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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

#61

Post by fsckboy »

mschuster91 wrote: post #51
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #25

"Everything that we're doing is all underground." This indicates that their local and state governments aren't (at this time) captured by the incumbent cable provider. A captured state gov will pass laws to thwart new infra deployment, commonly written by ISP interests. A captured local gov will never approve deployment or slow-walk permitting in an attempt to bankrupt the upstart. more explainers: New suburban fiber…

It's not that easy. Poles vs trenches are a tradeoff discussion. FWIW I was once in construction digging trenches and I'm German, so I might be biased a bit. Pro poles / open air: - very, VERY cheap and fast to build out with GPON. That's how you got 1/1 GBit fiber in some piss poor village in the rural ditches of Romania. - easy to get access when you need to do maintenance Con poles / open air: - it looks fucking u…

>Poles vs trenches are a tradeoff discussion. FWIW I was once in construction digging trenches and I'm German, so I might be biased a bit.

when i got this far I literally thought you were making a joke about Poland.

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

#62

Post by bcrl »

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…

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 something goes wrong with IPv4, it's going to be noticed very quickly.

Some people will say monitoring is all that you need, but I do not agree. There are a million different little issues that can and do occur on physical networks in the real world, and there's no way monitoring will have a 99% chance of detecting all of them. When incidents like the partial Microsoft network outage that hit certain peering points occurred, I had to route around the damage by tweaking route filtering on the core routers to prefer a transit connection that worked over the lower cost peering point. It's that kind of oddball issue that active users catch and report which does not happen for barely used services like IPv6.

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

#63

Post by justusthane »

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…

> their provided router is locked down to hell

From the article, it sounds like the "default" option is for the customer to supply their own router, which I appreciate:

> Prime-One provides a modem and the ONT, plus a Wi-Fi router if the customer prefers not to use their own router.

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

#64

Post by bigstrat2003 »

ta8645 wrote: post #35
jerf wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I'm guessing yours doesn't support IPv6 because most fiber providers don't." Yeah, what's up with that? I just got switched on to fiber and the CGNAT for IPv4 doesn't shock me much, but what's with the no IPv6 in 2025? I know enough to deal with it, but what's the deal? Is there something systematic here?

Everybody can muddle along without IPv6, so it's easy to make it a very low priority. Especially for small shops that are struggling just to create a viable business. IPv6 needs something more to motivate it, a web destination or application that is only available on IPv6.

We used to have freeipv6porn.com, lol. But I suspect that was a joke as much as anything else given how much porn you can get for free all over the Internet.

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

#65

Post by rayiner »

yalok wrote: post #8

Still waiting for someone to do the same in Bay Area. Many parts of it don’t have any fiber optics options, even though Sonic does provide some in the north. AT&T put an optic cable at my curb 10 years ago (most likely due to imminent competition from Google Fiber internet), but then never lit it (most likely because Google dropped their effort due to complications with cities)…

I have two lit fiber cables to my house in exurban maryland and I find it hilarious that many places in the Bay Area have zero.

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

#66

Post by bigstrat2003 »

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…

For me, no IPv6 = no business. I don't think it's acceptable to build a network on IPv4 only at this point, it speaks to being willing to cut corners and not do things the right way just because it's easier.

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

#67

Post by tptacek »

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?

For the same reason you called the phone company when your phone went out, not a phone plumber.

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

#68

Post by bcrl »

mschuster91 wrote: post #51
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #25

"Everything that we're doing is all underground." This indicates that their local and state governments aren't (at this time) captured by the incumbent cable provider. A captured state gov will pass laws to thwart new infra deployment, commonly written by ISP interests. A captured local gov will never approve deployment or slow-walk permitting in an attempt to bankrupt the upstart. more explainers: New suburban fiber…

It's not that easy. Poles vs trenches are a tradeoff discussion. FWIW I was once in construction digging trenches and I'm German, so I might be biased a bit. Pro poles / open air: - very, VERY cheap and fast to build out with GPON. That's how you got 1/1 GBit fiber in some piss poor village in the rural ditches of Romania. - easy to get access when you need to do maintenance Con poles / open air: - it looks fucking u…

There's a huge downside to poles where I'm based: permit shenanigans by pole owners that delay projects and allow incumbents to destroy competitors. Granted, some municipalities do the same thing. One local municipality I have to deal with responds to permit requests almost instantly, while another takes weeks of pestering to acknowledge even the most basic of permit requests.

For anyone starting out today, I would strongly recommend having a planned legal / regulatory strategy to fall back on in the event that excessive delays occur by parties you cannot avoid dealing with.

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

#69

Post by freedomben »

icedchai wrote: post #59
teeray wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

After fixing internet for some neighbors and older relatives, I've wondered if people would pay for a home network / internet handyman service. It's super frustrating, especially for older folks. They often confuse their email passwords, ISP passwords, wifi setup, etc. Also I could save them a bunch of money getting rid of services they don't use, like moving their landlines to VOIP.

I had the same thought, and even took on a few "customers" (local folks I didn't charge, but used as a test group). If I decide to do it "for real" I will definitely need to build a relationship with a person who can run ethernet cables through walls for people. I can do that, but the time it would take would not make it worth it for me.

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

#70

Post by tptacek »

For anyone who doesn't know the area, Saline is adjacent to Ann Arbor, and along with Ypsilanti makes up a sort of greater Ann Arbor/UMich co-prosperity sphere. Saline is the kind of place you expect people to stand up a private fiber ISP; a place with an outer-ring suburb vibe, but far from any major metro, with lots of nerds.
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