[HN Gopher] Start Your Own ISP ___________________________________________________________________ Start Your Own ISP Author : maxwell Score : 377 points Date : 2021-06-17 13:07 UTC (9 hours ago) (HTM) web link (startyourownisp.com) (TXT) w3m dump (startyourownisp.com) | dang wrote: | Past related threads: | | _Start Your Own ISP_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20726906 - Aug 2019 (95 | comments) | | _Start Your Own ISP_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16160394 - Jan 2018 (193 | comments) | | There have been other threads on this general theme but I don't | remember what they were; anyone? | LukeShu wrote: | _Jared Mauch didn't have good broadband-so he built his own | fiber ISP_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25753360 - | Jan 2021 (7 comments) | | _' Anti-authority' tech rebels take on ISPs, connect NYC with | cheap Wi-Fi_ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16978544 - | May 2018 (230 comments) | | I was sure there was a thread about Mauch that got more | traction, but I can't seem to find it. | 29athrowaway wrote: | If you want to start your own ISP, lawyer up. | myfavoritedog wrote: | Built an ISP back in the mid-90's with some friends as a startup. | Dial-up, ISDN, Frame Relay, DSL, etc. | | My one piece of advice is to not overestimate sales. We | engineering types tend to underestimate how hard it can be to | sell things. We love the "build it and they will come" fantasy. | The real world rarely works that way, especially for something as | run-of-the-mill these days as internet service. | jjice wrote: | While this is something I would never take on for a handful of | reasons, this is extremely cool in concept and this would be an | incredibly fun project to put together. | sfgweilr4f wrote: | I think starlink is going to seriously mess with these kinds of | businesses. Anyone with real knowledge care to chime in? | twiclo wrote: | I work for a wisp as a software engineer. I'm knowledgeable | enough about our network/prices. None of the network engineers | believe the numbers spacex is claiming they can do yet they can | see it right in front of their eyes. The main argument is, | "Well once this network actually gets any load it'll crumble." | Or, "The latency is going to be through the roof." But people | who live where a WISP is their only option already don't care | about latency all that much. | | I can't definitively say this is going to be disruptive but I | can tell they're nervous. From my perspective the future of | rural internet is in space. | foobiekr wrote: | I work in networking but not for an ISP. I have worked in | networking for a long time. | | To me, Starlink looks like a very typical Musk venture - | vastly, vastly overhyped. As someone who would like to move | to a more rural area, it appeals to me, but the numbers don't | work. | | The _total planned switching capacity_ of the starlink | constellation, and I emphasize planned because the current | capacity is kind of a joke, is approximately that of a single | current generation multi-linecard network switch. And that's | assuming they do in-space switching, which at the moment they | do not, and to my knowledge none of the current satellites | are even capable of doing so in a non-experimental production | capacity. They also have very significant routing challenges | if they ever do that (and even if they don't). Worse, the | skinny end of the pipe is on the wrong side of the | satellites, so even things like caches are not really going | to help them. | | It just isn't even remotely possible that Starlink is going | to provide the current level of service once they get any | kind of significant user uptake. The bandwidth per spot is | too low and the spots are too large. | | I personally think that half the Starlink story (inter- | satellite switching) is going to be SpaceX's "full self | driving." Unlike FSD, SpaceX has an easy out - they will | build out enough ground station coverage that they don't need | to do inter-satellite switching except for the air/sea cases | and those markets they may simply abandon. | | The true innovation of Starlink is that their ground stations | are dirt cheap, but that's not a sexy story. | no_time wrote: | It's a small miracle our local isp stayed afloat. Service was so | flaky for a decade and a half that I could tell the weather | outside by the lagspikes and speed drops. A few years ago he won | some national/EU grant and now he operates a village wide fiber | network. | | Probably the biggest infrastructure upgrade since the | introduction of tapwater/sewage in the 70's. | grahamburger wrote: | Hi folks, author of startyourownisp.com here. Not sure why we hit | the front page today, but happy to be here! I'll try to hang | around and answer questions for the next few hours. Thanks! | tomschlick wrote: | It's probably in relation to the push to ban municipal ISPs in | Ohio: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27538804 | ignoramous wrote: | Does SYOISP overlap (tech-wise) with the efforts of those at | https://www.meshcenter.org/ who are really trailblazing it in | NYC and Baltimore? | | Also, is SYOISP closer to what https://starry.com/ has | deployed? | | Thanks. | grahamburger wrote: | Related in both cases. SYOISP describes what I, as a somewhat | opinionated author, believe to be the absolute minimum amount | of information required to build a business that can be | called an ISP. To the extent that the companies involved in | meshcenter.org and also Starry are ISPs, there is definitely | overlap. | ignoramous wrote: | > _SYOISP describes what I, as a somewhat opinionated | author, believe to be the absolute minimum amount of | information required to build a business that can be called | an ISP._ | | Thanks. Then, what'd you say are key differences between | meshcenter.org and syoisp? Curious because meshcenter goes | for maintainability and affordability too, from what I | gather. | | Also, has Facebook's foray into the space with | https://telecominfraproject.com (and Google's too with | https://opennetworking.org/) change the landscape? They're | going after 4G/5G like deployments, which is in sharp | contrast with what starry and meshcenter are doing? | grahamburger wrote: | > Then, what'd you say are key differences between | meshcenter.org and syoisp? | | No big differences, everything is applicable to both. In | practice 'Mesh' has kind of become associated with 'non- | profit, volunteer staff,' and SYOISP makes the implicit | assumption of a for-profit entity. | | > Also, has Facebook's foray into the space with | https://telecominfraproject.com (and Google's too with | https://opennetworking.org/) change the landscape? | They're going after 4G/5G like deployments, which is in | sharp contrast with what starry and meshcenter are doing? | | Unsure yet what these efforts (and I'll add Microsoft's | Airband) will amount too. I will say that I don't really | see them tackling the actual hard parts of improving | connectivity, which is primarily the actual building of | physical infrastructure. I mean, other than Google | obviously doing so with Google Fiber. Software can only | get you so far in this effort, which is I think a lot of | the reason that the incumbent providers have maintained | such a stronghold over modern tech companies. | ThePowerOfFuet wrote: | >Also, is SYOISP closer to what https://starry.com/ has | deployed? | | Probably not: >We designed every piece of hardware ourselves | to ensure it works seamlessly to beam internet from the tops | of towers to building receivers and right into your home | without a hitch. | grahamburger wrote: | (author here) It's similar in architecture, if not in the | actual hardware being deployed. FWIW my personal opinion | (informed by personal experience) is that designing your | own equipment is a huge distraction with little benefit. | We'll see how it works out for Starry. | | As I understand Starry has moved to focus largely on | apartments buildings and in-home WiFi (rather than | residential Internet service to single-family homes.) | burnished wrote: | Is this a reasonable way to make some money? Or for people who | are fed up with their ISP options and are ready to take matters | into their own hands? Basically, who do you imagine the typical | user of your guide is? | grahamburger wrote: | > Or for people who are fed up with their ISP options and are | ready to take matters into their own hands? Basically, who do | you imagine the typical user of your guide is? | | If your only motivation is that you are fed up with your ISP | (join the club!) that may not be enough. If you are fed up | with your ISP, have a spare $25k laying around, and/or have | access to grant money, then we should talk. (Many states have | grant funding available today specifically for broadband | projects in rural or underserved areas.) | | I do consulting work on these types of projects as my main | gig now. Many of my customers own businesses in other | industries, live in a small town, and decided that their | Internet sucked and they want to fix it. But it does take | some capital. | loxias wrote: | Thanks for the article! Well written I think. I agree with the | top post that if you're a engineer who hasn't dealt with low | level networking stuff, worked in a DC, or had to be on call, | this probably isn't a good first project. But golly, I can't | wait to have the free time and capital to try starting one. (I | live in a spectrum dominated area) Maybe try and make the whole | operation solar powered. | | Also fun, for anyone else who's interested taking "DIY self | hosting" to new extreme, it's possible to start your own cell | phone company! I don't have a link handy, but search "starting | an MVNO" will yield tons of links. When I did the math, it | worked out to require only ~100 customers to hit break even. | (assuming your time and labor is free, of course) | | I have unreasonably happy giggle-fit inducing day dreams about | some day using my own designed and manufactured smart phone | (easy, because IDGAF about trendy features. running stock | debian is fine.), which gets service from my own service | provider, and my homemade laptop, getting internet from my own | ISP, in my solar powered house. | | Also also, for anyone who lives in the SFBA, monkeybrains | internet is the best ISP evar. I was one of their first | customers, and I miss my ~4ms ping times to the office, and | ~8ms ping time to my colo box. | grahamburger wrote: | Thanks! I know some of the folks at Monkey Brains, they're a | great ISP and super cool people too! | | > I agree with the top post that if you're a engineer who | hasn't dealt with low level networking stuff, worked in a DC, | or had to be on call, this probably isn't a good first | project. | | I don't really disagree, but I would just say that if you're | interested in doing this, and have money you'd like to invest | in it, reach out to me. With our powers combined we can | probably make something work! | elliekelly wrote: | Every time I've seen your site posted here or on reddit you're | always in the comments offering to help and answering questions | so I just wanted to say major kudos to you for being so helpful | and responsive. I'm sure it can't be easy but you're doing a | great public service by sharing your knowledge. | grahamburger wrote: | Thanks, appreciate the kind words. It did derail my plans a | bit to hit HN this morning, but it's fun to chat about and HN | has done a lot for me over the years! | icedchai wrote: | I helped build a couple of ISPs in the 90's, back when upgrading | from a 56K leased line to a T1 was considered a right of passage. | Fun times. Not sure I'd want to go back. Seems hard to compete | with the cable company in high density areas. Maybe a WISP if I | was out in the boonies... | [deleted] | traceroute66 wrote: | Start Your Own ISP ? | | To be honest, the first thing that crossed my mind was "good luck | getting an IPv4 range in 2021". ;-) | | The second thought was. Don't bother unless you've got a clear | competitive differentiator. There are already too many ISPs out | there as it is without another "me too" cluttering up the market. | avipars wrote: | the only place that would make sense would be someplace | deserted or underserved... | | But spacex is rolling out their solution | dimitrit wrote: | I would love to see a guide on how to setup a 5G network | delabay wrote: | This is now possible with the advent of CBRS. | | https://freedomfi.com/ is selling hardware later this year | which will allow you to become your own cell tower for 5G CBRS | bands. You'll get paid $.50 per gb consumption, paid in Helium | HNT crypto (yes, crypto). Its still a big work in progress but | could totally unlock private deployments of 5G networks and | make them _almost_ as easy as setting up wifi. | mahathu wrote: | Previous discussion: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20726906 | nedrocks wrote: | This is so interesting! I noticed a sign while driving yesterday | that was unbranded saying "high speed internet" and an arbitrary | local phone number. I presumed it could be a reseller but my mind | started turning on how I could create an ISP and what that | process looks like. Next morning I see this. | | I don't think I would execute on this personally because of the | support required -- the spreadsheet takes into account the | building but less so the maintaining. I would struggle to be | hated as much as people fume at ISPs when their service is | impacted. | amichal wrote: | Having done this informally many years ago for a dozen neighbors | in a village before we got decent broadband I can relate. People | get real weird and twitching when there internet is out and there | is nothing like being woken up at 6am on a Sunday with a | "customer" in you bedroom ranting that the INTERNET IS DOWN. Or | having to bust the kid who hid a wifi repeater in the village | library to torrent gigabytes of "ISOs" over our tiny 1.5Mbit | connection | bombcar wrote: | People handle power failures more gracefully than they do | internet outages. | zekica wrote: | has anyone thought about bufferbloat in wisp setting? | | my experience is that some manufacturers