I've been wondering lately if it's possible to have an Uber-style fiber service where people sign up to serve as nodes and then users pay a nearby node to connect. This would skirt what seems to be the major roadblock to installing fiber -- city regulations -- by having too many people running improvised fiber lines to enforce the rules. Is this just not possible?
Starting an Internet Service Provider
121–130 of 248 posts
Re: Starting an Internet Service Provider
#122I've been wondering lately if it's possible to have an Uber-style fiber service where people sign up to serve as nodes and then users pay a nearby node to connect. This would skirt what seems to be the major roadblock to installing fiber -- city regulations -- by having too many people running improvised fiber lines to enforce the rules. Is this just not possible?
You'd need some kind of mesh network, rather than a tree network to get anywhere near enough reliability. I'd also guess that passing through a node might cause some slowdowns that kinda stack up.
There still is a major privacy issue with peeps that are nodes. And maintenance is going to be a bitch.
That said, those are all hypotheticals. Don't let my imagination stop anyone trying this.
Re: Starting an Internet Service Provider
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
If he's using Level 3, he would have to have his own PI-IP block. I'd be interested to hear more about IPv4 and IPv6 in the small ISP world. With 50-100 clients, a single /24 block would serve his current client base.
Why is that? Level3 is one of my upstreams and I've had two /23s from them for a few years. I'm pretty sure they still have some addresses available, although they might be harder to get nowadays.
You can get provider-aggretable (PA) IP addresses from your ISP, but they can only be used with that ISP. You can also get provider-independent (PI) addresses, which you can use and move between ISPs with BGP. If they're using Zayo and Level 3 at the same time, you would need PI-IPs that you can move to the other ISP when one ISP is down.
Or, another option is that they're doing CGNAT on all of their client traffic.
Re: Starting an Internet Service Provider
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
> One other reason is that counties have the land rights. They negotiate with the big Telco's like Comcast, Verizon, Cox, Charter, etc and then issue a monopoly or duopoly in the county for a fixed period of time - usually 10 years at once. They do not do that. It's illegal under federal law. Pole and conduit owners are required to rent out access at non-discriminatory rates: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/4…
> They do not do that. It's illegal under federal law. But they most certainly can impose enough bureaucracy and other hurdles to make renting factually impossible. Or simply both the incumbent provider and the county employ just a single FTE (or less!) to handle permits, and one can't do anything about it. All while following the letter of the law, because there's nothing in the law that says "county has X days to d…
That feels easily litigated to me. The law probably makes some statement like 'will make available'. You then go to court showing that the opportunity to rent isn't available even though there technically is a service.
Re: Starting an Internet Service Provider
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
> we tried relentlessly to contact our local utilities to gain access to their underground conduit and was never able to get someone on the phone or even much of a response. I find that really hard to believe. Go to their offices and ask for the manager. > I eventually got to the point where I was like, "Fk it, I'll do it on my own." Now we're looking at microtrenching, which is probably an even larger endeavor, but…
Renting duct is $3/ft/year. That's $15,840 per mile per year. That's not including ~$30,000 to contract out the work (I was quoted $7/ft) and $5,000 that the utility charges to have someone on-site to oversee the operation. I've determined we can microtrench ourselves for between $30,000 and $40,000. I've been on contact with another ISP, https://tsi.io who has successfully done micro-trenching with very minimal capi…
Do you actually expect to turn a profit doing this? Seems like it will never pay for itself.
Re: Starting an Internet Service Provider
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thank you. I obviously completely agree; we tried relentlessly to contact our local utilities to gain access to their underground conduit and was never able to get someone on the phone or even much of a response. I eventually got to the point where I was like, "F k it, I'll do it on my own." Now we're looking at microtrenching, which is probably an even larger endeavor, but at least we'll own the conduit.
Become a CLEC. Or, more appropriately, I suppose: look into the benefits that being a CLEC would give you (in this regard) and consider if that's worth it for you.
That's in the works.
Re: Starting an Internet Service Provider
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
The majority of our customers are businesses paying >$100/m. Aside from that, I still work full-time as a Systems Engineer at USPS +$3,400/m after taxes.
Gotcha, this is really amazing, I've been thinking about doing something similar. Thanks for the write up!
The time to start an independent ISP was 20 years ago.
Re: Starting an Internet Service Provider
#128> I was starting an ISP, perhaps the most capital intense business on the planet
Semiconductor manufacturing is literally a million times more expensive (~3B investment in a new fab). The sentence I'm quoting doesn't appear to be intended as a joke.
Re: Starting an Internet Service Provider
#129Great read! I've always wanted to start one too. How did you go about the addressing? Did you purchase IP blocks from Zayo? If you could go technical it would be great.
I have a /24 from Zayo and a /23 from ARIN for IPv4. For IPv6 I have a /32 IPv6 from ARIN.
Re: Starting an Internet Service Provider
#130> I was starting an ISP, perhaps the most capital intense business on the planet Semiconductor manufacturing is literally a million times more expensive (~3B investment in a new fab). The sentence I'm quoting doesn't appear to be intended as a joke.
"perhaps" intended to mean, among the top*
But that's still debatable depending on what level of scale you're talking.
Deploying fiber throughout the entire United States, to every single household, would be near or exceed $1 Trillion. We have semiconductors in likely 99.99% of households now; at what cost? (I don't know, but I'd assume it's probably close.)