Location of NZ Fiber backbone

Forums › New Zealand Broadband › Location of NZ Fiber backbone

1 | 2

tweake

2647 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 1138

#3261067 18-Jul-2024 16:05

Scott3:

In terms of the big 10MW+ data center's, currently we have three in Auckland, and one in Hamilton.

Seems that massing around major population centers, and international cable landing points is the way to go.

Interesting development is the Intelia Te Waipounamu cable, which is targeting commissioning in 2026. Will connect with ~25ms ping the two biggest Aussie cities (large population base) with the bottom of the south island (cool temperatures + masses of cheap, reliable & Green power).

isn't there a data center going in at Invercargill ?

GV27

5977 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 4212

#3261076 18-Jul-2024 16:52

Pretty sure it comes up down the road from me in West Auckland.

Could run some CAT5 down the side of the road for you but the airforce lads might get a bit concerned.

djtOtago

1181 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 605

#3261145 18-Jul-2024 19:01

tweake:

isn't there a data centre going in at Invercargill?

T4 Group and DataGrid are looking at putting Data Centers in Southland

https://www.odt.co.nz/southland/southland-express/data-centre-location-be-released-soon

https://www.odt.co.nz/regions/southland/work-start-50m-southland-data-centre

https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/127020332/land-bought-for-1-billion-bid-to-turn-southland-into-global-it-hub

BUT

There is some doubt about some projects.

Meridian voices doubt over Southland data centre after Remi Galasso quits venture | Stuff

Edit:

And one that has already failed

Clyde data centre company in liquidation | Crux - Local News - Queenstown, Wānaka and Cromwell.

Scotdownunder

225 posts

Master Geek
+1 received by user: 108

Subscriber

#3261174 18-Jul-2024 20:33

Note that when you talk about the core backbone fibre, it most likely using a multi-channel long-haul DWDM system on a single fibre pair, i.e. ten to hundreds of 40 / 100 GBit channels over hundreds of km.

If your data centre is more than a few km from a backbone node (as illustrated in the core network schematic) then you will probably also want to use some form of DWDM system so only need a few fibres and distance becomes less of an issue. The distances quoted in the table are really only applicable to short inter-building links across the city from the backbone nodes.

You will need to talk to Spark and the big ISPs to find out what networks they have and where their nodes are.

BarTender

3629 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 2572

ID Verified

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#3261183 18-Jul-2024 21:36

Getting dark fibre between cities hasn't been a thing for quite a few years now.

These days there is "OTN" or Optical Network Transport where the services you pay for are then multiplexed into higher speed connections.

Have a chat with a Spark/One/Vocus/Wholesaler of your choosing about how much capacity you need 10G/100G/400G.. and be sure to be sitting down before reading the quote. They won't tell you where the fibres run along the railway tracks or by the motorway as there are anti-5G cooker luddites who like creating work for fibre splicing teams.

But what they will do is give you a response time in milliseconds that they will guarantee.

Have a read from Alcatel/Lucent/Nokia what they are doing:

https://www.nokia.com/networks/optical-networks/1830-pss-x-p-otn-switching/

Most people just want a fast IP pipe as that is what most things talk these days so Carrier Ethernet is more what people want.

ezbee

2656 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 3098

#3261424 19-Jul-2024 13:22

The Clyde project.
Its fascinating that they can get so close to commissioning, containers on site, then poof, its over...
Must be a lot of sunk cost.

Clyde data centre company in liquidation | Crux - Local News - Queenstown, Wānaka and Cromwell.

Though it seems a large part was intended for cryptocurrency mining?

For crypto I would imagine.
If you are not getting a super sweet power deal like the smelter, or much better.
Reality of economics and your yield compared with elsewhere would bite hard.

Exacerbated by Bitcoin slump at time of collapse, now its going back up to historic levels again?

They also 'had' an Ohio venture linked to a Nuclear Power station
https://blockworks.co/news/nuclear-bitcoin-mining-hits-snag

Apparently Russia has rapidly expanded crypto mining for 'reasons'.
Now jumped to number 2 globally in coin mining.

Samsung

Shop now on Samsung phones, tablets, TVs and more (affiliate link).

noroad

1025 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 675

Trusted

#3261447 19-Jul-2024 14:29

From someone who does this for a living, make contact with someone like myself who has experience with the countries telecommunications networks. This is not something you can open source with some Googling. I have seen more that one DC put in places with bad connectivity and regret it when they learn how much connectivity is going to cost and others are not interested in paying the price to connect to them.

bigalow

568 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 112

#3261487 19-Jul-2024 16:57

i renenber there was a site thay had good info ispmap.co.nz

but they closed it down

Scott3

4177 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 2990

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#3262656 22-Jul-2024 10:35

ezbee:

The Clyde project.
Its fascinating that they can get so close to commissioning, containers on site, then poof, its over...
Must be a lot of sunk cost.

Clyde data centre company in liquidation | Crux - Local News - Queenstown, Wānaka and Cromwell.

Though it seems a large part was intended for cryptocurrency mining?

For crypto I would imagine.
If you are not getting a super sweet power deal like the smelter, or much better.
Reality of economics and your yield compared with elsewhere would bite hard.

Exacerbated by Bitcoin slump at time of collapse, now its going back up to historic levels again?

They also 'had' an Ohio venture linked to a Nuclear Power station
https://blockworks.co/news/nuclear-bitcoin-mining-hits-snag

Apparently Russia has rapidly expanded crypto mining for 'reasons'.
Now jumped to number 2 globally in coin mining.

