Comment by dataflow

3 years ago

I can't find any section of that guide that talks about peering or whatever ISPs are supposed to do to connect to the broader internet. Do you see any step that explains this?

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dataflow

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bombcar  3 years ago

As a small ISP you don't peer - you just buy transit from a bigger ISP. So the basic steps are:

1. Buy a 1G/1G or 10G/10G whatever link to a building you own.

2. Resell that link in parts to customers.

Or you can get yourself into a POP (point of presence) somewhere that multiple providers are also in, and get transit that way. Depends on where you are and what you can get access to.

  • nixgeek  3 years ago

    As a small ISP you definitely can peer and many do, you just aren’t going to get settlement-free peering with any of the big eyeball networks like Comcast.

    Something like Seattle IX is a good example of where lots of peering sessions could be established (although I haven’t looked at Jared’s ASN in any detail to see where it’s present).

    https://www.seattleix.net/home

    Any traffic you’re able to offload via peering you wouldn’t be paying an IP transit to haul, so it’s worth seeing if networks like Netflix are on the Route Servers (https://www.ams-ix.net/ams/documentation/ams-ix-route-server...) at any IX nearby your network, seeing if you can negotiate a session over the IX even if they don’t participate in the RS, or seeing if you can do PNI (sling a cable between your networks in a facility you’re both located in).

    Edit: Jared’s on Detroit IX. https://www.peeringdb.com/net/20268

    • 2Gkashmiri  3 years ago

      Wait. The poster above said in point 1 to buy a line,1G, 10g depending on your upstream seller. Why do you need peering then?

      If I have 1Gbps line for example and 10 users each are using equal amount 100% of time, it shouldn't matter they send the data to Alaska or Russia or Australia ? Or does it?

      Do you buy the pipe and the data itself also?

      1 reply →

    • toast0  3 years ago

      > Any traffic you’re able to offload via peering you wouldn’t be paying an IP transit to haul

      When you're small enough, the difference in price between transit and what it takes to get you to an IX is likely to be pretty small. But, you probably want to be at an IX sooner or later anyway (easier to get multiple transit offers at an IX than on the side of the road), so might as well peer while you're there.

  • twothamendment  3 years ago

    Yes, it can be pretty simple. Back in the day when DSL and comcast were the options and all of the connections were things like UP TO 5 or even 20 Mbps, but speeds were rarely that - I paid for a dedicated 2Mbs up and down ($180/month) with no restrictions on use and started sharing/reselling it to others in my apartment building, not with wireless, but with cat5 out the window, up the gutter, back inside, etc. Across the parking lot another guy was sharing his comcast with another building - but comcast was starting to be so slow they couldn't use it. We merged our empires by stringing some cat 5 across the parking lot, around a pole and to his place. Later we added more nearby buildings, all wired until we had 5 buildings and about 20 "subscribers". Even with 2Mbps, everyone on the network was happier with a guaranteed speed than their flaky "up to" speeds they used to have. Did I run an ISP? I had subscribers, had to maintain a network, had a proxy server to reduce requests out of the network, had to deal with abuse and collect money - so I'd say yes, a small one, but yes.

    • smeyer  3 years ago

      Out of curiosity did you do things above board from a business standpoint (taxes etc.) or was this more of a blackmarket setup?

      1 reply →

  • spmurrayzzz  3 years ago

    You definitely can (and should) peer as a small ISP, even if you are buying transit from other providers. This is especially true if you're running an MPLS headend as you'll still have choke points at L2 circuits in your own network. Owning your own peering can be a great way to offload traffic to other circuits that share destinations, most commonly traffic destined for VOD/streaming CDNs.

    (N.B. — This is what has worked well for the WISP I cofounded, but YMMV depending on headend infra).

haunter  3 years ago

It's the 2nd step

https://startyourownisp.com/posts/fiber-provider/

If you just Google then it's usually called leased or dedicated internet

Just some (US) examples

https://www.business.att.com/products/att-dedicated-internet...

https://business.comcast.com/learn/internet/dedicated-intern...

https://www.verizon.com/business/products/internet/internet-...

  • dataflow  3 years ago

    So they're leasing ("buying"?) fiber from the same ISPs they're trying to displace and relying on that payment to provide them with continued internet access? This doesn't sound like a real first-class ISP, but something akin to an MVNO where they're at the mercy of the same companies they're competing with. I get the initial sale might seem fine, and the established ISPs might be fine with this as long as the company is small, but why wouldn't these companies shut them off (or raise the prices, etc.) when they grow too big to become dangerous?

    • dboreham  3 years ago

      You're misunderstanding this market. There's a wholesale market, which he is buying from. There's a retail market which he is selling into. Some providers service both the wholesale and retail markets, but typically with different divisions, people, tech, resources. It's like saying that if you build a gas station and buy your gas from Exxon then that's bad because Exxon also operates gas stations. It's not like an MVNO where all you're doing is sending the customer a bill, and provisioning API requests to Verizon.

      2 replies →

    • bombcar  3 years ago

      Because it's all business to them, and if they did it overtly they could get sued.

      But also because once you're in a single location, you can pretty easily get multiple providers to that location for a Price, so there's really no point. Even small rural towns usually have multiple internet connections from different companies, and if they don't you can pay to run fiber if you really wanted to.

      People find it hard to believe, but Comcast et al are actually businesses, not Satan's marketing department; and they happily take money even from "competitors".

      1 reply →

    • q3k  3 years ago

      You can lease fibre/lambda/L2 transport to an IXP (and there peer with other local ISPs and get global transit from Tier 1 providers) from many companies that don't even have any residential offering.

      Or if (technically/financially/legally) possible, even run your own fibre to a PoP housing an IXP on your own.

      Once you're in multiple PoPs and on multiple IXPs and with multiple upstreams/peers you're pretty much independent from the whims of a single ISP.

    • mbreese  3 years ago

      Because there are different business units in the upstream company handling the dedicated access vs consumer sides. The dedicated business side have their own sales goals and if you compete with the consumer side, that’s not a problem for them. I’m sure there are some regulatory/anti competitive measures at play here too, but economically, the two sides of the business will act more or less independently.

    • wins32767  3 years ago

      He's not trying to displace the majors. In rural areas, owning and maintaining a bunch of fiber to service less than a thousand customers isn't a business Comcast really wants to be in unless they get paid a ton for it.