End of an Era|New Era: Internet Fiber Comes to Gerlach

[some seeing eye]

Pandora's Box...

The first Internet on the playa was from the Oregon Country Fair camp with their satellite dish in the 90's. Some of the startup crowd camped adjacent to be in the matrix pre- Wired blowing the scene with their Bruce Sterling massive.

The Internet was birthed by ARPA, now DARPA. A friend of mine designed the first IMP nodes. Initially connecting universities, it grew into a a system of overlapping privately-run and monetized national and international fiber backbones connecting major cities and data centers.

It is extremely difficult to impossible to assemble long linear rights of way. So the Internet travels between cities in abandoned pipelines, along power lines, along highways, and along rail lines. Bundles of glass fibers traverse long distances and under oceans, each the thickness of a thick human hair, with up to 160 colors of infrared, each an independent channel.

To get on the fiber, or get off it, you need a climate-controlled room, with backup electric power. You need to splice into the fiber by melting the glass, you need a device to separate out your color from the rest, and you need a box to decode the light into Internet.

Until now, the Internet came to Gerlach on microwave beams with limited capacity. BRC, the ranch, and the Gerlach offices depended on that.

Joe Biden and each state want their rural areas to have fast fiber Internet. Those programs are bringing the fiber Internet to a hub at the Gerlach public library.

The BORG will need to decide/pay to connect to the Gerlach fiber. Then the BORG will need to decide/buy equipment to increase capacity to the BRC internal Internet backbone.

Private companies who connected temporary cell towers at Frog Pond to the microwave Internet may contract to link to the fiber by a short radio hop. With very limited private land around the playa within cell tower distance of BRC, like Frog Pond, there is still the cell sector capacity limit until beam steering antennas become commonplace.

If you are in little Gerlach, they are celebrating it Tuesday 12:30PM at the Library and 1 partying at the Community Center.

Gerlach Fiber 20230725.jpg

[Captain Goddammit]

Internet and cell service are some of the worst things to happen to Burning Man, but you can’t stop progress.

[Sham]

Internet and cell service are some of the worst things to happen to Burning Man, but you can’t stop progress.

I SECOND YOUR THOUGHTS IN ALL CAPS!

[some seeing eye]

Agree. Digital video cameras without fragile tape are up there.

The tech trend is in low earth orbit satellites. They bring us Starlink, and there are competitors to that on the way. Today some phones can get a little data to the satellite if you point it. You can certainly get a good antenna if it is a little bigger and you have a bigger battery.

Other satellite constellations carry cameras. The lower the orbit, the better the picture. For example, Planetscope, 3 meters, is daily at a price. Real time lookdown for everyday people will come, and we can watch exodus while we are in it, even through the dust.

I'm not sure any of those are a greater good because the screen consumes our eyes when they could be experiencing beauty on the playa right in front of us.

The BORG BRC and ranch operations are dependent on the fragile microwave links, so this gives redundancy. Maybe the digital nomads will move to Gerlach to work remotely the rest of the year and spread some money around?

[Elorrum]

They make it sound like Gerlach is a little rural town where the school children, small businesses, and elderly need the good internet and net equality. Not that the entertainment venue offices need it or the bedroom community of the entertainment venue needs it. Or the summer customers, Or Fuse Battery Metals.

I agree the lack of cell phones and internet at Burning Man was a large plus to the experience.

[Skuzzy61]

Internet and cell service are some of the worst things to happen to Burning Man, but you can’t stop progress.

Nailed it.

[Token]

I’m thinking that geothermal plant and lithium brine sucking installation need reliable Internet …

… makes you go hmm …

[ygmir]

I’m thinking that geothermal plant and lithium brine sucking installation need reliable Internet …

… makes you go hmm …

the geothermal plant near Empire has been there for years, so I'd not feel it's related to any new plant. Satellite internet would serve any of them just fine, and for similar cost. To me, it's as simple as trying to get high speed to rural, isolated communities as a government program. Though, it may well change things there, since techies and work from homies could move out there. And, change the town, forever. Much like they've done here in my (formerly) little town.

