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Author here. I see your posts often and have a lot of respect for you as someone who obviously has a deeper knowledge of networking than I probably every will.

Author here. I see your posts often and have a lot of respect for you as someone who obviously has a deeper knowledge of networking than I probably every will. That being said I don't really agree that a person necessarily needs a ton a networking or even any technical background to start a WISP, any more than they necessarily need a ton of experience as a cook to start a restaurant. They definitely need employees or advisors who have that experience, but like you allude to here probably no one can have all of the knowledge to so it themselves upfront. Also I've also seen a lot of WISPs with a myriad of problems as they grow from a few dozen to a few hundred customers, many of them are able to make that transition, fix their problems, and either grow or be acquired. This seems basically the same as any industry - if everyone waited until they knew exactly what they're doing no one would start anything. All of this said, starting a WISP isn't for everyone. I talk to a lot of people who are in the early stages of starting an ISP, and often my best, honest advice is that it's not a great idea in their situation.

LinuxBender 5y ago
Does your site have a section that covers the legal steps a person should follow to protect themselves and their small business? i.e. incorporating their business, business insurance specific to a WISP, processes to follow to ensure legal compliance, what data to log and not log, log retention policies, consumer disclosure, frameworks to put in place for law enforcement requests, agreements to have in place for the upstream fiber provider, etc...
- grahamburger 5y ago
  There's a little bit of that in there. Surprisingly, in the U.S. at least, there's not much of a gap between being a legal business entity (LLC, corp) and being able to be an ISP. You don't have to log much of anything (unless you're doing voice services as well). You do have to be able to intercept customer traffic without going on site physically in order to comply with law enforcement requests. But as someone who is not a lawyer and has no business giving legal advice the best I can do is suggest that you talk to a real lawyer.
  - LinuxBender 5y ago
    I think it might be useful to have a section that includes anecdotal experiences of existing WISP's of what actions they had to take in their location to cover themselves, what legal challenges they ran into and any caveats or scenarios to be aware of. Obviously with the disclaimer that it is not legal advise and they should retain their own legal council. It might give folks a better picture of what to expect before they consider the investment. For what its worth, I really like the idea of people implementing some options for those that might only have access to one ISP. I was locked into Comcast for the longest time and would have loved to see more options available.
  - p_l 5y ago
    Legal requirements can be funky. Back in ~2007 or so I considered doing my own WISP just to get any reliable internet that wasn't making 300 baud modem look nice (put enough latency on telnet and it will look like that). Turned out that if we wanted to cross a community (smallest administrative region in Poland), to be fully legal we might have had to submit war and disaster preparation plans to Ministry of Defense. For cooperation with military and other services, just in case.
- adolph 5y ago
  I am not an expert but I've seen this book recommended: Small Time Operator: How to Start Your Own Business, Keep Your Books, Pay Your Taxes, and Stay Out of Trouble https://www.amazon.com/Small-Time-Operator-Business-Trouble/dp/1493040200 https://www.amazon.com/Small-Time-Operator-Business-Trouble/...
walrus01 5y ago
If somebody has the opportunity to work in a role that has 'network engineer' in the title for somebody else's mid sized ISP first, I would encourage them to think of that like free paid training for a couple of years before trying it on their own. Of course totally dependent on their level of pre-existing knowledge, level of risk with the capital they intend to spend on a startup wisp, financial partners, and what scale/scope of service area they want to do it in. Varies widely with location. And what competition (if any, other than hughesnet/viasat) exists. I've seen people do some pretty cool non-profit community based WISP things for under 50 houses, if built right it can be quite trouble free. The tools and equipment to do really basic 100% fiber based GPON network (or active ethernet) are also a lot less costly than they used to be... The things some guys are doing on really shoestring budgets with FTTH aerial drop cables across roofs and low cost GPON things in cities like Dhaka, Bangladesh show that it doesn't have to be super expensive. In a USA/Canada context, right of way and poles and routes are an issue (even after you're got your ROW, go price how much bucket truck/aerial fiber contractors cost, if you don't do it all in house)... I read somewhere that 40% of restaurants started by people with no previous industry experience go belly up within 5 years? Something like that. I imagine one could easily spend $400,000 setting up a restaurant and working 14 hour days and ultimately not be successful, so doing something like a startup WISP on one's own similar amount of funds (and loans, private party investors) I would think of something similar to that. If one has the funds and the appetite for the risk and is really determined to do it, then go for it!
- grahamburger 5y ago
  > I read somewhere that 40% of restaurants started by people with no previous industry experience go belly up within 5 years? Something like that. I imagine one could easily spend $400,000 setting up a restaurant and working 14 hour days and ultimately not be successful Absolutely agree with this and everything you said here. I think the only thing I see differently is that while someone should have some relevant experience before starting an ISP (or any business) is that it doesn't necessarily have to be networking. For example, some of the biggest challenges I've seen WISPs face as they try to grow are: obtaining lease agreements for wireless relay sites, hiring and training technicians in large numbers, and in logistics around keeping stuff in stock that they need to grow. Someone with experience from a different industry in some of those areas might do just as well as someone with networking experience. EDIT TO ADD: One of things I find kind of difficult to communicate with people who are interested in it is that it's just another business, and doesn't really have any better or worse odds of succeeding beyond a few years and making money than any other business, including restaurants. People sometimes seem surprised that you can make money at this, but, of course you can! You can also make money running a taco truck or building custom furniture. But you can also lose a lot of money and time.
