Item — HN Reader

Palo Alto, if you can pick the right property, also has the benefit of metro fiber. If you can find a house or office on the right street (Waverly, a few others; ask at City Hall, the fiber utility guy is awesome), you can pay about $2-3k to get linked in, and then have your own fiber for $600/mo from home/office to PAIX. From there, it's pretty easy to get a wave crossconnect to one of the big datacenters in SF or the Peninsula.

For me, I'm willing to pay the extra $1k/mo to rent a house in Palo Alto vs. Mountain View or Menlo Park specifically so I can do this. Having fiber directly to your colo, when you're working on big data, moving virtual machines, etc., is amazing. If you live with cofounders and use it as an office, or live with 3-4 other people and split the cost, it really isn't that bad.

Otherwise, I look for Web Pass connected buildings up in SF, or buildings that have IP Networks fiber over PG&E. Those are mainly in SoMA, although some in the east bay around Emeryville/Berkeley/Oakland.

1 comments

oh man. do you have maps or other resources that describe where this sort of thing is available?

centered around university, waverly, and bryant.

I know 365 Forest (condo building) would have been about $3k to add, since the fiber was in the basement.

There is a utilities guy at city hall who has maps, but I don't have the current ones (I last checked in 2008).

When I move back to SFBA next year, I am either getting a house with fiber in PA, or a condo with IP Networks fiber up in 8th/Folsom area of SoMA. 10GE for the win

It would be an interesting niche to work with landlords to wire up their properties, set up some colo space, and rent out house + cage/racks + fiber on a quarterly basis to startup teams. I'd much prefer a (really nice) house, shared with team, to a bunch of crappy apartments, a daily commute, and an office-building office. Although at that point, fixed wireless becomes an option too..

http://www.cityofpaloalto.org/depts/utl/news/details.asp?New...

hm. I wonder if this is public data, and how many people would sue me if I went through the effort to dig it up and publish it? many price quotes in the co-location industry are protected by NDA... I wonder if fiber locations are too?

private fiber maps are sometimes kept private (post 9-11) on vague "anti-terrorism" grounds.

however, the palo alto metro fiber map is public. I just don't happen to have a copy on my iPad, sorry.

wow... this comment is hit 4 on my google search for "palo alto metro fiber map" and the rest seem to be fairly useless. I'll spend some time poking around and maybe contact the city after I sleep.

but thanks, this is useful.