Sonic.net

Hey there!

We are fortunate to have solar + batteries at our house, so we have been able to stay up during these multi-day outages in Redwood City recently. Amazingly, Sonic has been pretty much rock solid. Curious about this... Is this because it's a pure optical connection from our home all the way to the CO? Like... the strand of fiber that goes to our house... does it not have any electrical boosting or anything like that? Just goes on its own fiber all the way to the CO, so as long as the CO is up, our connection is up?

Or is it some other reason that it's been reliable, like backup power on power poles or something?

I'd love to understand how this works. Thanks!

Yes, it's a passive optical network (PON), so there are no electronics in the outside plant. As long as the CO has power, your connection should remain online. (And the CO should really never lose power, it has huge on-site batteries, plus generators and on-site fuel storage.)

* Narrow exception: there are three Sonic fiber locations where the optical link budget (the amount of light over distance) was insufficient to allow direct service out of the CO. A small outside plant "CO" cabinet is used in these sites. These street-side cabinets have their own batteries and a generator plug point but no generator - we have to hustle out to them with a generator truck if/when there is a power outage. Currently, the only city where these cabinet-based deployments have been used is Brentwood in the East Bay, where a little over 60% of the homes there are served are connected to a small CO cabinet instead of the actual CO. The remainder connect directly to the CO. All other residential services in all other cities are currently served exclusively out of large conventional CO buildings.

Can I ask what CO stands for? Is it Corporate Office? I'm new to fiber optic and just wanted to make sure it wasn't some industry terminology that I'm unaware of.

CO = "Central Office." The term is from the old days, where all the telephone wiring in a town went to a single building where the switchboard, and later, the telephone switch, directs phone calls.

Today's COs usually have more than just phone lines. As we've seen, they can also be the hub for fiber networks.

rubens wrote:Can I ask what CO stands for? Is it Corporate Office? I'm new to fiber optic and just wanted to make sure it wasn't some industry terminology that I'm unaware of.

Hey there,

Sorry about the confusion it is a bit of industry terminology. CO stands for "Central Office" and it's the building where all the local Internet Service Providers store all of their back-end equipment that supplies service throughout the city.

brandonc wrote:

rubens wrote:Can I ask what CO stands for? Is it Corporate Office? I'm new to fiber optic and just wanted to make sure it wasn't some industry terminology that I'm unaware of.

Hey there,

Sorry about the confusion it is a bit of industry terminology. CO stands for "Central Office" and it's the building where all the local Internet Service Providers store all of their back-end equipment that supplies service throughout the city.

Telecom carriers use the shared central office - but many ISPs do not. This is because access to these facilities is limited to telecom local exchange carriers (LECs), incumbents (ILECs) and competitors (CLECs) alike. But ISPs including wireless providers (WISPs) and Cable TV companies (multichannel video programming distributors or MVPDs) do not have regulated access to the facilities.

Local COs are a great resource. They’re secure facilities with ample battery backup and diesel power generation, designed to provide “five nines” or better level reliability. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_av ... alculation

For more on COs, see: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_exchange

Thank you for the clarification and additional information.