smoldesu 5y ago
What about the customers though? My family used to be chained to a WISP, and we paid $100/month for internet that made dial-up look like a viable competitor. Not to mention, downtime was atrocious (1/10th of the time the service would just be out). I think the bigger argument for not starting a WISP is that nobody wants to be a guinea pig in your amateur networking project.
- grahamburger 5y ago
  (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.
- xoa 5y ago
  FWIW, and not to undersell the challenges, but I think you're extrapolating too much from a single example (and possibly an old one). The started-tiny-and-local WISP around here is $100 a month for 50/50 and it's been pretty rock solid. While I certainly haven't run a WISP myself, I have set up point to multipoint wireless networks for some local businesses, and with current equipment it's impressive how straight forward and relatively turnkey the basics of the physical link itself have become. It was no problem to have dozens of points over distances of 5-16 miles with solid 100-400 Mbps links. My understanding from far more senior people and reading about real WISPs is that there is a non-linear increase in difficulty/expense over greater distances, scaling up to hundreds/thousands of points, and handling things for multiple independent entities rather then what is effectively a big LAN even if sectioned up with VLANs. There's also completely non-technical challenges to be ready to deal with like compliance departments and legal/law enforcement interaction aspects of when a customer inevitably does something naughty. The path has been tread but it wasn't anything I've had to deal with. Still, if I was still in an area with dial up speeds and Starlink wasn't a thing, helping jury rig up neighbors with a mini-WISP is a project I'd certainly consider contributing to and believe could be quite reliable and easily beat out DSL at least. Also speaking of Starlink, I'll be curious if a side aspect of them would be driving phased arrays in general down in price significantly. That'd be a pretty interesting development for terrestrial PtP/PtMP imho, since a lot of the trickiness over long distances is precise aiming. If the antenna merely needed to be aimed with 10-20° and then could perfectly align with the other from there, including real time adjustments for some motion or interference, that'd be another pretty cool improvement. And for the time being at least Starlink has left an opening in that the connections are quite asymmetrical (ie., 200 down but only 30-40 up), which is challenging to work around given their physical and economic constraints. Whereas a WISP can be full symmetric right up to gigabit speeds, assuming their backbone supports it. That could let some remain competitive beyond just density limits.
oarsinsync 5y ago
Pivoting your server or software stack is like changing a floor in a building. Changing your network stack is like changing the foundations of the building. Sure you can do it, but the bigger your building, the harder and more expensive it's going to be. There's a lot of value in learning a lot of these basic mistakes first on someone else's dime. Sure, you don't need to be a trained chef to start a restaurant, but if you dont know that undercooking pork is going to make your customers sick, you probably should be hiring someone else to do the cooking.
- crmd 5y ago
  > Changing your network stack is like changing the foundations of the building. Same thing with data storage. Platform changes are like open heart surgery on data centers.
windexh8er 5y ago
The WISPs that are started by people with no/little background in NOC operations leave themselves to build, not only insecure, but inefficient networks rather quickly. I started my career on the network side and have worked for a number of ISPs (small and large). And while a WISP creator can make it - they can also just as easily create a bad product unknowingly. Case in point... I have family that only had one option for Internet service. Long story short a utility owned a WISP and no longer wanted to run it (they ran it OK, but made a number of mistakes when choosing architecture and products to go to market with). One of their employees bought it out and started making worse choices. The owner clearly had never scaled a network nor did this person have any formal training in networks or the protocols he'd have to manage and monitor. I've submitted no less than a dozen vulnerabilities within their network and have had to install a monitoring stack for said family members to show the owner of the WISP that during peak hours they were dropping a significant percentage of packets, latency was spiking and SLAs were not being remotely met. The owner has refused to acknowledge any and all data I've provided to them, saying that "things are working well". Yet, I have now a years worth of logged data in a very consumable format that shows otherwise. The reality is I ended up randomly meeting someone who had worked for them and the conversation was such that the owner was furiously trying to figure out how to fix the problems, but had neither the technical skills to do so or the budget to revamp the architectural flaws. Starting a WISP almost certainly is not for everyone. Getting it working correctly is only one aspect, but keeping an open network secure for your users is not trivial. Not only do you need a working knowledge of multi-user networks but also a decent perspective with regard to the threat models involved. If you can't, minimally, check those two boxes it seems (to me) a bit egregious to expect others to fork over money and trust you for said services.
- tinus_hn 5y ago
  > I have family that only had one option for Internet service. Long story short Long story short: nobody cares if they are the only game in town
fragbait65 5y ago
I think your analogy with restaurants is flawed. There's a reason a lot of newly started restaurants fail. You most definitely need some form of experience from the restaurant business to succeed as a restaurant owner, unless you are really lucky. Your analogy make it seem as being a chef is the only job that exist in the restaurant business. Sure, you can succeed without experience, but your chances to do so increases dramatically with experience.
- walrus01 5y ago
  I was also referring to the role of restaurant general manager and owner (Sometimes same person, sometimes not), not just chef.
- grahamburger 5y ago
  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].
dboreham 5y ago
All that, and: a business where you extract cash from regular people and provide them technical support can be more painful than you ever imagined.

