It isn’t necessary for any user to have knowledge of exactly how the YS fiber network is laid out and how it connects to the rest of the world. But I find it interesting to get some idea of just how this stuff works and I’ll try to give you some idea of just how robust the network and its connections to the wider world are.

The physical aspects of the fiber build-out are covered pretty well in my postings, as listed in the left-hand column. This fiber is being built out, according to the installers I’ve talked with, to support 10 gb, up from the current 1 gb maximum. Each user’s ONT has a burned-in address that allows the switching gear at MVECA (located on the western edge of YS, at E Enon Rd) to route traffic to the proper ONT.

Each ONT is assigned an external IP address out of MVECA’s pool. For example, my ONT’s IP address is 199.18.59.55, which is part of a large pool of addresses registered to OARNET. You can find out your ONT’s IP address here. If you use checkhost to check on your address you’ll get a screen that looks something like (click to enlarge):

If you try to “ping” your address it will answer from anywhere in the world, with good response times and reliability. More details can be found here.

I am presuming that MVECA has run fiber to Dayton (and maybe elsewhere as well, need to ask Thor about this) to connect to OARnet. OARnet has an Ohio-wide network of 100 gb fibers between major Ohio cities as shown:

OARnet is in turn connected to Internet2, which is a nationwide network serving a wide variety of educational and other users.

There is one interesting consequence of topology that you will likely notice when going to the web site of a national chain, like Lowe’s or Home Depot. They will typically use what they see as your IP address to figure out where you are located, so they can direct you to the nearest store. For example, some stores saw my Spectrum address/location as being in Springfield, OH, while others see somewhere in KY. For the YS fiber network I seemed to have moved to Chicago. You can see in the above map where internet2 may well connect to the larger internet in Chicago.