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I started one of the first 56k dial up ISPs in Nebraska when I was 13 years old with the help of my parents. In high school I partnered with some friends after

I started one of the first 56k dial up ISPs in Nebraska when I was 13 years old with the help of my parents. In high school I partnered with some friends after reading a CNET article about a WISP in Washington state. My friend's dad had a few businesses that needed to share a T1 line so we connected them wirelessly and sold the excess capacity to farmers in rural Nebraska and Kansas. It was an amazing experience. Working with networking gear, setting up FreeBSD servers, learning about NEMA enclosures, antennas, polarity, frequency hopping FHSS vs DSSS, 2.4,5.2,5.8GHz, and 900Mhz. We had our ups and downs and learned a lot about what gear worked the best. My senior year of high school we sold the company. I still browse my google history to feel nostalgia from those days :)

cadr 9y ago
I would love to hear more about your experience. Did you write about it anywhere?
- tegansnyder 9y ago
  There are various posts on DSLReports from my early days. Unfortunately a lot of the pictures I posted are no longer available. Here is an example: http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r3891399-Split-Wire-WISP http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r3891399-Split-Wire-WISP
tnorthcutt 9y ago
+1 for hearing more about this experience. If you wrote about it, please do share a link.
- swyea 9y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIhM-VdUpXU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIhM-VdUpXU
  - sillysaurus3 9y ago
    Haha, this is legit. Nice find.
    - tegansnyder 9y ago
      Wow. I forgot about that video!
iooi 9y ago
>We had our ups and downs If it was intentional, great job :)
guiambros 9y ago
+1. I had a similar experience, starting one of the first ISPs back in Brazil, in 94-95. Me and my two co-founders came from an academic background, so we were using BITNET for a few years by then, and saw firsthand when the internet started to open up for commercial access. Overall it was a great learning experience, but incredibly challenging. There was nothing like OP's guide (or HN, or Google for that matter), so the knowledge had to come from books, Usenet news, and mail lists. It helped that we had experience managing Unix servers and WAN networks at the University, but still had tons of things to figure out, from setting up dial-up lines, to keeping httpd servers up and running (we decided to use Linux 0.99 beta from the get-go, but it kept crashing, usually in the middle of the night; later we discovered it was a race condition in the multi-serial port card driver, which manifested only when several ports were under heavy use, hence only happening at night). Although we could solve most of the technical challenges, we were absolutely clueless on how to run a business: selling, bizdev, billing customers, hiring and building teams, etc. I have fond memories for those (usually bad) decisions, but can't stop thinking how things would be different if I could magically go back and do it all over again :) We quickly reached a few thousand customers, and realized it was turning into a capital intensive business - phone lines in Brazil in the 90's were crazily expensive, plus Cisco routers, server upgrades, etc. We decided to pivot towards B2B, thus becoming one of the first corporate ISPs: web hosting, security consulting, leased lines, some web development. We sold the company 5 years later, when the market started consolidating, right before the dotcom crash.
- swah 9y ago
  Fellow brazilian here - would love to hear your story on a longer form if it exists.
ndespres 9y ago
That's a great story and incidentally a similar one to another Nebraska ISP I'm familiar with (KDSI). I think they got started when a larger industrial company had excess bandwidth. Sounds like your story was a lot of fun for a high schooler. Who did you sell it to and why?
- tegansnyder 9y ago
  I know of KDSI! We ended up selling to a guy starting a new business called RCOM in Kearney, NE. I worked with him for half a year getting everything transitioned. We sold our Kansas operations to telco called Nex-Tech. At the time the business was funded by my good friend's dad. Collectively we decided it was best for us to focus on our further education and go to college.
voltagex_ 9y ago
This would make a great article if you write it up.
speps 9y ago
That talk might interest you, someone doing similar in the 90s in Germany: https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9034-bbss_and_early_internet_access_in_the_1990ies https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9034-bbss_and_early_internet_acc...
felipellrocha 9y ago
That is amazing! Can you tell us more about the experience?!
hellbanner 9y ago
Very cool. How much did you sell for?

cadr 9y ago

I would love to hear more about your experience. Did you write about it anywhere?

tegansnyder 9y ago
There are various posts on DSLReports from my early days. Unfortunately a lot of the pictures I posted are no longer available. Here is an example: http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r3891399-Split-Wire-WISP http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r3891399-Split-Wire-WISP

tnorthcutt 9y ago

+1 for hearing more about this experience. If you wrote about it, please do share a link.

swyea 9y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIhM-VdUpXU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIhM-VdUpXU
- sillysaurus3 9y ago
  Haha, this is legit. Nice find.
  - tegansnyder 9y ago
    Wow. I forgot about that video!

iooi 9y ago

>We had our ups and downs If it was intentional, great job :)

guiambros 9y ago

+1. I had a similar experience, starting one of the first ISPs back in Brazil, in 94-95. Me and my two co-founders came from an academic background, so we were using BITNET for a few years by then, and saw firsthand when the internet started to open up for commercial access. Overall it was a great learning experience, but incredibly challenging. There was nothing like OP's guide (or HN, or Google for that matter), so the knowledge had to come from books, Usenet news, and mail lists. It helped that we had experience managing Unix servers and WAN networks at the University, but still had tons of things to figure out, from setting up dial-up lines, to keeping httpd servers up and running (we decided to use Linux 0.99 beta from the get-go, but it kept crashing, usually in the middle of the night; later we discovered it was a race condition in the multi-serial port card driver, which manifested only when several ports were under heavy use, hence only happening at night). Although we could solve most of the technical challenges, we were absolutely clueless on how to run a business: selling, bizdev, billing customers, hiring and building teams, etc. I have fond memories for those (usually bad) decisions, but can't stop thinking how things would be different if I could magically go back and do it all over again :) We quickly reached a few thousand customers, and realized it was turning into a capital intensive business - phone lines in Brazil in the 90's were crazily expensive, plus Cisco routers, server upgrades, etc. We decided to pivot towards B2B, thus becoming one of the first corporate ISPs: web hosting, security consulting, leased lines, some web development. We sold the company 5 years later, when the market started consolidating, right before the dotcom crash.

swah 9y ago
Fellow brazilian here - would love to hear your story on a longer form if it exists.

ndespres 9y ago

That's a great story and incidentally a similar one to another Nebraska ISP I'm familiar with (KDSI). I think they got started when a larger industrial company had excess bandwidth. Sounds like your story was a lot of fun for a high schooler. Who did you sell it to and why?

tegansnyder 9y ago
I know of KDSI! We ended up selling to a guy starting a new business called RCOM in Kearney, NE. I worked with him for half a year getting everything transitioned. We sold our Kansas operations to telco called Nex-Tech. At the time the business was funded by my good friend's dad. Collectively we decided it was best for us to focus on our further education and go to college.

voltagex_ 9y ago

This would make a great article if you write it up.

speps 9y ago

That talk might interest you, someone doing similar in the 90s in Germany: https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9034-bbss_and_early_internet_access_in_the_1990ies https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9034-bbss_and_early_internet_acc...

felipellrocha 9y ago

That is amazing! Can you tell us more about the experience?!

hellbanner 9y ago

Very cool. How much did you sell for?