Now With 20% More Fiber!

The DataCenterDynamics site has an article I really liked, titled The American Clould's Weakest Link. It covers the sobering speech given by Allied Fiber CEO Hunter Newby at the Seattle DataCenterDynamics conference Thursday. Newby said "Moving apps into the cloud is very dangerous if you don't know your physical fiber route". How very true -- I almost think people take the physical connectivity between data centers for granted some times.

$7.2 Billion of the recent U.S. stimulus money was dedicated to developing the country's broadband infrastructure. Allied Fiber has been applying for stimulus funding and dreams of building one large fiber ring around the country.

I've worked with several places and brokers that know where all of the fiber routes are in America -- what a fun resource that would be to have as public domain. I think much more fiber investment is needed in this country and NOT just in the big / tier 1 cities and markets. I think if the U.S. is to stay competitive, on both the business and home side of things, we must have a more robust fiber infrastructure that reaches everyone. Next to cheap land and cheap power, data center site selection places a strong emphasis on the amount of lit and dark fiber available in the area.

Allied Fiber and TMCnet have built a Dark Fiber Community to bring together optical network providers and the suppliers who help them build. I've also worked with NEF and the vast database of buried and lit services they have. They also have a natural extension of that business in findadatacenter.com Another favorite site and set of research reports I would Love to use if I had money burning a hole in my pocket is TeleGeography.....some pretty cool data here.