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Start Your Own ISP

startyourownisp.com

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Re: Start Your Own ISP

#41

Post by dboreham »

grahamburger wrote: post #38
jfrankamp wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I noticed the part on IP, is it true that the termination points for a customer do not have a public ip address? Isn't that an issue for your customers?

It is an issue, and it's a tricky one to solve. It's getting much harder to get a hold of public IPv4 addresses and lots of smaller providers are using NAT instead. It's not a total show stopper - the vast majority of customers don't even notice and only a few actually need it enough to not use the service, and for those you can probably come up with clever ways around it (like a VPN) but it's definitely a problem. I…

Just be ready with a story when Law Enforcement show up asking you to identify whoever used one of your IPs to commit a crime on such and such a date in the past.

Re: Start Your Own ISP

#42

Post by scott00 »

grahamburger wrote: post #29
arca_vorago wrote: post #20

My very first real job at 16 was a WISP that served a small town in Arizona (~8k pop), by having a microwave tower on top of a hill in the middle of the town and just tying a few t1s in. The factor that got this WISP traction though was that we were doing family friendly filtering for customers, and in a religious town that went over pretty well. I left because I ended up doing too much of the work for $6 dollars an…

(author here) This is actually probably the hardest part of the whole thing - finding places to put the equipment and negotiating leases with all the right people. If it's an actual cell phone tower you're looking at you can usually find it on the FCC website and find out who manages the tower. Most cell phone towers are managed by a third party management company (like Crown Castle or American Tower). The management…

I keep track of fiber deployments in Chicago by looking at the city's permit database (which is public and has a pretty usable search UI hooked up to it). Might not be as easy in other cities but I'm wondering if it suggests a general strategy of looking to local government for help in finding fiber. Maybe something as basic as finding the guy who issues permits to dig up streets and asking if he remembers who's been laying conduit recently and where. No idea how well this would work in practice outside of Chicago.

Re: Start Your Own ISP

#43

Post by grahamburger »

dboreham wrote: post #41
grahamburger wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is an issue, and it's a tricky one to solve. It's getting much harder to get a hold of public IPv4 addresses and lots of smaller providers are using NAT instead. It's not a total show stopper - the vast majority of customers don't even notice and only a few actually need it enough to not use the service, and for those you can probably come up with clever ways around it (like a VPN) but it's definitely a problem. I…

Just be ready with a story when Law Enforcement show up asking you to identify whoever used one of your IPs to commit a crime on such and such a date in the past.

That's true, I've been there! I've never had them be unreasonable about the situation but maybe I've just been lucky.

The real scary one was servicing a relay site on top of a bank late at night and the cops showing up guns blazing thinking the place was being robbed ;)

Re: Start Your Own ISP

#44

Post by AFNobody »

neosavvy wrote: post #6
tomcam wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The website is completely free and was Created by a guy who is doing it all right now – his ISP already works great

I just moved to a new town and was thinking it would be great to do something like this. I was inspired by the guys I posted in the earlier article. Curious about startup costs/financing.

$12-36K for 12 months fiber. ~$36k in software/equipment costs is probably a safe floor. Lease is toooooooo variable to ballpark.

I wouldn't do it with less than $100k on the assumption you are burning money for the first year and any income is reinvested into marketing.

You probably need a minimum of 500 people for this to be viable.

Re: Start Your Own ISP

#45

Post by dboreham »

grahamburger wrote: post #8

Hey everyone! Author here. Happy to answer questions. Thanks for posting @tomcam! Just a quick note about me - I currently work with the great folks at common.net running an ISP that is similar but not exactly like what's described here. Look us up if you're in East Bay maybe we can get you better Internet service! This site is not associated with common.net, though.

Hi, I've been doing this for ...um 15 years or so. Generally tried to exit the business because in our area it turns out to be a money pit. However, I notice you don't mention anything about interference : we found that even in a deep rural area this is a major headache. It can be hard to find even 40MHz of clean adjacent channels so delivering tens of megabits via P2MP is not so easy and that's before you look at the issues with air access control and half-duplex. The interference picture is always changing too so just because your network works today, doesn't mean it will tomorrow. You're made of stronger stuff than me to try it in an urban area!