are way better than | others and there is no way to compare them based on any specs. | | OpenWRT is the gold standard for fighting bufferbloat, but not | many manufacturers even consider using algorithms and driver | patches that can help... | | For example, Ubiquity still uses ancient 2.6 linux kernel with | some backported funcionality while mikrotik has the same base but | don't even try. | markonen wrote: | Over the last year or so the company I run moved some content | delivery workloads from a CDN onto our own network. So now we | have something like 100Gbit/s of total external bandwidth. | | The next thought in my addled brain is that since we only really | use the egress side of it, perhaps some of our neighbors would | enjoy affordable 10G internet access... | grahamburger wrote: | (Author here) Maybe possible to figure out a way to use this. | The problem is the people using it would still need transport | to your network, which in practice can cost as much or nearly | as much as direct DIA to their location. | | The reverse here is maybe interesting too - a lot of WISPs have | a bunch of spare 'upload' (from their perspective) bandwidth | available, and by definition it's very geographically | distributed, maybe that would be of use to CDNs? | | I'd love to chat more about this if you're interested. Email in | my profile. | toast0 wrote: | The tricky bit is that a CDN doesn't really want geographic | distribution so much as to be close to network distribution | points. If a WISP's customers aren't enough to warrant a CDN | node and their internet backhaul is fiber to a not | particularly nearby internet exchange point, there's not a | whole lot of benefit to the CDN to be at the WISP rather than | the internet exchange. | | It might be different if the WISP has connections to local | residential ISPs that aren't well connected to local internet | exchanges (or there nearest internet exchange isn't very | near) so the WISP facility offers a way to get (network) | closer to more users. | | I could also see some potential for mixing traffic streams | between a WISP (or several) and a CDN to try to balance | traffic flows enough to qualify for peering with networks | with restrictive peering policies; however, they also often | have geographic requirements that might be harder to meet. | grahamburger wrote: | Thanks, this helps to confirm what I've always expected | from my end (the wisp side.) It sure seems like a good | match at a high level but seems to fall apart once we get | in to the details of making it work. | yitchelle wrote: | Had a colleague that ran an a very small scale ISP. It was back | in the day when the country is transitioning between dialup and | broadband. Needless to say that it was very short lived. | mikewarot wrote: | I thought this was going to be a game reliving my experience as | the System Administrator at our local dialup internet service | back in the 1990s. I wasn't there at the start, but I ran the | thing for 2 years, serving about 200 customers. I wrote the | "Internet Installation" floppy disks that people used to install | networking on Windows 3.1, and configured dialup icons on their | desktop. I was the ONLY technical support they had. | | I learned that people don't use the same words we technical folks | do, so if you get a support call and ask "Have you installed | anything?" the answer they give is no, but, if you ask "do you | have any new programs or stuff", the answer will be yes. | | Why? - My theory is that they either didn't know what | "installing" was (nobody opened up the computer to put something | in), or they themselves didn't do it. | | You have to have a very strong ability to _route around_ the | person on the other end of the phones preconceptions of the world | and get the right answers anyway. | | If you're going to be an ISP, you're going to be on call | 24/7/365, and you're going to see weird shit. More than once we | had to deal with people wanting to post adult content for | money.... and this was back in the days of dialup. Who knows what | the heck the folks are doing today. | grahamburger wrote: | (Author here) This is great, you can't see me but I'm laughing | with you! :) | | I have sometimes considered making this in to a game, actually. | It could have some fun territory and financial mechanics. But | the more I think about it the more it seems like work, and the | less I want to play it! | | To be realistic it would have to wake you up at 3AM and make | you pull pants on and drive out to the bottom of a tower in a | muddy field that smells like chicken shit to drop in a | generator. While it's <0 F@ outside. | stevehawk wrote: | Is there really any future in small ISPs now that Starlink and | its competitors are being launched? | grahamburger wrote: | Author here. This is definitely something some WISPs are | worried about. It's likely that Starlink will take a lot of the | most rural customers. WISPs can also be very successful in more | suburban environments, and can speeds much higher than Starlink | can provide in suburbia (300-500mbps) at a lower cost, so there | will probably be a place for WISPs at least until there is no | gap between fiber availability and Starlink as the best option. | | Also, a lot of WISPs have started running fiber in rural areas, | so that's another way they can stay relevant. | maven29 wrote: | Starlink only has permission for 5 million user terminals at | the moment. | martinald wrote: | That's a lot? Something like 120m US households, so it's | nearly 5% penetration. | rabuse wrote: | How does Starlink hold up to adverse weather conditions? That's | where I believe the big separation comes from, especially in | rainy areas. | seniorivn wrote: | starlink is in no way a competitor to a modern ISP, on a modern | ISP it's normal to have >=1Gbit and more than 10 times less of | a latency compared to starlink, and the maximum potential | userbase for starlink is a fraction of internet userbase | twiclo wrote: | I work for a WISP. It is not common to have >=1Gbit and 10 | times less latency compared to starlink. | grahamburger wrote: | We should chat! (Author here.) Email is in my profile. It'd | be cool to have a hangout with a bunch of the WISP folks | from Hacker News. | seniorivn wrote: | oh, my bad, i did open the link, but jumped straight to | marketing section(since it was my point of interest) and | somehow assumed it was about local small ISP's, with | wireless it's not that simple, yes. | | But still, it's mind blowing how horrible ISP's in US are, | you would think if in some third world countries it's | accessible, everyone in US should have it. | alksjdalkj wrote: | It seems like there should be a lot of potential for something | like this in cities. The site says that line of sight and | apartment buildings are problems but in the east coast cities I'm | familiar with there's lots of neighborhoods consisting mainly of | row homes or 2-3 story multifamily houses. To me places like | neighborhoods like those would be a natural fit, more so than | suburbs. | | Also for me the main appeal of this is the potential for a not | for profit, co-op style ISP. I.e. owned and operated by the | customers. Although if the fiber is still coming from a Comcast | or Verizon I'm not sure how different it would be vs. just buying | consumer internet direct from Comcast/Verizon. | grahamburger wrote: | Could be! East coast has traditionally been hard for WISPs | because of trees. Recently I've been doing a proof of concept | in Georgia, though, and had a lot of success even with tree | cover. Would love to try out a few more of these places that | have traditionally been hard for WISPs. (Author here.) | kfajdsl wrote: | > Recently I've been doing a proof of concept in Georgia | | Can you disclose where in Georgia? I'm just curious as a | resident of the state ;) | grahamburger wrote: | I can share these news articles! | | https://broadbandbreakfast.com/2021/06/start-your-own-isp- | lo... | | https://www.wfxg.com/story/43745096/georgia-cyber-center- | wor... | runningskull wrote: | Related and fun: the Fremont Cabal Internet Exchange[1]. The | person who started it has a great blog[2] about all kinds of | related things. There's a really good interview[3] with him about | how it started and what it takes to run it on the On The Metal | podcast (highly recommended in general) | | 1: https://fcix.net | | 2: https://blog.thelifeofkenneth.com | | 3: https://oxide.computer/podcasts/kenneth-finnegan | godman_8 wrote: | I honestly feel like starting a WISP is risky right now. | Companies like Starlink and T-Mobile have the money and | infrastructure to compete and solve a lot of problems that WISPs | have. | smoldesu wrote: | My family bought internet from a small ISP nearby who had done | the same thing. We paid ~$100/month for WISP access, with ~10% | downtime, 500ms of latency (at lowest), and 500kb down. It was a | nightmare, and my siblings performance in school started tanking | as they couldn't access homework or lectures from home. We | eventually switched to Starlink, which has been a 100x | improvement, both literally and figuratively. | | Please, nobody ever start your own ISP. It absolutely sucks to | use your infrastructure. | grahamburger wrote: | Author of startyourownisp.com here. Your experience is | unfortunate and definitely not unique, but also not universal | or I would say even the norm for WISPs. I'm personally involved | in running a few different ISPs in rural parts of the U.S. and | Mexico. In all cases we are providing 100mbps+ service with | <20ms latency to most of the Internet. | smoldesu wrote: | I'll take your word for it, but I'm definitely not switching | back from Starlink any time soon. We had more issues with our | old provider in a week than we've had in 3 months of Starlink | service. | Naac wrote: | > How Much Do I need? | | > You probably need less than you think. A 1Gbps fiber connection | will easily serve 500-800 | | No thanks. I was intrigued, but ultimately I don't think my | community is better served by having yet another oversubscribed | Comcast-like ISP ( even though its run by individuals ) | bombcar wrote: | Any ISP that charges less than Datacenter transit rates | (something like $200/mo per gigabit) is oversubscribed. | | And even those rates at hurricane electric are oversubscribed | simply because it doesn't make sense to pay for unused transit. | marcus0x62 wrote: | All IP networks are oversubscribed, even the ones charging | "datacenter transit rates". The difference, in this respect | at least, is that good providers monitor utilization and | proactively upgrade capacity. | bombcar wrote: | It would be interesting for ISPs (especially municipal or | small ones) to have a live graph showing ingress/outgress | on their various routers and lines. | | There's also "soft" limits (currently we pay for 10G on | this fiber line that could do 1000G) vs hard limits (we are | at 1G on this 1G copper connection). | grahamburger wrote: | (Author here) That is old, I'll update it. My recommendation | today is to keep a 1gbps customer to 200-300 customers. | | FWIW, though, Comcast's oversell rates are probably worse (at | least in some places) than even the old number that I've listed | here. | grahamburger wrote: | Also just a note for those curious: this is how I like to | measure what's needed for a WISP, and track how it changes | over time. | | Set up a 1gbps connection and start adding customers. Watch | the usage on the circuit as your customer base grows. You | want to make sure that any time a customer comes online, they | can get their full speed according to the package you're | selling. So if you're selling 100mbps packages, you always | want to have _at least_ 100mbps available on that circuit, | even at peak times of day. As you add customers, you can | start to estimate how much traffic, on average, each customer | adds during the peak time of day (it 's not as much as you'd | expect.) Then you can estimate how many customers you'll have | before you approach your limit (1gbps minus max speed | package.) | avipars wrote: | Wouldn't SpaceX's solution essentially solve this... | | You just need to sign up and point the device they gave you to a | satellite | walrus01 wrote: | I would caution against just jumping into this and trying to be a | _real_ ISP if your experience is in software development, | sysadmin stuff, or something kind of tech industry adjacent but | you 've never worked for an ISP in a NOC environment, as a junior | network engineer or similar for somebody else's medium to large | sized ISP. There's a lot of missteps that can be made without | experience. | | In general I would recommend thinking of starting a small ISP as | a depth and breadth of knowledge base you need to develop, | similar to how an apprentice electrician is expected to work | under some more senior/experienced persons in their field for a | number of years before being able to operate independently. | | I do not want to discourage anyone but I've seen a myriad of 'oh | my god why did they do _that_ ' small WISPs with anywhere from 50 | to 1500 customers. Going down the wrong network | architecture/topology/business plan path can be very costly later | on if you're 100% learning as you go. | | Overall I think a site like this is a great idea, but the sheer | scope of things that would need to be written down in a wiki-like | format for _everything_ to start your own ISP, and what systems | /subsystems/technologies you will want to be familiar with, could | fill thousands of pages if printed in book form. It's a | gargantuan task to make a website that has everything needed to | start an ISP from scratch, assuming the reader hasn't been | involved in somebody else's ISP operations first. | Exuma wrote: | What type of profit potential is there to doing this? Seems | like good stable income, but I also see lots of downsides with | literally not knowing how anything works (and not being an | engineer). There would be an awful lot of new information to | learn, so the profit potential would really need to be there. | walrus01 wrote: | That would vary wildly by geographical location and whether | it's some place that has no WISP at all right