Maps of the 204 metro fiber networks in the continental US used in our study. Magnified areas shown include Portland, Chicago, Phoenix, and Miami
Optical fiber deployments in metropolitan areas are critical for information distribution to businesses and large segments of the population. In this paper, we describe a characterization study of metropolitan area fiber networks in the US. The goal of our work is to elucidate the key aspects of these infrastructures and to assess how they can be enhanced to support growth in cloud-mobile via expanded connectivity to data centers. We collect maps of 204 metro fiber networks and transcribe these into a geographic information system for analysis and visualization. We report on characteristics including raw miles, geography, proximity to users, correspondence to other infrastructure and PoP/data center proximity. These characteristics indicate highly diverse deployments in different metro areas and suggest different strategies for future deployments. Next, we conduct a resource allocation analysis to assess how fiber infrastructure can be deployed in metro areas to reduce the physical distance to data centers over a range of cost scenarios. Our results show that a small number of new connections to data centers can significantly reduce physical distances to users.