LinuxBender 5y ago

Does your site have a section that covers the legal steps a person should follow to protect themselves and their small business? i.e. incorporating their business, business insurance specific to a WISP, processes to follow to ensure legal compliance, what data to log and not log, log retention policies, consumer disclosure, frameworks to put in place for law enforcement requests, agreements to have in place for the upstream fiber provider, etc...

grahamburger 5y ago
There's a little bit of that in there. Surprisingly, in the U.S. at least, there's not much of a gap between being a legal business entity (LLC, corp) and being able to be an ISP. You don't have to log much of anything (unless you're doing voice services as well). You do have to be able to intercept customer traffic without going on site physically in order to comply with law enforcement requests. But as someone who is not a lawyer and has no business giving legal advice the best I can do is suggest that you talk to a real lawyer.
- LinuxBender 5y ago
  I think it might be useful to have a section that includes anecdotal experiences of existing WISP's of what actions they had to take in their location to cover themselves, what legal challenges they ran into and any caveats or scenarios to be aware of. Obviously with the disclaimer that it is not legal advise and they should retain their own legal council. It might give folks a better picture of what to expect before they consider the investment. For what its worth, I really like the idea of people implementing some options for those that might only have access to one ISP. I was locked into Comcast for the longest time and would have loved to see more options available.
- p_l 5y ago
  Legal requirements can be funky. Back in ~2007 or so I considered doing my own WISP just to get any reliable internet that wasn't making 300 baud modem look nice (put enough latency on telnet and it will look like that). Turned out that if we wanted to cross a community (smallest administrative region in Poland), to be fully legal we might have had to submit war and disaster preparation plans to Ministry of Defense. For cooperation with military and other services, just in case.
adolph 5y ago
I am not an expert but I've seen this book recommended: Small Time Operator: How to Start Your Own Business, Keep Your Books, Pay Your Taxes, and Stay Out of Trouble https://www.amazon.com/Small-Time-Operator-Business-Trouble/dp/1493040200 https://www.amazon.com/Small-Time-Operator-Business-Trouble/...

