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Start Your Own ISP

startyourownisp.com

181–190 of 199 posts

Re: Start Your Own ISP

#181

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.

I worked on this recently, free space optical system... http://www.doncio.navy.mil/chips/ArticleDetails.aspx?ID=5550 The parts are extremely expensive if you want a high data rate. The acquisition logic for creating a link is very difficult as one has to aim their beam just perfectly. I'd say it's not ready for prime time.

Your username is awesome.

Re: Start Your Own ISP

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(author here) It's possible that this could turn in to something like that. When I originally started writing it that's exactly what I had in mind, actually - but I have since started working with common.net and I'm quite happy there. If this is something people are interested in though reach out to me! I may be able to line something like this up.

I am very interested in this. Making it dead simple to set up an ISP would be a very awesome thing.

shoot me an email graham at startyourownisp.com.

Re: Start Your Own ISP

#183

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.

How dependent is this on flat land and no trees? This would be great for northwest Arkansas, but we have lots of trees and hills. We are stuck with only Cox, and ATT in some places.

Generally you need unobstructed line of sight, so you need to go around or above trees. Sometimes you can mount an antenna _on_ a tree, but only sometimes.

Unfortunately, to rain on the parade a little: note that it is hard using wireless (due to technical limitations to do with Shannon capacity) to compete with a copper coax provider. It really doesn't work notwithstanding the OP's claim that they can deliver 75Mbits/s to subs. I really don't know how he is doing that unless they are all fed with dedicated point-to-point links (which won't scale and costs $$).

Re: Start Your Own ISP

#184

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.

What an amazing thing you've done taking the time to share your knowledge for free with everyone - thank you! This is very timely for me. I actually had just started paying a consultant to help me plan out a WISP, because it's so overwhelming starting out because you don't even know what questions to ask to get started (the internet is a great resource for so many things... but much less helpful when you don't have w…

There is free/open source software that will compute viewsheds for you, and data downloadable from the USGS. In times past I did a lot of this but really you just need to go look with a telescope or a camera on the end of a long pole. But note that the work you do to figure out if you can provide service to a prospective customer can easily exceed the lifetime value of that customer!

The Post Office (in the US anyway) will mail a postcard to every household in a defined area for reasonable cost.

Remember to get good insurance if you construct or climb towers.

Honestly I really question your sanity though. Think of all the people who decide they are going to open a restaurant: we shake our heads at the large subset of them who have absolutely no restaurant experience. We know that in order to make money at a restaurant you at least need to absolutely nail the whole making food that people like to eat and making the place pleasant and inviting and all that (execution). If you don't have that, you're doomed for sure. And then some large proportion of even the experienced restaurant folks still fail -- we look at their efforts and shake our heads "well they should have known this town doesn't have a big enough market for a fine dining place", and so on.

As someone who does know all about how to build and run a wireless ISP, I'm reading your post like how most folks look at a doomed new restaurant opening.

Sorry to be a party pooper but I figure I may save you some $$$. I think at least you need to be doing this in a place where there is _no_ competition besides satellite. If there is even just regular LTE service people will scrape by with that rather than pay you for better service. If there are traditional providers (Coax/HFC, DSL) then forget about it.

Re: Start Your Own ISP

#185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How dependent is this on flat land and no trees? This would be great for northwest Arkansas, but we have lots of trees and hills. We are stuck with only Cox, and ATT in some places.

Generally you need unobstructed line of sight, so you need to go around or above trees. Sometimes you can mount an antenna _on_ a tree, but only sometimes. Unfortunately, to rain on the parade a little: note that it is hard using wireless (due to technical limitations to do with Shannon capacity) to compete with a copper coax provider. It really doesn't work notwithstanding the OP's claim that they can deliver 75Mbit…

Not surprising, although I still believe their could be opportunity in the rural areas, whose only option is satellite, which is both expensive and slow. Just getting that line of site is difficult. Thanks for the info!

Re: Start Your Own ISP

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally you need unobstructed line of sight, so you need to go around or above trees. Sometimes you can mount an antenna _on_ a tree, but only sometimes. Unfortunately, to rain on the parade a little: note that it is hard using wireless (due to technical limitations to do with Shannon capacity) to compete with a copper coax provider. It really doesn't work notwithstanding the OP's claim that they can deliver 75Mbit…

Not surprising, although I still believe their could be opportunity in the rural areas, whose only option is satellite, which is both expensive and slow. Just getting that line of site is difficult. Thanks for the info!

Yes, WISP is fine when there is no terrestrial alternative. That's really its niche.

Re: Start Your Own ISP

#187

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?

As a ISP, you don't want to do this. You're not responsible to what goes inside your pipes.

Let the majors/govs do the work of spying and detecting piracy / illegal websites, and just answer to subpoenas, that will be enough.

Re: Start Your Own ISP

#188

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…

That's a great story and incidentally a similar one to another Nebraska ISP I'm familiar with (KDSI). I think they got started when a larger industrial company had excess bandwidth. Sounds like your story was a lot of fun for a high schooler. Who did you sell it to and why?

I know of KDSI! We ended up selling to a guy starting a new business called RCOM in Kearney, NE. I worked with him for half a year getting everything transitioned. We sold our Kansas operations to telco called Nex-Tech. At the time the business was funded by my good friend's dad. Collectively we decided it was best for us to focus on our further education and go to college.

Re: Start Your Own ISP

#189
post #55

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…

I would love to hear more about your experience. Did you write about it anywhere?

There are various posts on DSLReports from my early days. Unfortunately a lot of the pictures I posted are no longer available. Here is an example: http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r3891399-Split-Wire-WISP
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