[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)