it’s probably not wise to build your own backhaul if you’re not in that business. don’t know the particulars of course but most likely DIY is not the way to go.
startyourownisp is not really about that.
now if you can do a microwave or other backhaul that’s great but it still sounds like something you should be able to get someone to provide for you.
It’s definitely not the preferred solution, but the article here is trying to make the case for running a whole ISP for a customer base that’s less than the employee count of this single site. They also already maintain their own roads and I believe some high voltage equipment so they are a bit of a special case when it comes to being able to maintain infrastructure.
That being said, what this guide really gives me is an alternative solution to present to a CEO and IT manager who think that it is an unsolvable problem. I still think this ends with a 3rd party doing everything, but for substantially less than $500k (before monthly service fees).
You don’t have to do it all yourself. The article shows that for about $55k in the first year you could start your own ISP. This leaves about $450k for hiring some people who do know about running an ISP to get it off the ground and it’d still be cheaper. Maybe you could even start getting customers locally and break even in a few years.
he already said he could get someone to provide to him...for $500k. Why would it be unwise to build this if "he's not in the business?" isn't that literally what the above site is for?
when you build out physical infrastructure you are guaranteed to have real world
physical problems, on top of deep infra tech maintenance issues that you can’t just let slide.
nothing is easy at this level.
$500k is likely cheap (but would have to see details) the main problem is that you are spending it all at once instead of capitalizing it over 20 years like the ISP is.
over the same period of time it’s going to cost the same. but in all the intervening years fixing problems is going to take longer, things will be less reliable, and you have to invest in things that are not a core competency.
again, not enough details are presented so it’s hard to say, but in general DIY is a bad way to go here.
meh, i disagree. If volunteers can build out networks like these which work pretty well, then I gather paid IT folks can as well. Since it has pretty low cost to start with, it could be used as a backup system until reliability issues have been worked out, and then used as primary with a fallback to the existing functional but painfully slow service they have now. Good monitoring could go a long way to making it viable. The extra money saved could then be used to pay for technology that does contribute to the companies core competency.
like you said, without details, i think the current systems admin could make this decision better than either of us arm chairing quarterbacking it. I certainly think it's viable though, when compared to operating under the poor dsl solution they currently have.
startyourownisp is not really about that.
now if you can do a microwave or other backhaul that’s great but it still sounds like something you should be able to get someone to provide for you.