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Starting an Internet Service Provider

chrishacken.com

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Re: Starting an Internet Service Provider

#191

Post by notdonspaulding »

doubleplusgood wrote: post #64
nickpsecurity wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's great info that I'm saving. It's way cheaper than I thought it would be since the cost of everything has gone down much vs back when I started networking. I was also considering possibility of reaching out to people in Shenzhen finding and testing gear from various suppliers to see if that cost could be reduced. Curious if you've considered any kind of mesh networking that relays from one location to another?…

What kind of latency does meshing add? I'd reckon a few more ms per hop?

For reference, in the unlicensed Ubiquiti gear that I've used, the point-to-multipoint latency is variable with the signal quality of the connected stations.

If all client stations have good, clear signals, the latency is around 1-2ms. But that can spike quickly if you're dealing with interference or other causes of low SNR.

Re: Starting an Internet Service Provider

#192

Post by mildlyclassic »

sumedh wrote: post #185
mildlyclassic wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>A small new player can't compete in either of those markets. We're Wifidabba.com and we're in the current batch of YC. We provide low-cost internet in India at tea-stalls and bakeries. Consumers buy tokens and get access to wifi. In effect, we take a broadband connection and slice it into tiny pieces and sell that as wifi. I guess in some ways we're an ISP, the government certainly thinks so, we've had to apply for…

The pricing looks super cheap. All the best.

We believe in charging for a good service. We don't ever want to show ads or mess with your connection in any way. thanks !

Re: Starting an Internet Service Provider

#193

Post by iptrans »

rexreed wrote: post #117
chrishacken wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you. I obviously completely agree; we tried relentlessly to contact our local utilities to gain access to their underground conduit and was never able to get someone on the phone or even much of a response. I eventually got to the point where I was like, "F k it, I'll do it on my own." Now we're looking at microtrenching, which is probably an even larger endeavor, but at least we'll own the conduit.

Chris - I might have an interesting low-cost microtrenching option for you. This company demo'd at a recent TechBreakfast: http://traxyl.com/ . I know the founders and they are very motivated to make this work for early customers. Let me know if you want a connection.

Can you hook me up too? Email in profile.

Re: Starting an Internet Service Provider

#194

Post by nickpsecurity »

wolf550e wrote: post #145
chrishacken wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"perhaps" intended to mean, among the top* But that's still debatable depending on what level of scale you're talking. Deploying fiber throughout the entire United States, to every single household, would be near or exceed $1 Trillion. We have semiconductors in likely 99.99% of households now; at what cost? (I don't know, but I'd assume it's probably close.)

In semiconductors, you need to invest billions before you make and sell your first chip. With fiber, you can start with a dozen customers. There is no comparison.

http://www.adapteva.com/andreas-blog/a-lean-fabless-semicond...

Re: Starting an Internet Service Provider

#195

Post by philtar »

jon-wood wrote: post #20
nickpsecurity wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could make the maintenance once a month on days your monitoring shows already have about no traffic. If a HA setup, then fail-over, reboot main, fail-back-over, reboot other stuff. Minimal disruption there.

If you've got an HA setup you should probably be doing this monthly anyway just to verify that it actually works. The adage that an untested backup isn't a backup at all applies to backup internet connections as well.

No longer an addage. Now it's called a gitlab.

Re: Starting an Internet Service Provider

#196

Post by kid0m4n »

vflagr wrote: post #10

This was a super interesting read. The one thing I never fail to get over though is how expensive internet is in the states. In the UK you can get 200/20 for about £58 p/m including TV & Phone. I couldn't imagine paying nearly $100 p/m for 100mbps.

I get symmetric 200/200 for about $70/month in Bangalore, India. It's just a dumb pipe though (no included TV/phone, though I could also go for those).

Re: Starting an Internet Service Provider

#197

Post by jbpetersen »

mildlyclassic wrote: post #190
bluesign wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is mesh network, right? can you tell a bit about your technology?

It's a mesh built on low cost custom hardware. Each node is also super powerful with >128gb storage and some nice computation power, with a GPU to boot :) We're looking to be more than just an ISP in the long run.

For what value of "more than just an ISP"?

Re: Starting an Internet Service Provider

#198

Post by mildlyclassic »

jbpetersen wrote: post #197
mildlyclassic wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a mesh built on low cost custom hardware. Each node is also super powerful with >128gb storage and some nice computation power, with a GPU to boot :) We're looking to be more than just an ISP in the long run.

For what value of "more than just an ISP"?

A sort of AWS style platform for retail. Eg. Are you building a POS or Inventory app or do you want to sell your online goods offline? You can access our merchants and authenticated users that already have a prepaid wallet and are at a retail location predisposed to buying. And because of our connectivity, you don't have to worry if your users have internet.

Or maybe an IOT platform of sorts, for example, you're an FMCG and you want to know that your shipments really did arrive at the location your distributor was supposed to deliver it.

India's a challenging country where > 80% of our retail is fragmented into millions of micro-stores.

Re: Starting an Internet Service Provider

#199

Post by snowwrestler »

rayiner wrote: post #91
gigatexal wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Governments would pay for this via taxes. At least that's one way. So in the end all of us would be paying for internet, and I guess if there were a way to get internet at 1gig up/1 gig down with no data caps that was very reliable for under 100 bucks a month I would do it. But the build-out costs a lot as you've stated so the capital would have to come from somewhere and perhaps that'd come from infrastructure spend…

We can't convince voters to raise taxes/utility rates enough to fix crumbling dams, lead water pipes, and overflowing sewers.

Depends on the locality; my city just raised taxes to address infrastructure needs in schools and storm sewers. It's probably not a coincidence that they are also looking at municipal fiber.

Re: Starting an Internet Service Provider

#200

Post by fludlight »

chrishacken wrote: post #169
dboreham wrote: post #162

I feel I need to write the inverse article "Stopping an Internet Service Provider", since I just shut down mine. Although this stuff can be great fun, you have to stop and ask yourself why the market is "under served" and why there isn't already some dude supplying these customers, driving around the city in his Lexus and waxing his new boat on the weekends. The unfortunate truth is that there just isn't that great a…

> No. And the reality is that IP connectivity is not much different to these other utilities. I understand where you're coming from, but it is different. You have ample power to power your home; utilities can fulfill whatever your power requirements are. The same can't be said about IP. I am literally incapable of live streaming from my parents house, no matter how much I'm willing to pay. There's no internet option,…

I agree with you that rural-broadbandification will be as important as rural-electrification was in the '30s. That said, I think that most lucrative (read: capital efficient) business model here is low-bandwidth web sites, not high-bandwidth ISPs. Does a news site really need to ship 2Mb of JS, a 20Mb auto-play video, and 5Mb of ads to communicate 1.5Kb of plain-text? Maybe if your users have fast connections but not if they're in rural Idaho and it takes 2 minutes (that's 2,000 milliseconds) to load a single page.

Edit: numbers

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