now, population | density, competition, terrain and tree cover, number of | houses, etc. I'm skeptical about the idea of starting a very | small WISP right now, one could easily spend $40-50,000 on | basic infrastructure for a small area and not be able to | compete in nines of reliability/uptime and speeds with | Starlink. | calgoo wrote: | Exactly, you need to have access to tall buildings / towers | etc with fiber. The cost of putting a couple of antennas on | a tower can basically eat up any profit you would get. You | are also competing with LTE/5G, and one storm can wipe out | half your infrastructure in an afternoon. | Exuma wrote: | Heh, I can't imagine that feeling when you have really no | idea what you're doing, you have 50 paying customers, and | then all your equipment goes down. This sounds | nightmarish unless you are some sort of electrical | engineer | smoldesu wrote: | I once lost internet for a week when our WISP provider's | base station went down. We tried calling his company for | days, and he only came to fix it when we found his | cellphone number and accosted him personally. Thankfully | we use Starlink now. | walrus01 wrote: | As a one-man WISP responsible for everything at the | physical level and the logical/IP configuration of the | network, monitoring systems, billing systems, customer | support systems etc you are also trapped in a personal | hell of never being able to go on vacation and on-call | 24x7x365. | | There are certain sorts of people who are capable and | comfortable with doing that and have the motivation to do | so, but running a small sized ISP realistically takes 3 | to 4 people with differing but complementary skill sets | in order for everyone to not burn out. It takes a fair | bit of revenue just to handle what would be the | reasonable payroll cost for that plus operating costs | plus overhead. | vidarh wrote: | My first company was an ISP. There were 4 of us. We were | around 19. No business experience. No networking | experience. How hard could it be, right? | | I configured my first router by calling our provider and | saying we'd set things up but something was wrong, and | having them echo to me what they did on their side so I | could "check" our side - they charged for the setup, but | this way we got it for free. | | We literally lived in the office for the first year, and | one of my most entertaining experiences was answering the | phone at 2am on a Sunday morning and the person on the | other end expressing surprise that someone answered - | they'd just called out of sheer desperation and expected | it to ring forever. | | Then there was the person who spent three hours | terrorising us before it transpired he'd not connected | his modem, nor turned it on, or in fact taken it out of | its package - something the person talking to him found | out call by call, while the rest of us tried to not | audibly laugh, because surely nobody could be that | stupid? (a "learning experience" - it was how I came to | understand why support people ask all those really | obvious "stupid" questions. | | I can't make up my mind if all the network issues were | the worst part, or if the support calls were. | | This was 26 years ago, and I have just about gotten over | the soul-sucking parts of it by now. | | I even contemplated setting up a local ISP again... I | don't know why. | marcus0x62 wrote: | > Then there was the person who spent three hours | terrorizing us before it transpired he'd not connected | his modem, nor turned it on, or in fact taken it out of | its package | | I worked at a local mom and pop ISP at around the same | time, probably a few years later. Those sorts of customer | calls were the best (after they were resolved of course.) | | * One guy would call at 2 or 3 AM and scream into our | voicemail "Internet's DOWN! FIX IT NOW!!!!!". His wife | would call the next day and apologize. | | * One time, someone called irate that their dialup | service wasn't working. He called the number we gave him, | and all he heard "was a bunch of ringing and static". | After several minutes we figured out he was dialing the | modem bank from a telephone and expecting to use the | Internet without a computer. He did not own a computer, | and was quite upset we had not told him he needed one... | | * It took two or three hours one time to figure out why | someone couldn't connect. Helpfully, they figured it out | themselves -- they were entering "the letter zero, not | the number zero". | | * A guy called up one time wanting to tell us about an | interstellar propulsion device he developed (which also, | of course, could cure cancer if the 'magnetic field' was | reversed.) I suggested he call the Jet Propulsion Labs | and gave him the number. | | For me, the support calls were always the worst and I was | very glad when the company got big enough that I no | longer had to regularly take calls (although the ones I | did get were the worst of the worst.) | vidarh wrote: | I'm sure JPL loved the referral... | reasonabl_human wrote: | Great stories, thanks for sharing! | grahamburger wrote: | Author here. I see your posts often and have a lot of respect | for you as someone who obviously has a deeper knowledge of | networking than I probably every will. That being said I don't | really agree that a person necessarily needs a ton a networking | or even any technical background to start a WISP, any more than | they necessarily need a ton of experience as a cook to start a | restaurant. They definitely need employees or advisors who have | that experience, but like you allude to here probably no one | can have _all_ of the knowledge to so it themselves upfront. | | Also I've also seen a lot of WISPs with a myriad of problems as | they grow from a few dozen to a few hundred customers, many of | them are able to make that transition, fix their problems, and | either grow or be acquired. This seems basically the same as | any industry - if everyone waited until they knew exactly what | they're doing no one would start anything. | | All of this said, starting a WISP isn't for everyone. I talk to | a lot of people who are in the early stages of starting an ISP, | and often my best, honest advice is that it's not a great idea | in their situation. | smoldesu wrote: | What about the customers though? My family used to be chained | to a WISP, and we paid $100/month for internet that made | dial-up look like a viable competitor. Not to mention, | downtime was atrocious (1/10th of the time the service would | just be out). | | I think the bigger argument for not starting a WISP is that | nobody wants to be a guinea pig in your amateur networking | project. | xoa wrote: | FWIW, and not to undersell the challenges, but I think | you're extrapolating too much from a single example (and | possibly an old one). The started-tiny-and-local WISP | around here is $100 a month for 50/50 and it's been pretty | rock solid. While I certainly haven't run a WISP myself, I | have set up point to multipoint wireless networks for some | local businesses, and with current equipment it's | impressive how straight forward and relatively