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Start Your Own ISP

startyourownisp.com

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Re: Start Your Own ISP

#101

Post by saagarjha »

thom_nic wrote: post #87
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.

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/

They may have meant 8.8.8.8 as well.

Re: Start Your Own ISP

#102

Post by grahamburger »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #95
grahamburger wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would not use free space optics for this but there are licensed wireless backhauls that can do this with high enough capacity and reliability. Feel free to contact me directly (contact info in the about me section of this site) for more info.

FSO was one of neatest things I learned to solve the "fiber is expensive to run in cities" problem back when I studied wireless. Just one class on that. I'd like to know why you recommend against FSO for this, if there's any time you would recommend it for smaller players, or drawbacks compared to LTE. I just haven't seen anyone bring up FSO in a while and wondered why.

Possibly you know more about it than I do! When I've used it (admittedly only once) it was very susceptible to anything in the air (dust, rain, snow) and was not very reliable over even a very short distance (less than 30meters iirc). I guess I can see how it could work with lots of buffering so there's not much packet loss but it seems like that would negatively affect latency.

Re: Start Your Own ISP

#103

Post by dboreham »

grahamburger wrote: post #47
dboreham wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, I've been doing this for ...um 15 years or so. Generally tried to exit the business because in our area it turns out to be a money pit. However, I notice you don't mention anything about interference : we found that even in a deep rural area this is a major headache. It can be hard to find even 40MHz of clean adjacent channels so delivering tens of megabits via P2MP is not so easy and that's before you look at th…

Yes interference and channel planning can be a big headache. I do have planned a section that will cover this but haven't finished it yet. I've typically gotten around interference problems by 1) using licensed (or at least not 5ghz, preferably full duplex) backhauls and 2) using AP antennas with narrow beamwidths (higher gain, less area covered.) I'm sure you're doing the same things if you've been doing it that lon…

Actually I didn't see anything about licensed spectrum on the site, but of course that helps with backhaul and high-end subscribers. For many years we really didn't see any interference issues with P2P links @5GHz but that has changed recently. We have been deploying dishes with shrouds to cut down on sidelobe gain.

My experience has been that interference is as much a problem at the CPE side (and much harder to diagnose there) than at the AP. I've also noticed that with Ubiquity/Mikrotik-grade radios in the 5GHz spectrum you can easily get interference from your own co-located radios at the same site, using different channels (because they are not so good about suppressing out-of-band radiation).

Re: Start Your Own ISP

#104

Post by voltagex_ »

tegansnyder wrote: post #9

I started one of the first 56k dial up ISPs in Nebraska when I was 13 years old with the help of my parents. In high school I partnered with some friends after reading a CNET article about a WISP in Washington state. My friend's dad had a few businesses that needed to share a T1 line so we connected them wirelessly and sold the excess capacity to farmers in rural Nebraska and Kansas. It was an amazing experience. Wor…

This would make a great article if you write it up.

Re: Start Your Own ISP

#105

Post by grahamburger »

ImSkeptical wrote: post #94
grahamburger wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(author here) I personally know probably a dozen or so people who have built a network like this, got enough customers to live comfortably for a while, and are either still doing that or eventually sold to a larger company and moved on to other things. So yes it can be profitable on a small scale.

Thanks for putting this together and sharing it. Really interesting read. I know it's a bit personal, but would you mind attaching numbers to the notion of small scale profitability?

It varies pretty dramatically depending on how much you have to pay for fiber, how many customers you're able to get per tower, what you're able to charge (competition) and what type of customers you get (business / residential / mdu).

My back of the napkin calculations usually show that to give one person a health salary ($80-120k) and pay a few contractors or lower wage workers to do some of the grunt work you would need 300-500 residential customers.

Re: Start Your Own ISP

#106

Post by grahamburger »

vvanders wrote: post #93
grahamburger wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(author here) This is actually probably the hardest part of the whole thing - finding places to put the equipment and negotiating leases with all the right people. If it's an actual cell phone tower you're looking at you can usually find it on the FCC website and find out who manages the tower. Most cell phone towers are managed by a third party management company (like Crown Castle or American Tower). The management…

> managed directly by a cell phone company they are still required to allow you to collocate (FCC!) but they will usually drag their feet through the process No way! Is that only for ISPs or could I get a ham repeater up there if I had enough time/money?

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!)

Re: Start Your Own ISP

#107

Post by chrishacken »

kbaker wrote: post #88
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…

This is exactly the market for 5G cellular, btw. You will have your pick of carriers in a couple years that can provide you with this service...

This is why we're starting to run fiber. 5G and tree's don't mix well.

Re: Start Your Own ISP

#108

Post by nickpsecurity »

grahamburger wrote: post #102
nickpsecurity wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FSO was one of neatest things I learned to solve the "fiber is expensive to run in cities" problem back when I studied wireless. Just one class on that. I'd like to know why you recommend against FSO for this, if there's any time you would recommend it for smaller players, or drawbacks compared to LTE. I just haven't seen anyone bring up FSO in a while and wondered why.

Possibly you know more about it than I do! When I've used it (admittedly only once) it was very susceptible to anything in the air (dust, rain, snow) and was not very reliable over even a very short distance (less than 30meters iirc). I guess I can see how it could work with lots of buffering so there's not much packet loss but it seems like that would negatively affect latency.

Well, they told us they work around a mile or so in good conditions with more in near-perfect conditions. They could miss a lot of packets if weather interference happened. So, they were often paired up with another link (slow wired or fast wireless) as backup for highest-priority stuff. They were also sold as more secure from taps. They were also really expensive back when I studied them. Aside from being low volume, that was probably because (as our course materials said) they were deployed in areas where laying fiber was really, really expensive. So, maximizing profit meant charging significantly less than that but not too much less, ya know? ;)

A long time ago, I looked it up again to see what the cheapest, budget setup was. I still have this bookmark of an open design I found:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RONJA

Past that, I don't know any more since I just had basic training on it as I said.

Re: Start Your Own ISP

#109

Post by vvanders »

grahamburger wrote: post #106
vvanders wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> managed directly by a cell phone company they are still required to allow you to collocate (FCC!) but they will usually drag their feet through the process No way! Is that only for ISPs or could I get a ham repeater up there if I had enough time/money?

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.

Re: Start Your Own ISP

#110

Post by miscreanity »

remir wrote: post #60

Great initiative! I would like to know what you think of Artemis Network's stuff? Is it legit?

I can say one thing... after having learned most of what the article outlines the hard way, I'm still waiting for hardware to trial.

Meanwhile, MIMO capabilities are improving steadily; not quite the same approach but functional and proven for use today. Never plan a business model on another company's promises.

Another piece of delayed hardware was Mimosa's window CPE that never made it to full production due to underperforming results.

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