[Elorrum]

To me, it's as simple as trying to get high speed to rural, isolated communities as a government program.

Oh… yeah that’s not a bad thing.

[Token]

I’m thinking that geothermal plant and lithium brine sucking installation need reliable Internet …

… makes you go hmm …

the geothermal plant near Empire has been there for years, so I'd not feel it's related to any new plant. Satellite internet would serve any of them just fine, and for similar cost. To me, it's as simple as trying to get high speed to rural, isolated communities as a government program. Though, it may well change things there, since techies and work from homies could move out there. And, change the town, forever. Much like they've done here in my (formerly) little town.

Oh, yeah … like CVIN got all that money in 2011 and by 2014 lit the fiber across 18 rural counties up highway 49 …

… ten years have passed and I’m still building 40’ towers to eek out 3 bars of cellular internet and clambering on the roof to get Starlink going …

But I will say that the Mokelumne Hill library is seriously lit up with great broadband!

The great lie of rural broadband. On paper we have been set for a decade. Just that little pesky thing about the last mile … that’s up to the county …

Big time broken.

Don’t sleep on the recently failed new geothermal and lithium mining project. That will eventually get pushed through.

Gerlach will transform, inevitably.

[some seeing eye]

The details are pdf files linked in this article under item 1: https://washoelife.washoecounty.gov/was ... eting-106/

Of course it took a year.

[Token]

The details are pdf files linked in this article under item 1: https://washoelife.washoecounty.gov/was ... eting-106/

Of course it took a year.

Hahahaha!

Broadband!

Project Title: Broadband Project that provides Lit Fiber (Mbps: 1 Gbps) from Nixon to the Gerlach Library

Imagine that! A whole gigabit for the library and town of Gerlach.

It is ~ 60 miles so at most one 3R regeneration with OS2 single mode, or if it’s good Corning 12 pair cable can probably push it without amplification or regen.

I hope they at least do the modern 24-strand cable. It’s like a buck a foot for the name brand.

This is too funny!

[some seeing eye]

12 strands for the library 36 for the provider. You want the contract link. It's all WDM and other advances, so you can put a lot of wavelengths on one fiber. The BORG has been loyal to HDISS for a long time. The cell on wheels, which is not controlled by the BLM or the BORG is placed on private land by Frog Pond and Commnet has contracted with HDISS in the past for backhaul. Someone would have to research who has the last mile spectrum licenses in the area, I believe Verizon is one from the Open BTS/Papa Legba camp. There is a lot of security through obscurity rightly, but it is an about 30 mile shot from the fiber to BRC, so you can see what kind of licensed and unlicensed radios can make that shot. At least there are no trees in the way!

[Token]

Got it!

Missed it when I looked via phone screen.

The MOU with the tribe tho is for 1Gb library connection. Guessing that’s just the start of service.

Good, a 48 strand is way better. With high powered 1550nm that can probably reach the 60 odd miles direct.

Yes, DWDM - in a past life I worked on that for the company that spun out of Stanford and commercialized it. Forgot more about that than most people should ever know. Real cool spacey math and science, that was.

802.17 was my gig at the time, turn of the millennium.

[Molotov]

I hope Gerlach has the same great fiber experience my area has. Five years ago, my town in rural Kansas was the beneficiary of a grant to bring broadband to rural America. Our local telephone co-op stepped up, laid fiber optic cable throughout town, including right up to my house. I have blazing fast speed and it only costs me $39 a month. I cut the TV/dish cable long ago, and now all my entertainment and news is through streaming services.

Prior to the arrival of fiber optic, internet was via line-of-sight radio waves, requiring a small directional dish antenna on subscribing homes, aimed at an antenna on top of the tallest structure in town, a local grain elevator. My town is only about a mile. Service was slow and sketchy at best (non existent in bad weather like heavy rain or snow), with the only alternative being expensive satellite systems like HughesNet or the pricey Starlink system.