I love reading these kinds of stories.
Keep them coming Chris, if you can :)
Starting an ISP: Deploying Fiber
21–30 of 67 posts
Re: Starting an ISP: Deploying Fiber
#22Great write-up. Great entrepreneurial tenacity. Would love more insight on the wireless challenges and how you tackle them? I wonder if a software monitoring app could detect increased noise and automate channel hopping. Surely that must exist -- on the other hand, you mentioned the vendors do everything to lower the BOM, so perhaps they are lazy and this software is needed. Could be a good OSS project.
From a WISP perspective you rarely want sector or horn antenna APs hopping to randomly chosen frequencies. Particularly if you have a well designed AB-AB back to back synced reuse or ABC frequency assignment pattern by azimuth. Any of this gear has a fairly full featured SNMP MIB and OID documentation so there are a lot of different backend operational support syetems you can use to monitor it.
Re: Starting an ISP: Deploying Fiber
#23Great write-up. Great entrepreneurial tenacity. Would love more insight on the wireless challenges and how you tackle them? I wonder if a software monitoring app could detect increased noise and automate channel hopping. Surely that must exist -- on the other hand, you mentioned the vendors do everything to lower the BOM, so perhaps they are lazy and this software is needed. Could be a good OSS project.
So Mimosa, one of the hardware vendors we use, does actually have this built-in to their firmware. The issue is, from what I've seen, is that it hops around too much. It also moves to congested channels sometimes. I'm sure there's a way to perfect it, we just don't have the time at the moment (I also don't believe they provide full API access yet, so I'm not even sure if we can change it without creating an automated…
How has your Mimosa gear worked out? I tested some B5s and they choked when you got them near even a tiny bit of interference. The B11s we have won't even hit MCS9 on a 1.5 mile link. I hear people swear by them, but in my testing, Airfibers & Rocket M5/AC spanked them every time, particularly when there was even a little bit of interference.
And FWIW I've never had auto anything actually work and pick the right channel. If you're trying to GPS sync, forget auto. But you know that already.
Re: Starting an ISP: Deploying Fiber
#24> [Wireless] Speeds are competitive with cable (for now). Latency, or just bandwidth?
I know of a few WISPs that have real network engineers behind their systems and have built reliable networks. One of them has several thousand users and multi-gigabit services.
People are jumping every day from cable to them for both speed and reliability.
Most WISPs are started by the local computer repair shop by someone who things that configuring a Linksys router is network engineering. They are plagued with reliability issues mostly of their own creation. I'm not knocking the people, they are filling a need and doing it 'good enough'.
If you build it right, they will come.
Re: Starting an ISP: Deploying Fiber
#25how do you deal with the legal aspect of running an ISP? What can the small players do?
Re: Starting an ISP: Deploying Fiber
#26Have you ever tried WeFunder or similar crowdfunded mechanisms to raise money? I would invest a few thousand at generous terms to support you guys and the mission, and I’m sure many others would too.
Can't imagine it would be worth the investor liability/risk for a couple $k.
percentages are percentages.
Re: Starting an ISP: Deploying Fiber
#27I was recently at BornHack2018, a small security camp for the 3rd summer this year held on the island of Bornholm.
The organisers also run BornFiber who are connecting the entire island with optical broadband.
BornFiber is a good example of how anyone with the right skill can start a fiber provider here in the nordics.
I'm glad to see this philosophy being adopted by the US.
However. Once they have fiber they still need some ISP and that's where the national ISPs come in. Thankfully we have plenty of options here but I hear things aren't as good in the US.
Re: Starting an ISP: Deploying Fiber
#28When deploying fiber, always lay down 10x what you need. Or calculate one fiber duct for each property on the way. So when more subscribers want to get connected you just have to dig at one point, cut one of the unused ducts and join it.
Re: Starting an ISP: Deploying Fiber
#29> [Wireless] Speeds are competitive with cable (for now). Latency, or just bandwidth?
I know of a few WISPs that have real network engineers behind their systems and have built reliable networks. One of them has several thousand users and multi-gigabit services. People are jumping every day from cable to them for both speed and reliability. Most WISPs are started by the local computer repair shop by someone who things that configuring a Linksys router is network engineering. They are plagued with reli…
My backup WISP link is pretty terrible, and does up to 10 Mbps, barely 5 Mbps most of the time, even thought there is clear line of sight to the base station antenna, and using Ubiquiti gear, probably because the people are either inexperienced or overselling. 4G gets me 300 Mbps (now up to 300 GB for $9/mo, or unlimited data for $25) in a village of 904 people. (though I use two different antennas and connect to two base stations to obtain maximum speed from LTE with carrier and link aggregation.
Re: Starting an ISP: Deploying Fiber
#30[deleted]