Re: Start Your Own ISP

#46

Post by qmarchi »

grahamburger wrote: post #29
arca_vorago wrote: post #20

My very first real job at 16 was a WISP that served a small town in Arizona (~8k pop), by having a microwave tower on top of a hill in the middle of the town and just tying a few t1s in. The factor that got this WISP traction though was that we were doing family friendly filtering for customers, and in a religious town that went over pretty well. I left because I ended up doing too much of the work for $6 dollars an…

(author here) This is actually probably the hardest part of the whole thing - finding places to put the equipment and negotiating leases with all the right people. If it's an actual cell phone tower you're looking at you can usually find it on the FCC website and find out who manages the tower. Most cell phone towers are managed by a third party management company (like Crown Castle or American Tower). The management…

As a side note, depending on the municipality/county, there are GIS databases that show who owns the land and some basic information on them.

A Google search for " GIS map" usually has some pretty promising leads.

Re: Start Your Own ISP

#47

Post by grahamburger »

dboreham wrote: post #45
grahamburger wrote: post #8

Hey everyone! Author here. Happy to answer questions. Thanks for posting @tomcam! Just a quick note about me - I currently work with the great folks at common.net running an ISP that is similar but not exactly like what's described here. Look us up if you're in East Bay maybe we can get you better Internet service! This site is not associated with common.net, though.

Hi, I've been doing this for ...um 15 years or so. Generally tried to exit the business because in our area it turns out to be a money pit. However, I notice you don't mention anything about interference : we found that even in a deep rural area this is a major headache. It can be hard to find even 40MHz of clean adjacent channels so delivering tens of megabits via P2MP is not so easy and that's before you look at th…

Yes interference and channel planning can be a big headache. I do have planned a section that will cover this but haven't finished it yet. I've typically gotten around interference problems by 1) using licensed (or at least not 5ghz, preferably full duplex) backhauls and 2) using AP antennas with narrow beamwidths (higher gain, less area covered.) I'm sure you're doing the same things if you've been doing it that long.

Re: Start Your Own ISP

#48

Post by nerdbaggy »

grahamburger wrote: post #31
simonjgreen wrote: post #30

Surprised no mention of Mikrotik in your vendors list. Ubiquity are great though and would also be my first suggestion.

(author here) I debated adding MikroTik because I heard a rumor that they were backing off on their wireless products and focusing more on routing / switching. So I should at least add them as an option routing/switching hardware. But then they just released a 60Ghz short range radio ... so maybe the rumor was wrong!

Any links about the rumor? That would be interesting if they switched directions

Re: Start Your Own ISP

#49

Post by grahamburger »

AFNobody wrote: post #44
neosavvy wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just moved to a new town and was thinking it would be great to do something like this. I was inspired by the guys I posted in the earlier article. Curious about startup costs/financing.

$12-36K for 12 months fiber. ~$36k in software/equipment costs is probably a safe floor. Lease is toooooooo variable to ballpark. I wouldn't do it with less than $100k on the assumption you are burning money for the first year and any income is reinvested into marketing. You probably need a minimum of 500 people for this to be viable.

(author here) this sounds about right to me. I definitely know people who have gotten started for less (a friend recently just sold a car for $10k and went for it - making enough now to support his family) but obviously safer to have some cushion.

I usually guess 300-500 customers to be able to pay yourself a reasonable salary and maintain the business, depending on how much you hire vs do yourself.

Re: Start Your Own ISP

#50

Post by hutch120 »

grahamburger wrote: post #34
hutch120 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the reply. Github pages used to be aimed purely at developers, but I think it's pretty mainstream now. If you've managed to get a web site up, then you won't have any problem with this. Happy to help if you have any questions PM me. I checked out riot.im but honestly I found the interface really confusing. Also, the lack of integration to a major auth service like Google/Twitter/Github/etc is a real turn o…

Gotcha, makes sense. I'm hosting on Firebase right now which seems fine and is close enough to free. Would there be a tangible benefit to moving to Github Pages? It wouldn't be difficult, it's a static site built with Hugo.

The main tangible benefit is that others can directly interact with each other and the content in one place using the built in collaboration tools.

It would be easy to move. Just upload the web site files to a Github repository with index.html in the root path, and turn on Github pages in the setting tab.

Other benefits that immediately come to mind are: - Anyone can submit suggestions, these are called Pull Requests. - Eventually you can add trusted community members as collaborators and they can edit pages directly. - There is already a massive community that know this interface. - It's free for public sites. - Last but not least, it's super easy to edit the site, just do it directly in the browser, no need for builds, deploy scripts, etc.

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