7 ms·

I believe what he meant was that this would be against the TOS of many providers. You are essentially buying a service plan for one location and distributing i

I believe what he meant was that this would be against the TOS of many providers. You are essentially buying a service plan for one location and distributing it. While I would agree that "if I am buying 100mbps than I should be able to use it how I wish" unfortunately just isn't the case and not how u.s telecom works. With that assumption, a city could technically buy 10 packages and distribute free wifi internet to an entire city on the cheap.

toomuchtodo 10y ago
Yes, you're correct. You cannot just buy residential service from a provider and share it out to the entire neighborhood. In that case, you need to buy transit/business/commercial service from them and use that as your upstream.
- SCHiM 10y ago
  Well you _can_ just do it ;). What can't be enforced can't be effectively outlawed.
jcrawfordor 10y ago
Against the ToS of home providers, sure, but there are tons of companies who will happily sell you transit for your small ISP - including some of the big incumbents, e.g., most of the small wireless ISPs in my area use CenturyLink as their upstream provider. This is a standard service offering in the commercial space, and if you want enough capacity to get 100+mbps service to multiple people, then you're going to be shopping in the commercial space.
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  CenturyLink is good, and believe it or not, I had an excellent experience with Comcast Business running greenfield fiber for me for backhaul (no one was more surprised than I!). ~$3000/month with a 3 year commit, 100mb symmetrical, and they ran the fiber over a mile with no up front cost.
  - closeparen 10y ago
    Why does that cost 30x more than a personal 100mbit connection?
    - pjc50 10y ago
      You can actually put 100mbit down it constantly without getting cut off, overcharged, or contended with 30 other people. Plus 50% extra ISP monopoly pricing.
      - feld 10y ago
        $30/mbit is still far too much. $10/mbit maybe would be reasonable
        toomuchtodo 10y ago
        You missed the part where I said they rolled the construction costs into the monthly payment. This was in a suburban area that required permitting and working with other utilities to run underground fiber.
    - toomuchtodo 10y ago
      No oversubscription, as pjc50 mentions.
    - SteveGerencser 10y ago
      I was quoted $5000 / month for 10mb connection where I live in Tennessee. They also run the DSL (3mb on a good day) the long way to where I live by running the opposite direction and putting me at the end of the line (2.5 miles+/-) when they have another line that passes the corner of our property but turns the other direction at the corner and won't tie me into that. (1/2 mile). Trying to decide if we should just wait for Elon Musk or go back to current satellite tech.
    - jcrawfordor 10y ago
      The service level assurance is radically different between commercial and residential service. The main way that this manifests is that your terms of service on a commercial connection allow you to do all kinds of things you can't do with residential (or business) service - like resell to other people. Technically, the main difference is that the 100mbit symmetric line is fully provisioned, and so you can actually use all 100mbit of it on a continuous basis. This will quickly get you in trouble with a residential provider. There's also the issue that this is symmetrical, and the way that ISP networks are engineered the upstream is usually actually more expensive to provide (mostly because they use a lot of underlying technologies and equipment that are designed for asymmetric service), and the issue that this service will probably come with fixed IPs that will be SWIPd over to the customer, which is extra administrative overhead, not to mention the IPs themselves getting more expensive to hold these days. Oh, and contract terms regarding service interruptions are usually much more generous towards commercial customers. Once you really get into the big leagues, you usually don't pay on a cap basis but instead of a 95%ile basis, where you pay a rate based on the 95th percentile of your bandwidth usage over the previous month. These rates end up being very high because you are paying for bandwidth that you actually, seriously used - unlike on a residential connection, where you might pay your ISP for 150Mbps but they expect your 95%ile usage to be more like a couple of Mbps tops (you probably aren't even using the connection at all most of the time).
- codeddesign 10y ago
  But isn't that what we are talking about in terms of this article and the parent comment. If the parent comment was talking about contracting at a business level with an ISP this would be a totally different conversation...

toomuchtodo 10y ago

Yes, you're correct. You cannot just buy residential service from a provider and share it out to the entire neighborhood. In that case, you need to buy transit/business/commercial service from them and use that as your upstream.

SCHiM 10y ago
Well you _can_ just do it ;). What can't be enforced can't be effectively outlawed.

jcrawfordor 10y ago

Against the ToS of home providers, sure, but there are tons of companies who will happily sell you transit for your small ISP - including some of the big incumbents, e.g., most of the small wireless ISPs in my area use CenturyLink as their upstream provider. This is a standard service offering in the commercial space, and if you want enough capacity to get 100+mbps service to multiple people, then you're going to be shopping in the commercial space.

toomuchtodo 10y ago
CenturyLink is good, and believe it or not, I had an excellent experience with Comcast Business running greenfield fiber for me for backhaul (no one was more surprised than I!). ~$3000/month with a 3 year commit, 100mb symmetrical, and they ran the fiber over a mile with no up front cost.
- closeparen 10y ago
  Why does that cost 30x more than a personal 100mbit connection?
  - pjc50 10y ago
    You can actually put 100mbit down it constantly without getting cut off, overcharged, or contended with 30 other people. Plus 50% extra ISP monopoly pricing.
    - feld 10y ago
      $30/mbit is still far too much. $10/mbit maybe would be reasonable
      - toomuchtodo 10y ago
        You missed the part where I said they rolled the construction costs into the monthly payment. This was in a suburban area that required permitting and working with other utilities to run underground fiber.
  - toomuchtodo 10y ago
    No oversubscription, as pjc50 mentions.
  - SteveGerencser 10y ago
    I was quoted $5000 / month for 10mb connection where I live in Tennessee. They also run the DSL (3mb on a good day) the long way to where I live by running the opposite direction and putting me at the end of the line (2.5 miles+/-) when they have another line that passes the corner of our property but turns the other direction at the corner and won't tie me into that. (1/2 mile). Trying to decide if we should just wait for Elon Musk or go back to current satellite tech.
  - jcrawfordor 10y ago
    The service level assurance is radically different between commercial and residential service. The main way that this manifests is that your terms of service on a commercial connection allow you to do all kinds of things you can't do with residential (or business) service - like resell to other people. Technically, the main difference is that the 100mbit symmetric line is fully provisioned, and so you can actually use all 100mbit of it on a continuous basis. This will quickly get you in trouble with a residential provider. There's also the issue that this is symmetrical, and the way that ISP networks are engineered the upstream is usually actually more expensive to provide (mostly because they use a lot of underlying technologies and equipment that are designed for asymmetric service), and the issue that this service will probably come with fixed IPs that will be SWIPd over to the customer, which is extra administrative overhead, not to mention the IPs themselves getting more expensive to hold these days. Oh, and contract terms regarding service interruptions are usually much more generous towards commercial customers. Once you really get into the big leagues, you usually don't pay on a cap basis but instead of a 95%ile basis, where you pay a rate based on the 95th percentile of your bandwidth usage over the previous month. These rates end up being very high because you are paying for bandwidth that you actually, seriously used - unlike on a residential connection, where you might pay your ISP for 150Mbps but they expect your 95%ile usage to be more like a couple of Mbps tops (you probably aren't even using the connection at all most of the time).
codeddesign 10y ago
But isn't that what we are talking about in terms of this article and the parent comment. If the parent comment was talking about contracting at a business level with an ISP this would be a totally different conversation...