Starting an Internet Service Provider • Hacker News Board

Re: Starting an Internet Service Provider

#161

Post by piker » Tue, Feb 21, 2017, 1:13 AM UTC

shambolic wrote: post #135

rocqua wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I'd also guess that passing through a node might cause some slowdowns that kinda stack up. Not really. Fiber has bandwidth to spare. It might add some latency tho, if there are a lot of hops. > There still is a major privacy issue with peeps that are nodes. Encryption is a thing. > And maintenance is going to be a bitch. Yes.

Is it possible to encrypt the destination and source IP in a packet header? Honest question, and, if not, it seems like arbitrary nodes could monitor traffic to and from neighboring nodes and their source/destinations.

Re: Starting an Internet Service Provider

#162

Post by dboreham » Tue, Feb 21, 2017, 1:21 AM UTC

I feel I need to write the inverse article "Stopping an Internet Service Provider", since I just shut down mine.

Although this stuff can be great fun, you have to stop and ask yourself why the market is "under served" and why there isn't already some dude supplying these customers, driving around the city in his Lexus and waxing his new boat on the weekends.

The unfortunate truth is that there just isn't that great a business there, especially in light of its quite high capital costs and quite significant risks.

It is a business that suits larger players who can spread the fixed costs across many cities. It is a business that suits providers offering a basket of services, not just IP transit (TV, Phone, value-added network services). It is a business that demands either a) high price boutique offerings (e.g. the people you end up buying your upstream connectivity from) or b) rock-bottom/who-cares-about-quality, high-volume products (e.g. Charter/Comcast). A small new player can't compete in either of those markets.

I could go on, but really : would you be super-excited if you had the idea to build better electricity transmission lines to a bunch of folk; or a better sewer system? No. And the reality is that IP connectivity is not much different to these other utilities.

Re: Starting an Internet Service Provider

#163

Post by angryredblock » Tue, Feb 21, 2017, 1:35 AM UTC

Would love to see more details on what actually goes down on the nitty gritty level -- it sounds like the business hemorrhaged money for quite some time and given that you didn't have investment it'd be great to know how you got from there to having the capital on-hand to start running fiber.

Re: Starting an Internet Service Provider

#164

Post by ng-user » Tue, Feb 21, 2017, 1:46 AM UTC

dboreham wrote: post #162

I feel I need to write the inverse article "Stopping an Internet Service Provider", since I just shut down mine. Although this stuff can be great fun, you have to stop and ask yourself why the market is "under served" and why there isn't already some dude supplying these customers, driving around the city in his Lexus and waxing his new boat on the weekends. The unfortunate truth is that there just isn't that great a…

If you ever get the time, I'd love a written response similar to the OP detailing the contrary.

Re: Starting an Internet Service Provider

#165

Post by dsl » Tue, Feb 21, 2017, 1:46 AM UTC

chrishacken wrote: post #8

patrickg_zill wrote: post #5

I've seen a possibly related issue with static electricity in a large building in PA that had 3 power feeds, after lightning we would have ethernet port problems. I would suggest that you declare a 2am Thursday maintenance window and use a script to automatically reboot all the devices. This in combination with checking that you have a good separate ground wire connection at all antenna locations should pretty much f…

That sounds like a great idea. I've actually debated doing this before, but I wasn't sure if the service disruption was worth it considering it happens maybe once every other month and sporadically at that.

I did a bunch of ISP builds in my younger days. It is worth while to see if you can horse trade some internet for an electrician with tower experience (or a real RF engineer) to help you.

As other commenters have suggested, check your ground potential and make corrections as necessary.

Re: Starting an Internet Service Provider

#166

Post by dsl » Tue, Feb 21, 2017, 1:47 AM UTC

trafficlight wrote: post #28

Fantastic write up, Chris. Chris has been hanging out with us (Treasure State Internet, our startup ISP in Montana) in a Slack channel called ISP School. If you're interested in any aspect of starting and running an ISP, please join us. http://slack.tsi.io/#ispschool

I think if your slack instance is a "community/group" there is no limit on users. It is only when you jump over to the paid plans.

Re: Starting an Internet Service Provider

#167

Post by zer0t3ch » Tue, Feb 21, 2017, 1:52 AM UTC

popey456963 wrote: post #78

trafficlight wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would work too.

Would definitely recommend Discord, although it's aimed at gamers, it seems to be an amazing all-round chat service. Rooms are of an unlimited size and have all the core functionality like file & image sharing, code highlighting, "reactions", which we've come to expect but also focuses more on getting people to speak to each other. It's built on electron and is both really quick & also require almost no resources whe…

It has code highlighting? This is news to me.

Re: Starting an Internet Service Provider

#168

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Feb 21, 2017, 1:58 AM UTC

cgh wrote: post #158

vflagr wrote: post #10

This was a super interesting read. The one thing I never fail to get over though is how expensive internet is in the states. In the UK you can get 200/20 for about £58 p/m including TV & Phone. I couldn't imagine paying nearly $100 p/m for 100mbps.

The much slower upload speed means your download is bottlenecked (tcp ACKs). A lot of providers offer such asymmetry because it works well for video (udp) but otherwise it's not the great deal you might think it is. As another point of reference, I live in semi-rural Canada about an hour from a major city and have 150/150 fibre for CDN$85/month.

[deleted]

Re: Starting an Internet Service Provider

#169

Post by chrishacken » Tue, Feb 21, 2017, 2:08 AM UTC

dboreham wrote: post #162

I feel I need to write the inverse article "Stopping an Internet Service Provider", since I just shut down mine. Although this stuff can be great fun, you have to stop and ask yourself why the market is "under served" and why there isn't already some dude supplying these customers, driving around the city in his Lexus and waxing his new boat on the weekends. The unfortunate truth is that there just isn't that great a…

> No. And the reality is that IP connectivity is not much different to these other utilities.

I understand where you're coming from, but it is different. You have ample power to power your home; utilities can fulfill whatever your power requirements are.

The same can't be said about IP. I am literally incapable of live streaming from my parents house, no matter how much I'm willing to pay. There's no internet option, among the few available, that are capable of fulfilling my requirements.

Re: Starting an Internet Service Provider

#170

Post by zer0t3ch » Tue, Feb 21, 2017, 2:41 AM UTC

chrishacken wrote: post #61

soheil wrote: post #57

Trying to figure out how 50 customers make it profitable enough for him to be laying fiber etc. Even if it costs $100/mo that's only $5000, half of which just goes for his office rent. Also WebPass in SF is very similar those guys are awesome, can't live without them, one of the reasons I always choose soma skyscrapers to live in.

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.

> I still work full-time as a Systems Engineer

I hope then that you're not the only person working at NEPA Fiber. How many employees do you have?