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I just placed a delivery order from home depot and this is exactly how they handled it. I put in my zip, they gave me a drop down of the cities that zip covers (there are like 5 of them, incredibly) and I was on my way.

Alice in Chains for me. I developed my taste for music in the 90s and love the grunge and punk from that era, but just not AIC. I can't explain way exactly, just drives me batty.

This is a cool idea and sounds like a fun project. That said, I imagine you could accomplish roughly the same thing with an invite only Wireguard network, with the benefit of not being geo-locked.

I just started reading the Earthsea series to my kids last night, what a coincidence to see this here! I discovered Le Guin relatively late in life and I'm so glad I did.

I've heard some teachers are assigning their students to 'grade' a paper written by LLM. The students use an LLM to generate a paper on the topic, print it out, then notate in the margins by hand where it's right and wrong, including checking the sources.

Yeah this seems like an easy way around it. Post the video with subtitles and no audio, and a link to the original video hosted on a PeerTube instance or something.

Isn't the only way to learn what things we can ignore and what things we can't ignore to do a lot more testing? Is there a better way to learn that? It seems like having a lot more data from tests is the kind of thing that would have some short term harm but massive long term benefits.

This is a major cultural difference between US and EU. In the U.S., data is only Personal if it's on a Personal device.

I can definitely see how someone who sacrificed to pay rent throughout the pandemic, maybe using up some of their retirement funds or defaulting on car loans in the process, would be frustrated to learn now that they could have just not paid rent instead and been fine. They're not getting that money back. It doesn't necessarily mean that they want to see people become homeless.

(I don't have a dog in this fight, I don't live in California, don't rent, don't own rental property.)

Where would you say it falls on the spectrum of animal abuse in relation to going fishing, fly swatting, and walking the dog? Those are all activities I'm personally ok with.

Another fun thing you can do with flies, and also bees and wasps, apart from vacuuming them up, is put them on a leash. But first you have to freeze them.

Catch one in a cup or plastic bag and stick it in the freezer for about 10 minutes. When you take it out it will look dead, but it's not (unless you leave it in too long.) Being careful not to rip it's wings off, tie a small string or fishing line to one of it's legs.

In a few minutes it will thaw and start to walk around, and then start to fly. You can now walk it around the park like you were carrying a balloon.

Yes, should have specified - I always monitor usage in circuits at no more than 1 minute resolution.

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!

> 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.

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].

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.

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...

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.

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!

> 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.

> 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.

(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.)

(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.

(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.

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.)

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.)

(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.

(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.

(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.

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.