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

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

#201

Post by Lu2025 »

bob1029 wrote: post #32

I am in a rural area of Texas and I just recently got access to fiber. The other competition is ADSL and DOCSIS providers - AT&T and Optimum. Optimum had their entire service area bought out by Comcast the day after I switched. Comcast has since broken every major utility at least twice and my fiber connection three times by working on the old infrastructure. I think Optimum won that trade. I can't imagine many resid…

> aggressive neglect for 811

Texas regulations are quite something. My friend told me that the closest thing to regulation and zoning they have is... an HOA. This was the first time in my life I heard anything positive about HOAs.

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

#202

Post by wmf »

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?

It's called the Geek Squad AFAIK. But most people have no understanding of how their home network works so they don't know how to decide who to call.

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

#203

Post by supertrope »

Sanzig wrote: post #73
bcrl wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had less than 0.5% of customers ask for IPv6 from my fibre ISP. It's not worth supporting as a result. The main reason is that any service that is not widely used will have gremlins that result in poor customer experience, and if it's always the same handful of customers hitting problems or finding quirks, there is a real risk of poor word of mouth incident reporting that can harm the business. At least if somet…

If you already have to do CGNAT, why not IPv6 as your core network with NAT64 at the border and 464XLAT on the CPE? It gives you best of both worlds.

Android and iOS have pressure on app developers to support IPv6 or at the very least function on 464XLAT. On home broadband people could connect anything including programs that use literal IPv4 addresses and break on 464XLAT. Things like corporate VPNs, Skype, online gaming. Ironically these services would benefit the most from supporting IPv6 but they've evolved to deal with IPv4 NAT to the extent that they've become dependent on IPv4 connectivity.

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

#204

Post by Dylan16807 »

nulbyte wrote: post #193
yuvadam wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Tailscale uses the same range as CGNAT. https://github.com/tailscale/tailscale/issues/12829

You shouldn't be seeing the CGNAT addresses inside your home network, should you?

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

#205

Post by simoncion »

amethyst wrote: post #165
simoncion wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you haven't already, check to see if either Google Fiber or Monkeybrains is available in your area. Last I checked, the regs are still in place that prevent landlords from denying you access to an ISP of your choice.

Google Fiber isn't rolled out to most of the bay area. Monkeybrains is wireless with speeds significantly slower than what Comcast offers me. I've checked just about every wired ISP possible, and Comcast is the only option that services my neighborhood. And FWIW, I own my house in the east bay — I am the landlady ;)

> Google Fiber isn't rolled out to most of the bay area.

I'm aware. And it's my understanding that -sadly- much of the Google "Fiber" deployment in the area is a WISP, just like Monkeybrains is. Quite a while back, Google Fiber bought Webpass and continued doing WISP deployment in the SFBA under the Google Fiber brand. (Because it's politically dreadfully hard to run fiber optic cables in the area.)

If you haven't contacted Monkeybrains for a minimum and expected speed quote at your site in a year or five, it's worth doing it again. It's my understanding that they aperiodically upgrade the hardware in their core network as well as the sort of hardware that they deploy at customer sites.

Monkeybrains' down-to 100/100 service is -on paper- far, far slower than the up-to 1400/40 service I was getting from Comcast, but the actual, delivered speed that I'm seeing from Monkeybrains varies between 300mbit and ~1000mbit (sustained) depending on what other folks are doing on their network. [0] I'm in a fifty-apartment building, so it's possible that they've installed faster gear on my roof than they install in smaller (or single-family) buildings. Reports on the Internet seem to be somewhat mixed, with some single-family buildings reporting ~1gbit service, and others reporting ~45mbit.

[0] Typical prime-time speed is something like 400mbit. Off-hours speed is frequently very close to 1gbit. The only time I've seen the minimum speed was when I had a poorly-crimped Ethernet cable between my router and the rest of my LAN that would intermittently only link up at 100mbit.

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

#206

Post by supertrope »

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?

Online gaming: No "strict NAT" program. No conflicts with having multiple consoles at one locations. No port forwarding needed.

VPNs: Business IT usually uses some weird IP range like 172.xxx.xxx.xxx so avoid conflicting with the popular 192.168.1.xxx or 10.xx.yy.zz. When two companies merge there is now an IP range overlap and a renumbering has to be done.

P2P file transfers: No port forwarding needed.

Self-hosted servers: No port forwarding needed.

Video chat/VoIP: One reason video chat still suffers from bad quality is that video is proxied through cloud servers to deal with NAT. With more IPv6 video chat services can use more direct connectivity lowering costs and improving quality.

Avoiding CGNAT. If anyone on the same CGNAT group in your ISP got banned you will also be banned. Many Internet services don't have IPv6 and they often cite IPv4 based reputation as the reason why they won't deploy IPv6.

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

#207

Post by Dylan16807 »

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?

To be honest, I'm significantly more envious of 1gig for $40 than 10gig for $80.

And my drives aren't fast enough for 25.

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

#208

Post by klooney »

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #27
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…

> 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…

Comcast has pretty good IPv6 support

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

#209

Post by supertrope »

bcrl wrote: post #78
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?

Fibre is orders of magnitude better than DSL or cable as entire classes of problems are eliminated. Water shorting out copper pairs? Not a problem unless the water gets inside a splice and freezes causing significant bends that lower signal levels. Water getting into a cable is generally not an issue as most cables are either gell filled or have water blocking tapes. Lightning strikes are generally a non-issue since…

Right now device manufacturers are capturing the sliver of the market that actually cares about having fast Wi-Fi. A few ISPs have partnered with these manufacturers through the time honored business model of charging $10-20/mo forever on a box that costs $200.

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

#210

Post by kalleboo »

lstamour wrote: post #85
eurleif wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modem and ONT? I'm under the impression that there's nothing called a "modem" for fiber, and that the ONT serves a similar role. Am I confused?

Can’t speak to this exact circumstance, but more generally: The ONT translates the SFP+ networking to fibre optic, but the modem is still somewhat necessary for logins if you use PPPoE as a wrapper for example. In telecom fibre optic, it often also assigns a particular vlan to internet packets and separate vlans for TV and phone. But I’m not an expert here, just explaining why I needed a modem function in my router a…

The component that does the PPPoE and VoIP VLAN is typically just referred to as a router (or a "residential gateway" for companies that want to sound less technical), I've never heard as it referred to as a modem, usually the ONT is referred to as a modem as it's MODulating/DEModulating the optical signal.
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