing the same, so I dropped the idea.
posted by Samizdata at 9:42 AM on December 26, 2016 [1 favorite]


I pretty much dropped in here to say that, and mention that the local consumer ISPs would probably bog the project down with legal actions to boot.

What's of no surprise is the regulations that stifle affordable broadband in the US were written with the help of lobbyists hired by the telecoms.
posted by SteveInMaine at 10:02 AM on December 26, 2016 [3 favorites]


If the new US administration really wants to revitalize rural America, it should start the broadband equivalent of the new deal era rural electrification project. Just like Canada.
posted by monotreme at 10:17 AM on December 26, 2016 [2 favorites]


...although one of the conditions is that profits must be ploughed back into the community.

What you did there. I see it.
posted by dammitjim at 10:32 AM on December 26, 2016 [6 favorites]


What you did there. I see it.

said with furrowed brow.
posted by zippy at 11:07 AM on December 26, 2016 [7 favorites]


The broker then told me the story of Alan Gerry, who lives about two miles from my place.

Maybe you should show up with a six-pack and a spool of coax, and say "We're getting the bandwidth back together."
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 11:56 AM on December 26, 2016 [18 favorites]


> What you did there. I see it.

said with furrowed brow.

What a harrowing pun. You guys are really milking it.
posted by XMLicious at 12:12 PM on December 26, 2016 [1 favorite]


SteveInMaine: "I pretty much dropped in here to say that, and mention that the local consumer ISPs would probably bog the project down with legal actions to boot.

What's of no surprise is the regulations that stifle affordable broadband in the US were written with the help of lobbyists hired by the telecoms.
"

Yeah, well, I knew that. Done a fair bit of reading on why the U.S.'s telecom infrastructure is rather a joke. And I would murder someone for 50 mbit. As that is about 10 times what I can get right now.
posted by Samizdata at 1:06 PM on December 26, 2016


XMLicious: "> What you did there. I see it.

said with furrowed brow.

What a harrowing pun. You guys are really milking it.
"

Look, you would prefer they farm their humor out? I want them to keep going until the cows come home.
posted by Samizdata at 1:07 PM on December 26, 2016 [3 favorites]


Sorry, I guess I like my humor home-grown is all.
posted by Samizdata at 1:09 PM on December 26, 2016 [2 favorites]


A friend in rural Bedfordshire, who has had absolutely terrible BT internet for years (sub megabit speed) in his village because the company has had no interest at all in upgrading the infrastructure, just got 100Mbps as an independent supplier ran fibre past his door. The company told him that he could expect BT to suddenly appear with their own fibre upgrade as 'they follow us around like a lost puppy'.
posted by Devonian at 1:39 PM on December 26, 2016 [4 favorites]


> I'm still unconvinced as to the need for this kind of speed for anyone who isn't running a large-scale business. At home, I get 50Mbps...

Per the article, some of the farmers are on dial-up, and websites have become bloated with images and gratuitous Javascript, making the combination a very trying experience. The 2012 presentation video mentions 2Mbit (over phone lines).

One facet of the story that resonates with people is the JFDI motto. Waiting around for weeks, being forced to use data-capped tethering in the meanwhile sure sounds bad, compared to being stuck on dial-up (dial up!), and waiting for decades, then finally doing backbreaking work of digging the trench yourself.

(FWIW, I say that as someone who just moved, and is stuck on a data-capped Mifi until Jan 20th).
posted by fragmede at 2:05 PM on December 26, 2016 [2 favorites]


I think some people are missing the point. Once you put fiber to someone's door speed doesn't really matter. 1 Gbps sfp's are advertised for 10$. That might actually be the cheapest way to offer this type of service. To quote the net: The theoretical capacity of fiber is somewhere north of 1 petabit per second.
Once you get rid of right-of-ways and other stupidity, fiber is $1/m for direct burial with enough bandwidth for the next 100 years.
posted by sety at 3:44 PM on December 26, 2016 [4 favorites]


Farmgineering at it's best!
posted by stet at 7:05 PM on December 26, 2016 [1 favorite]


fragmede speaks the truth. Do I need 1Gbps service? Absolutely not. Is it available to me now that my local telco has finally rolled it out in lieu of their horrific copper network? Yup, and I'm buying it. It's not the speed, it's the availability and reliability. Copper-delivered DSL is subject to all of the problems inherent in using copper (interference, weather, age) that are also present in the cable TV network but coaxial cable has a lot more shielding and insulation.

Given that, having 1Gbps is nice for a multi-person household because all of us can be doing whatever we want on however many devices we want and none of us has ever stopped on the others' use of the network.
posted by fireoyster at 7:39 PM on December 26, 2016 [2 favorites]


There is a large network, Guifi, in Spain that started this way. Guifi called it "Fiber from the farms".
posted by bhnyc at 7:29 AM on December 27, 2016 [2 favorites]


When we moved out where we are, Verizon still owned the fios lines, which stopped just outside of our little neighborhood of 20 houses. They wanted 25k to run the fiber to my house. So, I ended up doing Verizon's sales job, and convinced most everyone between me and the cable drop to also get high speed broadband, and once I got 10 other houses on-board, Verizon dropped the install fees, and subsequently we all got fast internet. Now it's been sold to frontier, and service is iffy,but we have the lines, at least.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 9:03 AM on December 27, 2016 [1 favorite]


Do you have the lines? Or does Verizon / Frontier have the lines?
posted by Nelson at 11:33 AM on December 27, 2016


If the new US administration really wants to revitalize rural America, it should start the broadband equivalent of the new deal era rural electrification project. Just like Canada.

Much as I love to burnish my country's credentials as a Socialist Paradise (tm), the initiative you're talking about is more of a signalling/introductory measure than a game-changer for the industry. I work for a regional telco with about 1/30th of the country's population as an addressable market, and we could spend the entirety of the fund alone, in the next year. Hopefully bigger, more meaningful moves are coming.
posted by Kreiger at 9:51 AM on December 29, 2016 [2 favorites]


« Older You make the sun shine brighter than Doris Day   |   It's a secret to everybody Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments