Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Two guys hated using Comcast, so they built their own fiber ISP

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 258 posts

Re: Two guys hated using Comcast, so they built their own fiber ISP

#121

Post by wmf »

nancyminusone wrote: post #19

I'm one of their customers. I often see that one green car parked down the road. It's pretty good - their provided router is locked down to hell and they're on a cgnat, but not having to deal with Comcast's 1.2tb data cap is well worth it. Checking Comcast's site now, it seems that they now offer "unlimited" data. Interesting, that option wasn't there 6 months ago. ~100 customers seems too small for the amount of eff…

their provided router is locked down to hell and they're on a cgnat

So not actually better than Comcast, just bad in a different way.

Re: Two guys hated using Comcast, so they built their own fiber ISP

#122

Post by tjohns »

yuvadam wrote: post #116
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm one of their customers. It's pretty good - their provided router is locked down to hell and they're on a cgnat This sounds like mine. I'm guessing yours doesn't support IPv6 because most fiber providers don't. For the router, I already build firewalls so that. I pay $10/mo to escape their cgnat. I've also alerted them to expect regular haranguing from me about deploying IPv6. Especially since bgp.he.net shows t…

since tailscale exists, why would you care about cgnat or even pay to escape it?

I'm not the only person connecting to my machines.

Some applications want to open ports and don't have the server-side infrastructure to punch a hole through NAT. Especially P2P apps and some games.

Sometimes I want to run a small, low-traffic web server from home.

Sometimes I'm connecting to my network from a machine that I don't control and can't install Tailscale on.

Re: Two guys hated using Comcast, so they built their own fiber ISP

#123

Post by wmf »

rayiner wrote: post #76
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #25

"Everything that we're doing is all underground." This indicates that their local and state governments aren't (at this time) captured by the incumbent cable provider. A captured state gov will pass laws to thwart new infra deployment, commonly written by ISP interests. A captured local gov will never approve deployment or slow-walk permitting in an attempt to bankrupt the upstart. more explainers: New suburban fiber…

I’ve been hearing about “captured government” with respect to fiber deployment for two decades now and the folks on that soap box have made absolutely zero progress on improving deployment of fiber infrastructure in that time. Tilting at that windmill isn’t working, because for the most part that’s not the real problem. Why isn’t the Bay Area a hot bed of fiber deployment? You think Comcast in Philly has more pull wi…

I guess Comcast doesn't need to capture the local government in places where it's already illegal to build anything. But in other places it has definitely happened.

Re: Two guys hated using Comcast, so they built their own fiber ISP

#124

Post by Polizeiposaune »

teeray wrote: post #28
kube-system wrote: post #3

I've seen a few articles about folks who started an ISP and they always talk about the physical infrastructure. But in today's world where ISP ads are touting the speeds of their wifi, it really makes me wonder what the support burden ends up being like. What's the breakdown for actual ISP issues vs issues with customer equipment?

ISPs are weird: You don’t call the water department if your sink is backed up—you call a plumber. You also don’t call the electric company when you want to wire your finished basement—you hire an electrician. ISPs somehow became responsible for absolutely every aspect of consuming their service though. Why isn’t “home internet plumber” a thing?

There are times when you're better off calling the local sewer department first.

In San Jose, if you see evidence that your house's main drain has backed up and you have a cleanout within 5' of the sidewalk, you're better off calling the city first before calling a plumber -- the sewer department will snake the "lateral" pipe between the cleanout and the main sewer line under the street for free.

The one time we used this the response time was very quick (in line with the 30 minute response time they cite on their website).

Re: Two guys hated using Comcast, so they built their own fiber ISP

#125

Post by wmf »

teddyh wrote: post #9

I am always baffled by these things. Say there’s a huge company with a monopoly in your area. My first thought is “How did they get that monopoly? What happened to all the other people who must surely have had the idea to compete with them?” But no, these stories are always treating “Hey, let’s start a competing company!” like some revolutionary idea that nobody has thought of before, and that success is assured.

Telephone and cable TV companies were explicitly envisioned as regulated monopolies in most places. Then it was cheaper for them to provide Internet over their existing lines than for a new company to come in.

Re: Two guys hated using Comcast, so they built their own fiber ISP

#126

Post by mook »

bcrl wrote: post #68
mschuster91 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that easy. Poles vs trenches are a tradeoff discussion. FWIW I was once in construction digging trenches and I'm German, so I might be biased a bit. Pro poles / open air: - very, VERY cheap and fast to build out with GPON. That's how you got 1/1 GBit fiber in some piss poor village in the rural ditches of Romania. - easy to get access when you need to do maintenance Con poles / open air: - it looks fucking u…

There's a huge downside to poles where I'm based: permit shenanigans by pole owners that delay projects and allow incumbents to destroy competitors. Granted, some municipalities do the same thing. One local municipality I have to deal with responds to permit requests almost instantly, while another takes weeks of pestering to acknowledge even the most basic of permit requests. For anyone starting out today, I would s…

More importantly, if they go on poles Comcast can "accidentally" cut their lines all the time.

Re: Two guys hated using Comcast, so they built their own fiber ISP

#127

Post by bell-cot »

immibis wrote: post #113
bell-cot wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What happened to all the other... There's a huge gap between "had the idea" and "had all the technical skills, the $millions in capital, and the managerial ability to actually build it". Then there's the barrier of "and succeed". If you read between the article's lines a bit - these guys had loads of the first 3, yet they're still losing loads of money every month. But, bigger picture, you have a good point. These…

The capital for an ISP is surprisingly low. The main problem is getting a physical connection to your customer's house. And that's such an obvious legal minefield that no networking nerd wants to do it.

The capital can be low. Vs. the article notes that these two guys have 75 miles of fiber installed (to 1,500 potential-customer homes) and 15 local employees. Vs. currently monthly revenues of about $10K.

Yeah, obviously these guy's long prior experience - pulling fiber for other ISP's - was another critical cornerstone of their ability to go from idea to build-out.

Re: Two guys hated using Comcast, so they built their own fiber ISP

#128

Post by simoncion »

PantaloonFlames wrote: post #84
dilyevsky wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sonic is doing this in sfba. Used to be att reseller now they lay their own fiber, 50% cheaper plans, byo router, ipv6 that actually works, great service.

Pardon my ignorance but what is the benefit to ipv6 for local, consumer internet?

The big customer-visible feature is that every machine on their LAN can be globally reachable. For ISPs that absolutely cannot get enough IPv4 space to give their customers even a single globally-reachable IPv4 address, this would be the only way to get any global IP space. IME, edge routers that are intended for networking noobs to use often set up their firewalls so that they block inbound unsolicited IPv6 traffic, but (unlike with IPv4 NAT) there's the option of opening up multiple hosts to some or all inbound traffic.

Another feature that I find to be pretty stupid (but that some folks seem to really like) are IPv6 "privacy" addresses. Because each host usually is assigned an IPv6 address in a subnet that's 64 bits wide, most mainstream OS's have configured their IPv6 address autoconfigurator to set one stable, "permanent" address, and to set a parade of periodically changing "temporary" addresses. The OS is usually configured to prefer the permanent address when software asks for a socket to listen on (and sockets that handle replies to that listen socket), and those temporary addresses are preferred for sockets that initiate outbound traffic. The idea is that this is supposed to confuse tracking, but I'm very skeptical of its efficacy in the real world.

Finally, a customer can also usually get enough IP space to make globally-reachable subnets on their LAN. Depending how the ISP has configured things, a customer can get between four and 256 subnets. These subnets are handy to provide networks that provide globally-reachable IP addresses, but that can be easily logically isolated from the rest of the LAN by the router.

Re: Two guys hated using Comcast, so they built their own fiber ISP

#129

Post by godelski »

freedomben wrote: post #103
godelski wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I also occasionally rsync large directories to/from cloud storage and that can also saturate Just offering some advice if you aren't aware. If you are, freely ignore. (And if you have advice in return I'd love to hear!) For convenience, the rclone tool is nice for most cloud storage like google and stuff that make rsync annoying[0] rsync also offers compression[1], and you might want to balance it depending if you…

Thank you! I do love rclone a great deal, and need to start using it more. I mostly use rsync right now because I've got some Contabo storage instances and ssh is already set up, so it's nice and easy, and I've already got the rsync commands burned into memory from decades of use :-) I also typically rsync with the same command to an external hard drive for an on-site backup. Great tips! I'll definitely be using your…

Oh, that reminds me. When I had an Android (I already regret my iPhone) I used termux to write a very basic script to rsync data to machines and do so based on if connected to WiFi (with whitelisted SSIDs). Pretty easy to write and then schedule a cron job. Can be nice to put that onto other peoples devices and give them automated backups. Makes it FAR easier to do the 321 backup strategy. Also pretty easy to build a tracking app for a lost phone that way (like if haven't connected to home WiFi in x days send you an email). Both work really well when also using tailscale.

Re: Two guys hated using Comcast, so they built their own fiber ISP

#130

Post by bayarearefugee »

wijwp wrote: post #105
nkellenicki wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've always had the _option_ of paying extra for unlimited data, however its only in the past month or two that they've started offering unlimited data as standard (in select markets). https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/06/stung-by-custome...

That's not true. I tried getting unlimited data like 7-8 years ago and they said I needed a business account to get it.

What ISPs offer and how much they offer it for tends to vary wildly region to region.

If you live in a region where they have no meaningful competition (which is still fairly common in a lot of places in the US) well bend over and lube up.

Post reply on HN