Amazing to see this go bust, just 6 - 8 weeks prior to completion. Goodnews was that there were not outstanding debts form the NZ partner company:

https://centralapp.nz/NewsStory/no-outstanding-debt-owed-by-liquidated-company/63f19a8f0c0619002a288f98

Yeah, the parent company went bust, coinciding with a bit dip in bitcoin price. I'm not expert on mining, but note that even though the current price of bitcoin is pretty high, there has been a "halving" of payout to miners between now and then.

https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/crypto-firm-lake-parime-calls-in-administrators-sold-to-statar-mining/

Cryptomining firm Lake Parime has called in administrators and been sold to Statar Mining.

Lake Parime pitched itself as a way to use excess renewable energy to power computer hardware. The company’s modular 'Powerbox' data centers could run high-performance computing applications like machine learning, visualization, modeling, and - of course - blockchain and cryptocurrency.

....

“Over the past 12 months, the value of the Group’s recently-acquired specialist bitcoin mining hardware decreased due to its intrinsic link to the price of Bitcoin,” Interpath said, adding that “a number of projects” where some investment had been made by the company fell away, leaving LP with legacy liabilities and “facing an immediate cash crisis”.

Latest google earth images (dec 2023) show the site still set up, but I haven't heard any news of it being operated by anybody.

Kind of feel that NZ's power is not quite cheap enough to justify such projects (or course prior to the smelter canceling their panned closer, lower south island generators may have been willing to offer very attractive longer term fixed power prices than they would be willing to now).

Scott3

4177 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 2990

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#3262658 22-Jul-2024 10:38

Just wanted to say thank you to everybody for your comments.

Some of the major players in the connectivity space have been happy to speak with me, and there is a wealth of non-public data.

raytaylor

4076 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 1296

Trusted

#3263171 22-Jul-2024 20:28

For cheap electricity you would probably want to go to invercargil.

There is a landing station for an NZ<>AUS cable nearby.

Alternatively auckland or hamilton for proximity to the southern cross cable and its replacement.
Near almost every chorus exchange in every major city there will be Chorus, FX (Vocus) and Telstra Clear (Vodafone) fiber.

If building a datacentre you will want connectivity to all three fiber backbone operators.

I dont know much about spark longhaul fibre but i understand they only really offer much diversification where chorus has limited pairs so they have built their own in places like taranaki.

If you are outside of auckland then you can have a selling point as an option for diversification.
That is if a company already exists in an auckland DC, you can sell them backup facilities against a natural disaster in the auckland region. Hamilton might be far enough away for this. Another option might be somewhere near turangi for proximity to electricity generation and fiber operators.

Ray Taylor

There is no place like localhost

Spreadsheet for Comparing Electricity Plans Here

Quic Broadband

Move to New Zealand's best fibre broadband service (affiliate link). Free setup code: R587125ERQ6VE. Note that to use Quic Broadband you must be comfortable with configuring your own router.

olivernz

512 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 177

ID Verified

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#3288494 1-Oct-2024 11:00

The motorway fibre -as far as I know- is for roading infrastructure only and generally doesn't offer dark fibre.

I've always been a fan of DC's in the south because with the smelter being EoL at some point there is oodles of cheap power available and less power needed due to colder temps. So let's get that undersea cable in! ;-)

MichaelNZ

1594 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 485

Trusted

Net Trust Ltd

#3299243 20-Oct-2024 20:08

Scott3:

Wondering if anybody could point me to a resource where I can map NZ land based fiber backbone network.

For context I am looking into evaluating some site's for development viability for 10MW+ data centers. Not sure exactly what the needs would be, but I assume it's a few hundred Gbit/s, with redundant feeds coming from different places.

There is fibre almost everywhere around NZ. This doesn't mean you will get access to it on a viable basis, if at all.

I work in this industry and have seen the uphill road for a DC to get established. Its not just power and fibre. In my opinion those are the easier parts. The harder part is trying to convince clients to come. To get clients you need connectivity and to get connectivity you need clients. Catch 22.

I have had more then one DC offer us space so cheap it may as well have been free. We still turned it down.

Why? Because we went to, and stayed at, where everyone else was at. So we didn't have to trunk everything in.

Then there is the other catch 22. DC's cost a lot of money on an ongoing basis and to fund that you need a lot of clients.

You haven't said what the DC's are for so maybe you don't need tenants. But if you do, think this through very carefully.

The other major hurdle you will face is lack of competition.

Build in the wrong place and yeah, you may get fibre to it, but they know where its competitive and where not, and quote you accordingly.

WFH Linux Systems and Networks Engineer in the Internet industry | Specialising in Mikrotik | APNIC member | Open to job offers | ZL2NET

noroad

1025 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 675

Trusted

#3299803 22-Oct-2024 10:46

raytaylor:

For cheap electricity you would probably want to go to invercargil.

There is a landing station for an NZ<>AUS cable nearby.

Alternatively auckland or hamilton for proximity to the southern cross cable and its replacement.

There is no international cable landing station in the South Island. There is talk of one that possibly might happen but most proposed cables never happen. Soutern cross does not go anywhere near Hamilton, it comes in at Muriwai and Takapua beaches in Auckland. The TGA cable comes in at Raglan and then connects to Caro st exchange in Hamilton.

1 | 2