On 6/14/07, Eugen Leitl <eugen@leitl.org> wrote:
... a stupid way to wire up the neighbourhood with fiber is connect every household with medium converter or a GBIC to a large switch, and once you're running out of ports to build a tree of those.
s/stupid/expensive/ :)
Is there a special device class for residential fiber Ethernet, and if yes, how much do these things cost?
passive optical networking is used, so you get cost advantages of a point to multi-point last mile distribution architecture. you can still easily achieve OC3 to each endpoint, so bandwidth per customer is of little concern...
If you don't want to use routers, one has to use trees of switches. Newer switches can manage redudant links/loops with spanning-tree, and similiar. Is there a way to mesh up a tree of switches not using a real router?
if an ATM switch isn't a real router, then sure! *grin*