> over $30,000 for each of those homes to get served This doesn't seem very efficient to me.
At $55/mo, he'll start making a profit in 45 years.
Man who built ISP instead of paying Comcast $50K expands to hundreds of homes
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Re: Man who built ISP instead of paying Comcast $50K expands to hundreds of homes
#12I'm going to put my hand up and say I have absolutely no idea how an ISP works. He runs cables to each house in the area... now where does the other end go?
Not sure if it’s what the person in question did, but there’s a whole guide that pops up on here occasionally regarding building a wireless ISP.
Re: Man who built ISP instead of paying Comcast $50K expands to hundreds of homes
#13A couple of fun facts about this guy: His little ISP is AS267, which is a SHOCKINGLY low number. That's like.. the ISP equiv of a 4 digit slashdot id, or owning something like sodapop.com. He's also one of the authors of RFC 5575, which is a pretty big deal in the DDoS world.
I recognized his name from providing hosting for the outages.org list[0] – if you haven't subscribed, and you do anything operations at all, go hit the button now.
Re: Man who built ISP instead of paying Comcast $50K expands to hundreds of homes
#14> over $30,000 for each of those homes to get served This doesn't seem very efficient to me.
To say the least, it's more about siphoning public taxes
I don't understand this sentiment. Taxes are levied to then pay for things such as infrastructure which this qualifies as. How else should this work?
Re: Man who built ISP instead of paying Comcast $50K expands to hundreds of homes
#15> Comcast once told him it would charge $50,000 to extend its cable network to his house—and that he would have gone with Comcast if they only wanted $10,000. Starts his own company and finds out it costs $30,000 to do it. You need big trucks, drills, excavating equipment, skilled union workers making good wages, safety concerns around water, gas, sewer, electrical and other communication lines, you can't mess up peo…
Its so expensive that Comcast only made a profit of 42 Billion in 2021, while providing a lower quality of service than what a small ISP in Michigan can give you for a one time 2M in government grants.
Re: Man who built ISP instead of paying Comcast $50K expands to hundreds of homes
#16> over $30,000 for each of those homes to get served This doesn't seem very efficient to me.
If utilities are underground, it can be pretty expensive to install anything. I have an estimate for municipal fiber that's about that much to get fiber a mile or two down the street overhead, and then about that much to go down my driveway underground 400 feet.
It's hard to justify when the local phone company is probably going to roll out fiber in the next few years without a direct charge, at least for the portion on the street. Of course, that'll probably be PPPoE, maybe asymetrical, likely limited to 1G, etc. Comcast won't even quote me to come down my driveway, even though they serve my neighbor across the street from the pole at the corner of my driveway.
Re: Man who built ISP instead of paying Comcast $50K expands to hundreds of homes
#17> over $30,000 for each of those homes to get served This doesn't seem very efficient to me.
At $55/mo, he'll start making a profit in 45 years.
From the article: he had $2.6MM in help from the "American Rescue Plan's Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds".
He's being paid by the government to bring Internet access to homes in the state that aren't currently wired for it.
Re: Man who built ISP instead of paying Comcast $50K expands to hundreds of homes
#18I'm going to put my hand up and say I have absolutely no idea how an ISP works. He runs cables to each house in the area... now where does the other end go?
Not sure if it’s what the person in question did, but there’s a whole guide that pops up on here occasionally regarding building a wireless ISP. https://startyourownisp.com/
I can't find any section of that guide that talks about peering or whatever ISPs are supposed to do to connect to the broader internet. Do you see any step that explains this?
Re: Man who built ISP instead of paying Comcast $50K expands to hundreds of homes
#19A couple of fun facts about this guy: His little ISP is AS267, which is a SHOCKINGLY low number. That's like.. the ISP equiv of a 4 digit slashdot id, or owning something like sodapop.com. He's also one of the authors of RFC 5575, which is a pretty big deal in the DDoS world.
I don't know (or care) about how he got that ASN but ARIN does occasionally recycle returned 3 or 4 digit ASN's, including very recently:
20220607|arin|US|asn|888|1|assigned|66e25d155d3f3d57ff208733b59f8cc8
20220607|arin|US|asn|889|1|assigned|5b048aafff56a02f895e68ac5188853b
20220607|arin|US|asn|890|1|assigned|708d3f11915973323c76a5f95fa2d775
20220607|arin|US|asn|891|1|assigned|ab9bfca0becd32b7fe44c7ea0ba1aac3
20220607|arin|US|asn|892|1|assigned|0b9118a23862aab1647fd26939f7b219
20220607|arin|US|asn|893|1|assigned|57d59e6dfd1cd07523724f9cf5fc572b
20220607|arin|US|asn|894|1|assigned|0a932835b90a81bffeb1539b4bc93040
There is also a market for reselling ASN's that aren't needed anymore: https://auctions.ipv4.global (filter by ASN)
Re: Man who built ISP instead of paying Comcast $50K expands to hundreds of homes
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
To say the least, it's more about siphoning public taxes
I don't understand this sentiment. Taxes are levied to then pay for things such as infrastructure which this qualifies as. How else should this work?
You are a private person and you choose to live deep in the country-side / on a desert / on an island / remote location / deep in the forest.
Who should pay for your road, your electricity, your water, your internet connection when you are the one mostly benefiting from it ?
Taxes have to be used primarily with the goal to maximize public interest, not the interests of single private persons.
Perhaps a Starlink connection would have been enough for them and perfectly fine if it's a single family.
Could there have been alternatives that maximize coverage ? For example, by supporting deployment of 5G antennas as public infrastructure (thus, benefiting the whole area).
This family doesn't necessarily need a single fiber cable to reach their house.