turnkey the | basics of the physical link itself have become. It was no | problem to have dozens of points over distances of 5-16 | miles with solid 100-400 Mbps links. My understanding from | far more senior people and reading about real WISPs is that | there is a non-linear increase in difficulty/expense over | greater distances, scaling up to hundreds/thousands of | points, and handling things for multiple independent | entities rather then what is effectively a big LAN even if | sectioned up with VLANs. There's also completely non- | technical challenges to be ready to deal with like | compliance departments and legal/law enforcement | interaction aspects of when a customer inevitably does | something naughty. The path has been tread but it wasn't | anything I've had to deal with. | | Still, if I was still in an area with dial up speeds and | Starlink wasn't a thing, helping jury rig up neighbors with | a mini-WISP is a project I'd certainly consider | contributing to and believe could be quite reliable and | easily beat out DSL at least. | | Also speaking of Starlink, I'll be curious if a side aspect | of them would be driving phased arrays in general down in | price significantly. That'd be a pretty interesting | development for terrestrial PtP/PtMP imho, since a lot of | the trickiness over long distances is precise aiming. If | the antenna merely needed to be aimed with 10-20deg and | then could perfectly align with the other from there, | including real time adjustments for some motion or | interference, that'd be another pretty cool improvement. | And for the time being at least Starlink has left an | opening in that the connections are quite asymmetrical | (ie., 200 down but only 30-40 up), which is challenging to | work around given their physical and economic constraints. | Whereas a WISP can be full symmetric right up to gigabit | speeds, assuming their backbone supports it. That could let | some remain competitive beyond just density limits. | krapht wrote: | Is Starlink such a big deal that it would materially | affect phased array costs? Cell base stations are already | ubiquitous. From my own experience with phased array | systems, the big cost is usually in the massive FPGAs | that are needed to process all the incoming data in | parallel. | grahamburger wrote: | (Author here) WISPs are more like local restaurants than | big chains. Some local restaurants are terrible. At least | with a big chain you know what you're going to get. | | That being said, the WISP you had probably just didn't know | what they're doing. Which is true of a lot of WISPs (and | small restaurant owners!) And is actually in large part | what motivated me to write this guide! I'd like to believe | that if they followed the guide, and/or gave me a call to | help out with the parts they're struggling with, we could | fix it. I'm personally involved in running several WISPs | right now, and without exception we are providing 100mbps+ | service, <20ms latency, and at least 99.9% uptime measured | to the customer. | LinuxBender wrote: | Does your site have a section that covers the legal steps a | person should follow to protect themselves and their small | business? i.e. incorporating their business, business | insurance specific to a WISP, processes to follow to ensure | legal compliance, what data to log and not log, log retention | policies, consumer disclosure, frameworks to put in place for | law enforcement requests, agreements to have in place for the | upstream fiber provider, etc... | adolph wrote: | I am not an expert but I've seen this book recommended: | Small Time Operator: How to Start Your Own Business, Keep | Your Books, Pay Your Taxes, and Stay Out of Trouble | | https://www.amazon.com/Small-Time-Operator-Business- | Trouble/... | grahamburger wrote: | There's a little bit of that in there. Surprisingly, in the | U.S. at least, there's not much of a gap between being a | legal business entity (LLC, corp) and being able to be an | ISP. You don't _have_ to log much of anything (unless you | 're doing voice services as well). You do have to be able | to intercept customer traffic without going on site | physically in order to comply with law enforcement | requests. | | But as someone who is not a lawyer and has no business | giving legal advice the best I can do is suggest that you | talk to a real lawyer. | LinuxBender wrote: | I think it might be useful to have a section that | includes anecdotal experiences of existing WISP's of what | actions they had to take in their location to cover | themselves, what legal challenges they ran into and any | caveats or scenarios to be aware of. Obviously with the | disclaimer that it is not legal advise and they should | retain their own legal council. It might give folks a | better picture of what to expect before they consider the | investment. | | For what its worth, I really like the idea of people | implementing some options for those that might only have | access to one ISP. I was locked into Comcast for the | longest time and would have loved to see more options | available. | walrus01 wrote: | If somebody has the opportunity to work in a role that has | 'network engineer' in the title for somebody else's mid sized | ISP first, I would encourage them to think of that like free | paid training for a couple of years before trying it on their | own. | | Of course totally dependent on their level of pre-existing | knowledge, level of risk with the capital they intend to | spend on a startup wisp, financial partners, and what | scale/scope of service area they want to do it in. Varies | widely with location. And what competition (if any, other | than hughesnet/viasat) exists. | | I've seen people do some pretty cool non-profit community | based WISP things for under 50 houses, if built right it can | be quite trouble free. | | The tools and equipment to do really basic 100% fiber based | GPON network (or active ethernet) are also a lot less costly | than they used to be... The things some guys are doing on | really shoestring budgets with FTTH aerial drop cables across | roofs and low cost GPON things in cities like Dhaka, | Bangladesh show that it doesn't have to be super expensive. | In a USA/Canada context, right of way and poles and routes | are an issue (even after you're got your ROW, go price how | much bucket truck/aerial fiber contractors cost, if you don't | do it all in house)... | | I read somewhere that 40% of restaurants started by people | with no previous industry experience go belly up within 5 | years? Something like that. I imagine one could easily spend | $400,000 setting up a restaurant and working 14 hour days and | ultimately not be successful, so doing something like a | startup WISP on one's own similar amount of funds (and loans, | private party investors) I would think of something similar | to that. If one has the funds and the appetite for the risk | and is really determined to do it, then go for it! | grahamburger wrote: | > I read somewhere that 40% of restaurants started by | people with no previous industry experience go belly up | within 5 years? Something like that. I