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Start Your Own ISP

startyourownisp.com

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Re: Start Your Own ISP

#141

Post by zimpenfish »

mseebach wrote: post #139
NotSammyHagar wrote: post #53

Wow, this is fascinating! I would love to invest and start a wireless ISP on the eastside of Seattle. Suppose you have an area that is flat with lots of exposure, where everyone hates Comcast (maybe that last part is superfluous). I would think you'd find plenty of programmer customers if you have a say 200 mbit wireless connection without bandwidth caps (or maybe something insane like 10 tb/month). This seems like a…

It seems like there'd be a market for a "ISPaaS" style company. This company would consult on the setup, in the style of this guide, but would remote-admin all the gear, keep track of updates, security settings, make sure everything is documented, run 24/7 NOC monitoring, spot bottlenecks early and recommend upgrades, review site access contracts (or provide standard contracts), run billing and customer service etc.…

> It seems like there'd be a market for a "ISPaaS" style company.

A few UK companies (easynet springs to mind) had "virtual ISPs" where you pay to use all their infrastructure (hosting, email, dialup, etc.) and get branded pages / etc.

I don't think any of them have survived to the modern era though.

Re: Start Your Own ISP

#142

Post by simonpantzare »

Brings back memories. 15 or so years ago in rural Sweden, me and some friends were frustrated about only having access to 56 k. There was this local networking guy who set up the networks at local LAN parties that we asked for help. It ended up with the brave one of us climbing a local mast to see how many roofs we could see. Then we called the mast/tower owner to ask what it would cost to put some equipment there. We could see around 20 roofs and it would cost ~2k USD/mo. On top of that we'd have to pay for other equipment of course. We figured it wouldn't be worth it really.

Years later we got ADSL but last year they cut the copper wires and now wireless (up to 4G) is the only option, and it works so so.

There's kind of a battle going on between proper fiber (realistic because of subsidies/EU grants) and WISP proponents currently. Marketers of the latter like to call it "air fiber" but that's not really fair IMHO.

Re: Start Your Own ISP

#143

Post by Gnarl »

lambdas wrote: post #137
Gnarl wrote: post #136

Hate to be the grumpy uncle at the party, but seriously, you don't want to build a business on microwave radiation based wireless. Why? Its a potent biological toxin and the wireless industry is just walking dead until Governments are forced to shut them down to prevent getting bankrupted through cost to the health-care system. The scientific evidence is abundant and its strong. Countries are already passing laws to…

Do you have a link to the scientific evidence? I've never heard this before. Don't want to dismiss it as tin-foil paranoia without reading the data!

The U.S. is famously behind on this issue, Europe far ahead.

For starters: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26151230 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26300312

then: http://microwavenews.com/news-center/ntp-cancer-results

and: http://www.bioinitiative.org/table-of-contents/

Re French law against Wifi in daycare centers: http://www.lemonde.fr/planete/article/2015/01/29/une-loi-pou... Belgium bans sale of cellphones to children: https://www.rtbf.be/info/belgique/detail_gsm-potentiellement...

Re: Start Your Own ISP

#144

Post by larrydag »

grahamburger wrote: post #26
omot wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey Graham. Do you pay Comcast/AT&T to connect to their ISPs? If so how much? What is the benefit of setting up your own ISP if you need to connect to one of these giants anyways.

In some cases yes you are buying an upstream connection from Comcast/AT&T/Centurylink/etc. I actually have a note about that specifically on the site, as it happens! ( https://startyourownisp.com/posts/fiber-provider/#overview second paragraph) Things to note - you're not buying a regular residential or even a business line, you're (usually) buying a dedicated Internet Access line and dealing with an entirely differe…

That is a really interesting nugget of information. Does this mean that a neighborhood could build a co-op ISP and share the costs?

Re: Start Your Own ISP

#145

Post by nerflad »

joejohnson wrote: post #17
neosavvy wrote: post #5

This reminds me of these guys out in Brooklyn building out a sick fiber network. http://bkfiber.com/ They have some of the fastest speeds in NYC and they had uptime surpassing numerous big names like Spectrum and Optimum after Sandy.

Their speeds don't seem very fast: http://bkfiber.com/plans-service-areas.php With Verizon Fios you can get 100 Mbps symmetric at $80/month. (Also, why are bkfiber's speeds not symmetric? I thought all fiber connections had upload == download.)

Wow, $75 for 15/3... I wish them well but that is seriously not competitive at all.

Re: Start Your Own ISP

#146

Post by zero_intp »

larrydag wrote: post #144
grahamburger wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some cases yes you are buying an upstream connection from Comcast/AT&T/Centurylink/etc. I actually have a note about that specifically on the site, as it happens! ( https://startyourownisp.com/posts/fiber-provider/#overview second paragraph) Things to note - you're not buying a regular residential or even a business line, you're (usually) buying a dedicated Internet Access line and dealing with an entirely differe…

That is a really interesting nugget of information. Does this mean that a neighborhood could build a co-op ISP and share the costs?

yes.

Re: Start Your Own ISP

#147

Post by magneticmagnum »

grahamburger wrote: post #8

Hey everyone! Author here. Happy to answer questions. Thanks for posting @tomcam! Just a quick note about me - I currently work with the great folks at common.net running an ISP that is similar but not exactly like what's described here. Look us up if you're in East Bay maybe we can get you better Internet service! This site is not associated with common.net, though.

Hi Graham, thanks for authoring and sharing such an interesting topic!

My main question is, how is the latency of these wireless networks? How well do these roof antennas perform in rain or covered in snow?

Is gaming suitable with wireless ISPs such as common.net?

And finally, what are the biggest complaints from your customers?

Re: Start Your Own ISP

#148

Post by lucb1e »

grahamburger wrote: post #89
thom_nic wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I noticed on [1] that you list 8.8.9.9 as Google's DNS server. Did you mean 8.8.4.4? If I `dig @8.8.9.9 ..` I get no response. [1] https://startyourownisp.com/posts/build-your-infrastructure/

Woops I think so! Thanks nice catch!

Why use Google DNS? We have no idea what's being done with the data, and 'apt install bind9' + two configuration options is enough to run your own.

Re: Start Your Own ISP

#149

Post by loooooooooooool »

mhasbini wrote: post #124
grahamburger wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(author here) My experience has been that if you're up front with the police about what you're doing they won't beat your door down and haul you away. What usually happens is that the police look up the IP address they've identified as a problem and then check the ARIN database to see who owns it. ARIN is going to give them the name of the ISP not of the subscriber, so they're accustomed to then calling the ISP to su…

Thanks for your great work! > In the past what I've seen is that the police will ask you to identify who was using an IP and also to help them catch the person in the act if they do the thing again What's the method to catch the person in the act? Is it something like creating a rule: "if [this website] was visited between [foo] and [bar] notify me" at the routing level?

DPI?

Re: Start Your Own ISP

#150

Post by loooooooooooool »

vvanders wrote: post #109
grahamburger wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe you could put a ham radio up there but it's quite expensive - most tower contracts I've seen are $1200-$2500/month. Also if the tower is already full (at it's structural capacity for wind loading) then you would have to pay for upgrades before you could hang your HAM (which would be tremendously expensive!)

Uf! Yeah, that's pretty spendy but not out of line with what I expected. Very cool though, always awesome to hear how this stuff works in practice.

spendy? Do you mean expensive?
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