Average cost of ~ $40k per connection to the government. How is this better than Starlink?
Man who built ISP instead of paying Comcast $50K expands to hundreds of homes
351–360 of 439 posts
Re: Man who built ISP instead of paying Comcast $50K expands to hundreds of homes
#352I greatly respect the initiative and scrappy-ness of someone doing this. And the legacy providers are clearly sitting on their monopoly position in a way that makes their pathetic alternative so starkly unattractive. But isn't it also true that once his network grows above a certain customer base (and gets into the maintenance phase), he will start to see all the effects that eat into being able to do this cheaply? N…
I'm going to skate past the fact that difficult customers and maintenance aren't why monopolies are expensive, in fact they're the things that are most amenable to economies of scale, so bigger gets cheaper . The real question is: why does he have to get larger than the 600 homes in his nearby rural area, ever? Why does his goal have to be to defeat and replace Comcast rather than to supply internet service to his ne…
Exactly. There are tons of smaller businesses not focused on infinitely growing that get by just fine. Especially in rural areas like these
Re: Man who built ISP instead of paying Comcast $50K expands to hundreds of homes
#353Earlier quoted context omitted.
> -- customers who don't behave as well or kindly as before Easy. Refuse service. You aren't legally obligated to offer your service to assholes. Any business has the right to do or not do business with whoever they want, provided they’re not refusing service for a reason that violates local, state, or federal law. > -- customers who need 24 hour customer service Also easy. You are under no obligation to meet peoples…
> Easy. Refuse service. You aren't legally obligated to offer your service to assholes. Any business has the right to do or not do business with whoever they want, provided they’re not refusing service for a reason that violates local, state, or federal law . Then isn't this a point against the scalability / feasibility of this idea working broadly for others or becoming a model for replacing dumb telcos? If part of…
I'm in a condo here, with an HOA / board, and it was a pain in the ass to get fiber brought in from the local telco. They wasted months sending out letters, waiting for people to give input, votes, etc. until they finally agreed it was a good idea. The telco pays for the whole install: trenching, digging, running fiber between the buildings, etc. That doesn't matter, because you still have people complaining about the utilities messing up their lawn.
It's been over a year now and the project still isn't done. The fiber is right on the street, not even 30 feet from my unit. I'd have paid a couple grand to get my own conduit brought in, if that was an option.
Re: Man who built ISP instead of paying Comcast $50K expands to hundreds of homes
#354> Jared Mauch is expanding with the help of $2.6 million in government money. > Mauch told us he provides free 250Mbps service to a church that was previously having trouble with its Comcast service. That's interesting, he's taking money from the government and giving free internet to a religious organization? Do all "churches" get free internet or just the ones he prefers? Taxpayers are OK subsidizing a specific chu…
> user: zzzeek
> about: ...I am a strong proponent of sarcasm.
So - difficult to interpret this comment.
An atheist might reasonably do the same for churches in his service area, for P.R. and Marketing reasons.
How is this different from Bob - who (say) the township pays to mow the lawn & plow the parking lot at the township hall - deciding that he'll mow the lawn & plow the parking lot for free at some local church?
Re: Man who built ISP instead of paying Comcast $50K expands to hundreds of homes
#355Earlier quoted context omitted.
University of Delaware, per this: https://dnschecker.org/asn-whois-lookup.php?query=AS2 So, not on that map, but it was part of ARPANET by the time the TCP/IP protocol was introduced in 1983[0], per this map: https://www.historyofinformation.com/image.php?id=6456 [0]: https://blog.google/inside-google/googlers/marking-birth-of-...
I wonder why there's so many weird domains being hosted on AS2? https://dnslytics.com/bgp/as2 (scroll down to Top Domains)
They are probably not actually hosted on AS2. Bad actors can inject garbage into BGP AS paths, either accidentally or deliberately.
Re: Man who built ISP instead of paying Comcast $50K expands to hundreds of homes
#356Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
If you want to try your hand in a playground for the software (routing) parts, DN42[1] is essentially one.
Re: Man who built ISP instead of paying Comcast $50K expands to hundreds of homes
#357Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a small ISP you definitely can peer and many do, you just aren’t going to get settlement-free peering with any of the big eyeball networks like Comcast. Something like Seattle IX is a good example of where lots of peering sessions could be established (although I haven’t looked at Jared’s ASN in any detail to see where it’s present). https://www.seattleix.net/home Any traffic you’re able to offload via peering you…
Wait. The poster above said in point 1 to buy a line,1G, 10g depending on your upstream seller. Why do you need peering then? If I have 1Gbps line for example and 10 users each are using equal amount 100% of time, it shouldn't matter they send the data to Alaska or Russia or Australia ? Or does it? Do you buy the pipe and the data itself also?
You don't "need" peering but it offloads your upstream (transit) links, which are generally much more expensive. In the old days, I worked for couple ISPs and we typically had 3 or 4 upstreams (generally UUNet, Sprint, MCI...) This was back when a T1 was still considered fast.
Re: Man who built ISP instead of paying Comcast $50K expands to hundreds of homes
#358I greatly respect the initiative and scrappy-ness of someone doing this. And the legacy providers are clearly sitting on their monopoly position in a way that makes their pathetic alternative so starkly unattractive. But isn't it also true that once his network grows above a certain customer base (and gets into the maintenance phase), he will start to see all the effects that eat into being able to do this cheaply? N…
I, too, greatly respect the scrappy-ness of this individual. Kudos to him for sticking it to Comcast. That said, I'm not wild about the notion of dropping $30K of our collective money on running fiber to a single home out in the country.
Re: Man who built ISP instead of paying Comcast $50K expands to hundreds of homes
#359Average cost of ~ $40k per connection to the government. How is this better than Starlink?
The area served is close to Ann Arbor, MI - so remember Starlink's "satellites are in random-ish orbits around the Earth, not magically hovering over areas with more potential customers" issue.
It's possible that the county is trying to get tough with Comcast here - "stop gouging our residents so badly, or we'll help a local competitor (to you) grow into a real thorn in your bottom line". Starlink isn't credible for that.
And the money is from a "State and Local Fiscal Recovery" fund that the county has access to - so spending it on Starlink would probably be a legal non-starter regardless.
Re: Man who built ISP instead of paying Comcast $50K expands to hundreds of homes
#360I don't understand why he doesn't use a microwave link for some of the single-endpoint long runs. (I don't doubt there was a reason; just want to know it,)