Two guys hated using Comcast, so they built their own fiber ISP • Hacker News Board

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

#251

Post by bobmcnamara » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 12:53 PM UTC

mindslight wrote: post #109

bobmcnamara wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comcast killed my Internet during an interview video call. Called them to ask why, and they said it was a planned outage. When was it planned, I asked? 17 minutes ago.

Exactly. That's the kind of logic that only makes sense in a metastasized corpo. The only times my non-incumbent fiber connection has gone down in 8 years have been overnight maintenance windows that only happen maybe a few times per year.

Comcast said they couldn't offer me another credit because I'd had too many outage credits in the previous month.

I don't really want any outage credits.

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

#252

Post by os2warpman » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 3:43 PM UTC

sometimes_all wrote: post #49

I understand the need for independent fiber ISPs. But are gigabit speeds really necessary? For me, a 300 Mbps connection is way more than enough for a four-person family.

Every bit per second that a WAN connection is slower than a CPU interconnect is too slow and that's only half hyperbole.

But I'm a realist so I'll take what I can get.

As your remote resources get faster and faster you start using them more like local resources, which can change (often for the better) how you do things.

If all you're doing is watching netflix then 25mbps per user is probably fine.

If you're working or creating or earning, then you want your connection to be as fast as possible, your distant end to be as fast as possible, and the hardware in between to be fast as possible.

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

#253

Post by monster_truck » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 4:50 PM UTC

simoncion wrote: post #151

monster_truck wrote: post #13

If you ever have the chance to support a local ISP like this, do it! You can get some pretty sweet deals, the last time I had the opportunity to do this they threw in a /28 for "free" (agreed to two year terms)

When was the last time you had the opportunity to do this? 1998? I believe that what you're telling me is true, (and yeah, small ISPs are often really great to be customers of because of stuff like that) but -given the state of IPv4 allocations- I find it difficult to believe that it happened within the past ten, twenty years.

Less than a decade ago! The rough part is when they inevitably get bought by one of the big ISPs

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

#254

Post by immibis » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 4:57 PM UTC

protocolture wrote: post #249

immibis wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can create a great wireless link. It still won't beat a great fiber link. I'm sure the best wireless links beat the worst fiber links, but...

>You can create a great wireless link. It still won't beat a great fiber link. I'm sure the best wireless links beat the worst fiber links, but... When engineered correctly people tend to have absolutely no idea wireless is involved in their connection. Largely its a self inflicted branding issue. You see wireless being sold as "Fibre Extension" way too often for this reason. Theres also factors that fibre people nev…

Look at it this way as well: The slowest practical fiber connection is 10Gbps, individually per fiber. The fastest practical wireless connection is about 2.5Gbps, shared between all users.

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

#255

Post by simoncion » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 10:25 PM UTC

eythian wrote: post #224

simoncion wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big customer-visible feature is that every machine on their LAN can be globally reachable. For ISPs that absolutely cannot get enough IPv4 space to give their customers even a single globally-reachable IPv4 address, this would be the only way to get any global IP space. IME, edge routers that are intended for networking noobs to use often set up their firewalls so that they block inbound unsolicited IPv6 traffic,…

My feeling with privacy extensions is that it's more to prevent enumeration of a network by looking at outgoing traffic. It may have a degree of tracking protection too, but that's probably less important, and is about equivalent to everything being behind a single NAT address.

The RFC 4941 problem statement [0] notes that an attacker who can look at outgoing traffic from a network will not be thwarted by "privacy" addresses. The background section of that document goes on to say that "privacy" addresses do little-to-nothing to thwart correlation attempts against client networks that have few hosts on them.

IMO, something like what's described in RFC 7217 [1] (changing the interface identifier used for "permanent" addresses from the interface's MAC address to something that mixes in the advertised prefix) is a much better way to address the concerns described in section 2.3 of RFC 4941.

[0] https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc4941#section-1.2>

[1] https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc7217#section-4>

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

#256

Post by simoncion » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 10:37 PM UTC

supertrope wrote: post #206

PantaloonFlames wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

> When two companies merge there is now an IP range overlap and a renumbering has to be done.

That has nothing to do with OP's question about consumer internet concerns. However, I've been through several corporate acquisitions. The thing that took the longest to work out? Getting the new company's name on the paychecks.

The thing that took the second longest to work out? Renumbering networks and consolidating and decommissioning hardware for which there just wasn't enough RFC 1918 space available. Every. Damn. Time. this process dragged on and on and on, when IT could have saved 6->18+ months of future work [0] by generating a /48 ULA and using that for every internal thing but the stuff that was IPv4-only.

[0] ...and god only knows how many dollars in labor costs...

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

#257

Post by protocolture » Thu, Jul 17, 2025, 12:14 AM UTC

immibis wrote: post #254

protocolture wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You can create a great wireless link. It still won't beat a great fiber link. I'm sure the best wireless links beat the worst fiber links, but... When engineered correctly people tend to have absolutely no idea wireless is involved in their connection. Largely its a self inflicted branding issue. You see wireless being sold as "Fibre Extension" way too often for this reason. Theres also factors that fibre people nev…

Look at it this way as well: The slowest practical fiber connection is 10Gbps, individually per fiber. The fastest practical wireless connection is about 2.5Gbps, shared between all users.

Slowest practical fiber connection is 10 gig? There are still plenty of 1 gig optics in the world. Still plenty of FC8s too.

And its weird that I can remember building a 10 gig path of siklus just a few years ago. Dodgy product in terms of failover, but delivered the goods.

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

#258

Post by rconti » Sat, Jul 19, 2025, 7:22 PM UTC

radley wrote: post #183

rconti wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'd ask support, if you care. I just took a glance at the forums over on forums.sonic.net, and I'd expect a huge outcry about such a change, and don't see anything. Agreed it doesn't matter in principle (hell, I can't ever use more than about 1.25Gbps even on download), but the downgrade would bother me.