On 1/2/25 07:33, Alex Buie wrote:
Curious about strategy here - any continental mid-sized ISPs do similar
with a small footprint in the main building but the majority of their
footprint offsite?
We have done this before and as a Engineer the answer is: it depends.
If you many many many racks at your "stubby datacenters" where you are
getting good price for power, service, etc. then cost of dark fiber or
wave service from an on-net carrier at your existing datacenter to a
popular place like One Wilshire does make sense.
However if you have only a few racks, then the cost might not make sense
as you have to factor in:
- dark fiber or wave service fee
- cross connect fees at your "stubby datacenter"
- cross connect fees at the premium datacenter (CoreSite, Digital
Realty, Equinix, etc.)
- peering/transit/IX fee you ultimately want to connect to
- Any multiplexing equipment you need (CWDM, DWDM, etc.) if you want
to split up/share the dark fiber connection
- any cabinet space you might need
Again, it all comes down to price.
For the Los Angeles area about 6 months ago we looked at roughly ~30
miles of dark fiber service by the airport over to downtown (CoreSite at
One Wilshire). Crown Castle (Wilcon), Zayo and Cogent were on-net at
both facilities.
Crown Castle and Zayo were the cheapest and offered dark fiber service
for ~$1500/month. Cogent offered wave service for about double. Sadly,
American Dark Fiber (local fiber company) was not on-net at our facility
which would have been half the cost.
We then had to factor in a small POP at CoreSite to host the
multiplexing equipment, etc.
Again, all comes down to price. Hope this helps
-Adam
--
Adam Brenner
https://aeb.io/