imagine one could | easily spend $400,000 setting up a restaurant and working | 14 hour days and ultimately not be successful | | Absolutely agree with this and everything you said here. I | think the only thing I see differently is that while | someone should have some relevant experience before | starting an ISP (or any business) is that it doesn't | necessarily have to be networking. For example, some of the | biggest challenges I've seen WISPs face as they try to grow | are: obtaining lease agreements for wireless relay sites, | hiring and training technicians in large numbers, and in | logistics around keeping stuff in stock that they need to | grow. Someone with experience from a different industry in | some of those areas might do just as well as someone with | networking experience. | | EDIT TO ADD: One of things I find kind of difficult to | communicate with people who are interested in it is that | it's just another business, and doesn't really have any | better or worse odds of succeeding beyond a few years and | making money than any other business, including | restaurants. People sometimes seem surprised that you can | make money at this, but, of course you can! You can also | make money running a taco truck or building custom | furniture. But you can also lose a lot of money and time. | [deleted] | walrus01 wrote: | I also totally agree that a lot of the challenges are not | exactly 'network engineer' related, trying to run a small | WISP has so many other things that aren't what you would | find in CCNA/CCIE study materials or similar. One can | feel much more confident in what they're doing once they | have a real firm grasp of BGP, OSPF, various types of | MPLS, metro ethernet stuff, optical networking, ptp | microwave, linux sysadmin stuff for operational support | systems and so on, but that's only one piece of the | puzzle of many business process related things to cover. | hhw wrote: | This is not imperative to do in-house. My company | (*shameless plug for Astute Internet) has expertise in | those areas you describe, and will provide and/or support | the edge network infrastructure for small ISP's in | exchange for selling them some of those services (we're a | mini-carrier and value added reseller) and charging a | nominal retainer to be an available path of escalation | 24/7. Due to our purchasing volume and industry | knowledge, we are able to sell these services for the | same or less than what our customers would be able to | negotiate on their own, while getting a lot of support | from us in the process. | | Although this type of knowledge and expertise is rather | specialized, we are able to focus on these specific areas | without getting involved in the intricacies of the | downstream side of our clients' networks, thus avoiding | the need for us to have too much client specific or | institutional knowledge. This has worked out very well | with the handful of eyeball networks we're currently | working with in the Pacific Northwest, and we intend to | more actively extend this line of business down the coast | in the near future. | oarsinsync wrote: | Pivoting your server or software stack is like changing a | floor in a building. | | Changing your network stack is like changing the foundations | of the building. | | Sure you can do it, but the bigger your building, the harder | and more expensive it's going to be. | | There's a lot of value in learning a lot of these basic | mistakes first on someone else's dime. | | Sure, you don't need to be a trained chef to start a | restaurant, but if you dont know that undercooking pork is | going to make your customers sick, you probably should be | hiring someone else to do the cooking. | crmd wrote: | > Changing your network stack is like changing the | foundations of the building. | | Same thing with data storage. Platform changes are like | open heart surgery on data centers. | fragbait65 wrote: | I think your analogy with restaurants is flawed. There's a | reason a lot of newly started restaurants fail. | | You most definitely need some form of experience from the | restaurant business to succeed as a restaurant owner, unless | you are really lucky. Your analogy make it seem as being a | chef is the only job that exist in the restaurant business. | | Sure, you can succeed without experience, but your chances to | do so increases dramatically with experience. | grahamburger wrote: | I realized after the fact that I didn't elaborate on my | meaning here, but it seems like you picked up on it. | | What I meant was: You _should_ have experience with at | least one and preferably several of the important parts of | running an ISP before you start one. NOC experience is one | of the things that you _could_ already have experience | with, but isn 't the only one. | | > Your analogy make it seem as being a chef is the only job | that exist in the restaurant business. | | This actually makes my point better than I did. Being a | [chef/network technician] isn't the only job that exists in | a [restaraunt/wisp]. | walrus01 wrote: | I was also referring to the role of restaurant general | manager and owner (Sometimes same person, sometimes not), | not just chef. | windexh8er wrote: | The WISPs that are started by people with no/little | background in NOC operations leave themselves to build, not | only insecure, but inefficient networks rather quickly. I | started my career on the network side and have worked for a | number of ISPs (small and large). And while a WISP creator | can make it - they can also just as easily create a bad | product unknowingly. | | Case in point... I have family that only had one option for | Internet service. Long story short a utility owned a WISP and | no longer wanted to run it (they ran it OK, but made a number | of mistakes when choosing architecture and products to go to | market with). One of their employees bought it out and | started making worse choices. The owner clearly had never | scaled a network nor did this person have any formal training | in networks or the protocols he'd have to manage and monitor. | | I've submitted no less than a dozen vulnerabilities within | their network and have had to install a monitoring stack for | said family members to show the owner of the WISP that during | peak hours they were dropping a significant percentage of | packets, latency was spiking and SLAs were not being remotely | met. The owner has refused to acknowledge any and all data | I've provided to them, saying that "things are working well". | Yet, I have now a years worth of logged data in a very | consumable format that shows otherwise. | | The reality is I ended up randomly meeting someone who had | worked for them and the conversation was such that the owner | was furiously trying to figure out how to fix the problems, | but had neither the technical skills to do so or the budget | to revamp the architectural flaws. | | Starting a WISP almost certainly is not for everyone. Getting | it working correctly is only one aspect, but keeping an open | network secure for your users is not trivial. Not only do you | need a working knowledge of multi-user networks but also a | decent perspective with regard to the threat models involved. | If you can't, minimally, check those two boxes it seems (to | me) a bit egregious to expect others to fork over money and | trust you for said services. | seaorg wrote: | Starlink doesn't change anything, it's not for dense coverage. | Not too much overlap with WISP. Revolutionary in other ways | though. | | The main problem with this way of transmitting is that you are on | unregulated parts of the radio spectrum. So there's nothing | stopping someone from jamming your equipment, grinding everything | to a halt, whether it's on purpose or by accident. Maybe in | practice it's rare, but it's too big a vulnerability for me to | invest in such a business. | | I was wondering about laser modems. It could never be jammed | without some kind of expensive and conspicuous physical | intervention. I would feel much more comfortable investing in | that even if lasers were more expensive or a pain in the ass. | | Not that it matters. 