Hi all,
Some random observations following our field trip this afternoon.
+ The ground-level machine rooms are operated by Sky City, and not Sky
Tower -- hence we didn't get to see them. I will try to get access/
power/environmental details once I have a contact at the casino.
+ CLEAR, Telstra and Telecom all own fibre up the tower; the Sky Tower
people do not provide any fibre access (they just provide ducts).
+ There are three main types of colo floor on the tower:
o enclosed in metal, with access to external antennas (e.g. the Sky
Tower FM antennae or customer-mounted DMR dishes)
o enclosed in glass, behind which it is evidently practical to hang
KU-band, cellular and DMR antennae
o open to the elements, with weatherproof antennae and mounting
hardware
+ on the enclosed decks, full 2.7m cabinets are available, as well as
shared "community" cabinets (which are cheaper)
+ The tower colo decks are fed by two independent 10kW AC feeds from the
base, where each is backed up by three generators. No DC power is
available. There is a potential 15 second delay between an external
power feed failing and the generators cutting in, so usual practice is
to feed a UPS from both power busses, and to take AC or DC feeds off that
to power equipment.
+ All floors are ventillated (especially the ones that are open to the
elements :)
+ Access to the tower decks is supervised, and is available 24/7
+ The comms decks seem surprisingly empty (although we only looked in three
or four of them)
+ The tower is very, very tall, and you can see a long, long way from the
top of it (including down)
Prices for colo in the tower seem to vary according to what the application
is, rather than how much space you take up -- it's all very "supply and
demand".
Clearly colo in the tower does not necessarily make sense if we're
connecting routers together and using fibre back-haul; however, if some
people are serious about doing radio shots back to base we could arrange
a pair of 100baseT switches (one up the tower, one in the basement) joined
with independently-routed 100baseFX uplinks, so that people only have to
buy colo space in one place or the other.
I think it would be a good idea to have a get-together to talk about all
this, prior to Uniforum -- say at Galbraith's some time late next week?
How does Thursday evening at 7pm sound to anybody else?
If we can get a few people to agree to move on this, I think there is every
chance on getting this up and running in the next couple of months.
Joe
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