Question on a local ISP start-up project

fmitawaps

Just for learning purposes more than anything, I have been looking into what would be required to start my own local internet service provider. Buying bandwidth from a level 1 or 2 carrier, startup costs, equipment needed, etc. It's not cheap.

Anyway, if the area of potential customers were suited for it, it seems like a wireless solution is by far the easiest and cheapest to do. Say for example a trailer park with 100 trailers. With a high speed enterprise class switch, and 6-12 fiber lines to some strategically placed wireless antennas located around the area, it should work.

But here's what I don't understand.

If it's wireless, each subscriber would get an SSID and password for their connection. But what's to stop the other 99 homes in the 100 home park from going to one subscriber, getting their login information, and all of them can then connect for free? Then 99 people don't pay to subscribe?

That is one problem I must have resolved before anything else could ever happen.

Anyone know about this, or can you tell me more about making a small local ISP, like hardware and software requirements? Is there software that can monitor the bandwidth going through each switch port or wireless antenna, or number of active connections?

networker050184

Limit the amount of connections from a single login.

But yes, starting your own ISP is next to impossible these days. Build out costs are astronomical.

Hammer80

There is one area where the Big ISPs don't play and that is rural America. Many locations use was is called WASP (Wireless Application Service Provider)these are usually small mom and pop ISPs but if you have a good bandwidth you can have your own little monopoly on the area you service. I live on 10 acres and the only cable buried in the ground is 50 year old telephone cable that can only transmit 2.5Mbps so my only choice was a WASP that provides me 15Mbps down and 5Mbps up using fixed wireless. Many folks in rural areas will pay through their nose for speeds that actually qualify as broadband. In rural areas the only competition you have is satellite internet and that has extreme caps on data use like 40-50gb a month max and it cost a fortune.

fmitawaps

Yes, this is what I was thinking of. Small rural areas, like a little town or my aforementioned trailer park idea. I know people who have lousy internet, but they are too spread out in the country for it to be worth the trouble to get a new fiber line to them. I wouldn't run miles of fiber lines.

Where I live, in an apartment complex, we had Verizon FIOS, and it ran well. But then Verizon stopped carrying The Weather Channel, and my wife thought that was the end of the world and couldn't live with it, so we switched to Comcast. After 2 new modems and tech visits, who eventually installed a signal amplifier, we got decent service. But it is well known that the Comcast lines are old and problematic, the Comcast techs come to our apartment complex often.

Networker, by "build out costs", you're referring to me getting the fiber line run to my place, then run more fiber lines out to peoples' houses or to wireless antennas and like that?

More questions. Assuming I wanted to make a local wireless area network, what hardware and software would I really need?

I know I'd have to have a modem to receive the incoming fiber line, but do I even need a server? Can it go fiber -- modem -- one kick ass gigabit switch -- out to the wireless antennas? But then if I'm going to access this network and regulate it at all, there'd have to be a computer in there somewhere, I think. Any certain software to run this network? A program to limit connections per SSID and to regulate the amount of bandwidth per customer, depending on the speed plan they choose?

Let's get into the details of a project like this.

Hammer, not only is satellite internet limited, it has lag issues. It may be no problem for some old people who just read the news and play card games, but I wouldn't want to try playing StarCraft 2 on a satellite connection. Got no time for lag in that game! Or any FPS game, for that matter.

networker050184

Build out the "last mile" as they call it to the customer. Wireless last mile would be the way to go there these days if you're trying to start a company I'd think.

You also have to build out back from your antennas to a carrier POP for internet access. The fiber to the tower business reselling to cell/wireless companies is big money too if you have fiber infrastructure built out.

As far as the wireless equipment I'm not familiar enough with that part to say.