1 Gbps in Swedish students' apartment network

[Martin Millnert]

Hi Google Fiber Group,

I'd just like to give a executive summary of our students apartment
network in Gothenburg, Sweden.

CSBNET, AS48514, is a students' run non-profit network giving Internet
access to 2000 mostly technical university students in Gothenburg.

Being a dormitory, the basic feature of the network is widely
different from a Fiber to the community effort, but I still think it
is interesting to share the experience. Our "meters per customer" is
very, very low; we have 24- and 48p 100BASE-T (RJ-45) ethernet
switches here and there, 2200 ports in total.

We are going to deploy a 1 Gbps access port network with approx 1:20
overbooking initially (option to go for 1:10 at a later stage for low
cost, if required) H1 2011. We've had 100 Mbps since 2002 here, and
it is getting a bit boring to say the least, switches lifetime
notwithstanding.

To help us build this network we're deploying a few kilometers of high-
density fibers to connect our various buildings as well.

Thanks to the density and uptake we have (100% contractually
enforced), the cost of this fork-lift upgrade and fiber build-out is a
modest $4 per customer. The students living in our apartments will pay
$20 2011 for Gigabit ethernet.

Best Regards,
Martin Millnert

[Bill]

This is an interesting model. ...a few questions:

1. May I assume that the student apartment complex is indeed the
property of the technical university, or is it by chance a privately
owned complex?
2. Similarly, are the upfront costs of the upgrade financed by the
university or in some other way?
3. In any case, under the business plan, what is the projected time to
recover the costs of the upgrade?
4. Is the pricing to the students such that the operation fully
recovers its costs, including, perhaps, a depreciation reserve to pay
for replacement equipment, etc. if not for future upgrades?
5. Do the students maintain, service, and troubleshoot the network, or
are university or commercial resources involved?

William H. Sanders, Director
Technology for the Arts
3210 Torgersen Hall (0292)
Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University
Blacksburg, VA 24061
Office: (540) 231-6499
Fax: (540)231-2091

[Martin Millnert]

Hi Bill,

On Nov 30, 4:51 pm, Bill <bill.sand...@bev.net> wrote:
> This is an interesting model.  ...a few questions:
>
> 1. May I assume that the student apartment complex is indeed the
> property of the technical university, or is it by chance a privately
> owned complex?

It is a privately owned complex, by a non-profit foundation. The
foundation itself is owned by both the municipality and the students
union organization at a local university, which is strictly not
identical to the university itself.

> 2. Similarly, are the upfront costs of the upgrade financed by the
> university or in some other way?

No, the financial operations of the foundation are its own. The main
(99% or so?) source of income is the rents payed by the students. The
investment is done in the foundations own budget for next year,
and ...

> 3. In any case, under the business plan, what is the projected time to
> recover the costs of the upgrade?

... will be recovered in 5 years as far as switches and routers go.
We're aiming at 25 years for the fiber network, but there will be one
more board meeting before this is decided (some are uncertain that
fiber is useful in the future). We can do it in 10 years if we need
to, but 25 is more reasonable to me from a technical standpoint.

> 4. Is the pricing to the students such that the operation fully
> recovers its costs, including, perhaps, a depreciation reserve to pay
> for replacement equipment, etc. if not for future upgrades?

Yes, the pricing I mentioned, $20, is such that the operation is fully
covered, including deprecation and obviously staffing costs. A service
contract will be in place with the vendor for replacement equipment.

There is no reserve for future upgrades however. I've discussed this
with my CFO several times, and she always say that bookkeeping laws
prevents us to legally do this.

> 5. Do the students maintain, service, and troubleshoot the network, or
> are university or commercial resources involved?

A few students, nine including myself, are employed part-time (2.5
full time positions in total) by the foundation to do what is normally
operations, but will next year be installation and configuration of
the new network obviously.

I believe I have to add that the copper access (CAT-5e/6/6a) into
apartments has already been written off for half the apartments (where
it was installed post-construction), and is not currently carried by
the network pricing itself for the rest, but the general rent, since
the apartments were built with the data network from scratch.
Irregardless, that installation in dense buildings like ours is only
some 200 USD per apartment, should it be done afterwards (for
CAT-6a). A fiber installation is probably more like 600 USD per
apartment if you include added costs of the required optics. If you
take this investment over 10-15 years it doesn't amount to much per
year.

Also, a very basic cable TV offer is included (~$2 per apartment and
month), which we currently run over a parallel cable TV infrastructure
that reaches into all apartments. Obviously IPTV would be more cool,
but practically impossible to do for $2. We did a survey of our
tenants interests when it came to TV this year, and it turns out that
48% watch about 5 channels, and 48% do not own a TV at all, and the
rest have a diverse interest. So we covered those 5 channels for $2 a
month included in the rent, and let the 4% order their own digital
receiver box and subscriptions.

The new network infrastructure can support IPTV with several
concurrent HDTV channels per apartment though.

Another variant to cover the TV requirement (we are legally obliged to
deliver some TV channels) if you build a apartment complex from
scratch with fiber, is obviously to deliver the TV signal over fiber
into a multi-purpose CPE which converts it from optical signal to a RF
signal. It didn't make sense for us since we already have the coax
cable TV infrastructure in place however.


Whereas we have a layer 2 network with a bunch of VLANs today and an
increasing amount of troubles due to having a shared broadcast domain
between customers, we are shooting for a full layer3 network in the
next iteration. The switches we are buying will do one VLAN per user,
and route the v6 themselves, and proxy-arp broute the IPv4. We believe
this is a truly future-proof and scalable architecture.

While no open network by any regular principle, we do provide a very
open internet to our customers (the students), and being non-profit
and run by students, we believe we keep the costs down low enough that
no profit-driven company truly desire (nor can) compete with us in our
own buildings.

We buy transit from the Swedish NREN, SUNET, but the prices are
comparable to market prices.
We also peer at a local internet exchange with nearly all Swedish
ISPs, accounting for 33% of the traffic.

I hope this (more than) answers your questions. If you have more
questions don't hesitate to ask.

Best Regards,
Martin