[IP] EFF: Secret Surveillance Evidence Unsealed in AT&T Spying Cas

[coderman]

On 6/14/07, Eugen Leitl <eugen at 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*