5G is going to put all these guys out of | business. | kalleboo wrote: | > _5G is going to put all these guys out of business_ | | Does 5G make much of a difference here? From what I've read, in | the the bands that give you reasonable range (mmWave doesn't | work at these distances), 5G at the very most gives you like | 20% more bandwidth than 4G LTE. That doesn't seem game- | changing. | kube-system wrote: | In most of the places where I know people who use a WISP, | they barely have 4G coverage, and when they do, it's not a | strong signal to say the least. Most of the places (at least | in the US) where 5G is going to compete are probably places | that already have cable. | kalleboo wrote: | Exactly. 5G doesn't focus on increasing coverage but mostly | latency. The mmWave stuff with the 1 Gbps+ speeds has a | coverage of around a block, so that will only be used in | super-dense areas. | | From the competition section of the site, the sweet spot | for WISPs seems to be just under suburban, where there's | enough density but not quite cable coverage (or the local | cable monopoly isn't giving their network enough TLC) | grahamburger wrote: | > Exactly. 5G doesn't focus on increasing coverage but | mostly latency. | | This is my opinion as well - 5G will improve latency and | also capacity (meaning carriers won't have to be as | stingy with tethering plans) but not necessarily top | speeds or coverage area. | grahamburger wrote: | (Author here) | | > The main problem with this way of transmitting is that you | are on unregulated parts of the radio spectrum. | | Traditionally this is true and is still mostly true today, but | a ton of WISPs picked up PAL licenses in the CBRS band and are | using that. Also, as you mentioned, in practice "jamming" | equipment is uncommon (and very illegal!) | | Also I always recommend that folks use licensed or FCC | registered links for their wireless backhaul, which limits the | amount problems you'll get from interference. | | > I was wondering about laser modems. It could never be jammed | without some kind of expensive and conspicuous physical | intervention. I would feel much more comfortable investing in | that even if lasers were more expensive or a pain in the ass. | | I've used some of these device (called "open air optical.") | They're ok for very short range connections, but over anything | more than a few hundred yards the performance of wireless is | much better. | | > Not that it matters. 5G is going to put all these guys out of | business. | | As a WISP you have the option of deploying 5G networks. It's | expensive, but might be worth it. Many, many WISPs (myself | included), operate fixed 4G LTE networks, and 5G is the next | step. I haven't dabbled in 5G yet, but I have sales people | calling me somewhat regularly ready to sell the gear. To the | extent that 5G will live up to it's promises, WISPs are well | positioned to take advantage of it. | delabay wrote: | Just because you mentioned 5G CBRS: | | Freedomfi (https://freedomfi.com/) is selling hardware later | this year which will allow you to become your own cell tower | for 5G CBRS bands, based on Facebook's magma project. You can | backhaul a 5G modem/antenna, offload to a major MNO/MVNO, and | get paid $.50 per gb consumption, paid in Helium HNT crypto | (yes, crypto). Its still a big work in progress but could | totally unlock private deployments of 5G networks and make | them almost as easy as setting up wifi. | grahamburger wrote: | This is cool, thanks! I'll check it out and probably add a | link on startyourownisp.com. | | A few of the other companies that I know are doing fixed 4G | LTE right now are Blinq and BaiCells. BaiCells, at least, | is also moving toward 5G. | nszceta wrote: | I am already working full time remotely in the middle of the | woods where there is "no cell service" getting 6 mbps up and | down on an unlimited plan with a super high gain antenna aimed | perfectly at the tower through several miles of trees. Once 5G | modems come down in price my throughput will only increase. | Coverage is already amazing on the under 700 MHz LTE bands even | with carriers that traditionally have had a reputation for | terrible coverage - even when the tower cells are aimed in the | wrong direction! (They are aimed at the town and highway | nearby, away from me.) High gain antennas are the most | important component of my stack. | adrianpike wrote: | Which antenna are you running? I've got a proxicast yagi | that's good but I'm always interested in expanding my | toolchest. | nszceta wrote: | 11 dBi Yagi Antenna for TV White Space (470-862 MHz) is my | choice for extreme penetration. It's several feet long. | | I don't trust the specs of the parabolic antennas on the | market. They are supposed to be better but I have heard | from multiple reviewers on multiple products that their | specs are wrong and they simply don't deliver high gain at | low frequencies when advertised to be tuned for 4G LTE. I | think it is because to cover 4G LTE bands fully you need to | support a ridiculously wide range of frequencies from 600 | to 2200 MHz. My low frequency LTE yagi is awesome for | difficult wooded areas. It can shoot through at least 3 | miles of trees. | | I think your Proxicast peaks at 11 dB gain and you need to | check which frequencies that's valid for. With such a large | frequency range spec'd on that you can't be sure you have | high gain on all frequencies. It can drop off drastically | on important bands. | | That's why I have a dedicated yagi for low frequencies and | a similar antenna to what you have for ~2 GHz bands. | | I found through experience the best proxy for correct | antenna aim is an upload speed test. And the best way to | determine aim is by using cellmapper.net and calculating a | compass bearing from your location, then using a compass | (app) to aim your antenna. Not the more high tech metrics | reported by your modem like RSSI and link quality. They can | be very misleading in general and especially when the link | is idle. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-06-17 23:00 UTC)