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

arstechnica.com

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

#181

Post by protocolture »

jeroenhd wrote: post #23
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?

My experience from almost a decade ago, mostly in DSL land, is that most customer calls were "my WiFi doesn't reach through the solid steel wall the router is hung against" and "how do I set up my email" and maybe "I lost the password to my WiFi again". WiFi issues were especially bad when 802.11n got finalised but there were tons of "draft n" WiFi devices out there that almost followed the WiFi spec. I still shudder…

I quite enjoyed "I run a massive home business and require 24/7 uptime and will get extremely aggressive about this"

"Maam, if your business is that important, surely you as a responsible business owner have gone and purchased a business class internet service with 24/7 SLA. It says here, you are on our cheapest, residential VDSL service"

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

#182

Post by avidiax »

jkl12 wrote: post #131
beeb wrote: post #43

Wow the US really has it bad when it comes to home internet. In many European countries, you can get symmetric Gbit internet for 30-40 EUR (probably less in some places), and I haven't seen a data cap in forever.

Would it make you jealous if I tell you, that I get 10 Gbit symmetric fiber here in Switzerland (greater Zurich area) for roughly 80 USD/month with no data cap? And I can use my own router and could even go up to 25 Gbit if I want ;-) Oh, and did I mention no CGNAT and it comes with a static /48 IPv6 net?

You are talking about init7, and they did have to fight tooth and nail and take it to court to get SwissCom to provide reasonable access to the fiber.

IIRC, Init7 explained that basically the internet wants to be fast, but ISPs want to spend lots of money on special equipment to slow down your internet so that they can sell speed tiers and data caps.

The US is much more captured that Switzerland, of course. Providers in the US get billions of dollars to expand their networks and provide service, and then don't provide the service, and nothing happens.

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

#183

Post by radley »

rconti wrote: post #141
radley wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bay Area has sonic.net with unlimited 10Gb down & 1Gb up for only $40.

I don't think sonic has asymmetric internet anywhere. It used to be symmetric gig, now they're deploying symmetric 10gig. And the price is $49, although they just announced an increase to $59.

I had symmetric 10Gb for over a year, until they sent a new modem. When I tested the speed again, it was asymmetric. I figure it's the new modem, but the change may have been made before. I don't usually upload >1Gb, so I didn't notice when it actually happened.

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

#184

Post by protocolture »

immibis wrote: post #112
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.

In the specific case of ISPs I think it's always because you won't make enough money to justify it as a big company, yet the task is too big and complicated to do it as an individual nerd. The worst part appears to be the physical wiring. If your government has implemented loop unbundling, you're already set (probably need to do some bureaucracy and pay some affordable-at-a-stretch fees to get access to it). Otherwis…

>Wireless service is always worse

Look, wireless service is almost guaranteed to be worse, but that has more to do with dodgy operators. The technology is fantastic, and when engineered correctly largely undetectable.

That said, in my time, I can count on one hand the number of installations where I was allowed to engineer the service correctly. And I can count on all the hands in a small city the number of times I have been called to rescue something extremely stupid, like shooting a link across a construction site.

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

#186

Post by marcusb »

no_wizard wrote: post #75
ecshafer wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is 10 years out, but I used to work on an IT help desk, that was the outsourced 24/7 helpdesk / hosting for a collection of small local/regional isps (<5000 customer rural dsl companies, local municipalities, apartments, etc) My ballpark estimate from that over 3 years working there is probably 75%+ are Not equipment related. Setting up email was a big one, people accidentally hitting the input/source button on…

other than flushing DNS / winsock resets, I don't understand how the rest of those are blockers. I think my conception of basic tech illiteracy among the general public is vastly wrong. I generally like to believe most people are competent enough to handle these sorts of things.

I once spent half an hour on the phone with a dialup customer who couldn't get connected. Fortunately, they fixed their own problem - they had been entering the "letter zero" instead of the "number zero" (their words.)

Took another call from an irate dialup customer who demanded a refund - he didn't know he needed a computer to use the internet -- and had driven himself mad dialing up our modem bank with his telephone and waiting for the training tones to subside so he could begin to navigate the internet as he imagined it to work: press 1 for email, 2 for news, 3 for weather...

Despite the proliferation of smart phones and greater prevalence of home networks, I don't think the situation has changed much for a segment of the population once you get down to troubleshooting why something isn't working. The skills and the willingness to just try to fix the problem aren't there.

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

#187

Post by protocolture »

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 for an ISP is surprisingly low.

Crazy generalization.

>And that's such an obvious legal minefield that no networking nerd wants to do it.

Honestly half the fun.

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

#188

Post by mosdl »

mayli wrote: post #117
mosdl wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Downtown SJ has sail internet as well, great local isp!

I am on it, still a little bit pricer than Comcast, but worth every penny.

In my condo complex the cost for Sail is the same as the lowest Comcast internet plan. Possibly Sail and others have forced Comcast to go down finally, which is great.

Also the Sail support is really good, fast responses (even the CEO sometimes answers tickets).

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

#190

Post by nulbyte »

bcrl wrote: post #100
mrweasel wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've had less than 0.5% of customers ask for IPv6 from my fibre ISP How many ask for IPv4? I understand your situation, it's a lot of work, for something that many won't notice. It's just that saying there's no demand because your average consumer, who also doesn't know what IPv4 is, isn't asking for it, is the mentality that keeps IPv6 from being implemented. On the funnier side of things, we've also sometimes run…

Static IPv4 addresses are closer to around 5% of customers. Nobody asks for IPv4, but some customers bring their existing or own wireless routers along and occasionally choose devices that are not IPv6 capable. Maybe in another 10 years those devices will finally be fully removed from service. The worst stragglers right now are the old combo DSL modems that effectively have no modern replacements -- it's just not wor…

I don't think GP meant static addressing but literally, how many ask for IPv4 service? None, because you just provide it; it's an unstated expectation.

Now apply that to IPv6 and you can see the point that (I think) GP is making.

Side note: The claim it is not widely used doesn't track. How many people use Google or Facebook? More than half of that traffic is over IPv6.

https://circleid.com/posts/ipv6-usage-in-the-u.s-surpasses-5...

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