Comment by 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.
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
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?
You don't "need" peering but it offloads your upstream (transit) links, which are generally much more expensive. In the old days, I worked for couple ISPs and we typically had 3 or 4 upstreams (generally UUNet, Sprint, MCI...) This was back when a T1 was still considered fast.
> 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.
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.
Out of curiosity did you do things above board from a business standpoint (taxes etc.) or was this more of a blackmarket setup?
Taxes? I was a college student, so I didn't make enough to owe any taxes, but it was mostly cash. I wouldn't have done it if I had to hop through the business hoops.
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).