walrus01 5y ago

If somebody has the opportunity to work in a role that has 'network engineer' in the title for somebody else's mid sized ISP first, I would encourage them to think of that like free paid training for a couple of years before trying it on their own. Of course totally dependent on their level of pre-existing knowledge, level of risk with the capital they intend to spend on a startup wisp, financial partners, and what scale/scope of service area they want to do it in. Varies widely with location. And what competition (if any, other than hughesnet/viasat) exists. I've seen people do some pretty cool non-profit community based WISP things for under 50 houses, if built right it can be quite trouble free. The tools and equipment to do really basic 100% fiber based GPON network (or active ethernet) are also a lot less costly than they used to be... The things some guys are doing on really shoestring budgets with FTTH aerial drop cables across roofs and low cost GPON things in cities like Dhaka, Bangladesh show that it doesn't have to be super expensive. In a USA/Canada context, right of way and poles and routes are an issue (even after you're got your ROW, go price how much bucket truck/aerial fiber contractors cost, if you don't do it all in house)... I read somewhere that 40% of restaurants started by people with no previous industry experience go belly up within 5 years? Something like that. I imagine one could easily spend $400,000 setting up a restaurant and working 14 hour days and ultimately not be successful, so doing something like a startup WISP on one's own similar amount of funds (and loans, private party investors) I would think of something similar to that. If one has the funds and the appetite for the risk and is really determined to do it, then go for it!

grahamburger 5y ago
> I read somewhere that 40% of restaurants started by people with no previous industry experience go belly up within 5 years? Something like that. I imagine one could easily spend $400,000 setting up a restaurant and working 14 hour days and ultimately not be successful Absolutely agree with this and everything you said here. I think the only thing I see differently is that while someone should have some relevant experience before starting an ISP (or any business) is that it doesn't necessarily have to be networking. For example, some of the biggest challenges I've seen WISPs face as they try to grow are: obtaining lease agreements for wireless relay sites, hiring and training technicians in large numbers, and in logistics around keeping stuff in stock that they need to grow. Someone with experience from a different industry in some of those areas might do just as well as someone with networking experience. EDIT TO ADD: One of things I find kind of difficult to communicate with people who are interested in it is that it's just another business, and doesn't really have any better or worse odds of succeeding beyond a few years and making money than any other business, including restaurants. People sometimes seem surprised that you can make money at this, but, of course you can! You can also make money running a taco truck or building custom furniture. But you can also lose a lot of money and time.

smoldesu 5y ago

What about the customers though? My family used to be chained to a WISP, and we paid $100/month for internet that made dial-up look like a viable competitor. Not to mention, downtime was atrocious (1/10th of the time the service would just be out). I think the bigger argument for not starting a WISP is that nobody wants to be a guinea pig in your amateur networking project.

grahamburger 5y ago
(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.
xoa 5y ago
FWIW, and not to undersell the challenges, but I think you're extrapolating too much from a single example (and possibly an old one). The started-tiny-and-local WISP around here is $100 a month for 50/50 and it's been pretty rock solid. While I certainly haven't run a WISP myself, I have set up point to multipoint wireless networks for some local businesses, and with current equipment it's impressive how straight forward and relatively turnkey the basics of the physical link itself have become. It was no problem to have dozens of points over distances of 5-16 miles with solid 100-400 Mbps links. My understanding from far more senior people and reading about real WISPs is that there is a non-linear increase in difficulty/expense over greater distances, scaling up to hundreds/thousands of points, and handling things for multiple independent entities rather then what is effectively a big LAN even if sectioned up with VLANs. There's also completely non-technical challenges to be ready to deal with like compliance departments and legal/law enforcement interaction aspects of when a customer inevitably does something naughty. The path has been tread but it wasn't anything I've had to deal with. Still, if I was still in an area with dial up speeds and Starlink wasn't a thing, helping jury rig up neighbors with a mini-WISP is a project I'd certainly consider contributing to and believe could be quite reliable and easily beat out DSL at least. Also speaking of Starlink, I'll be curious if a side aspect of them would be driving phased arrays in general down in price significantly. That'd be a pretty interesting development for terrestrial PtP/PtMP imho, since a lot of the trickiness over long distances is precise aiming. If the antenna merely needed to be aimed with 10-20° and then could perfectly align with the other from there, including real time adjustments for some motion or interference, that'd be another pretty cool improvement. And for the time being at least Starlink has left an opening in that the connections are quite asymmetrical (ie., 200 down but only 30-40 up), which is challenging to work around given their physical and economic constraints. Whereas a WISP can be full symmetric right up to gigabit speeds, assuming their backbone supports it. That could let some remain competitive beyond just density limits.

oarsinsync 5y ago

Pivoting your server or software stack is like changing a floor in a building. Changing your network stack is like changing the foundations of the building. Sure you can do it, but the bigger your building, the harder and more expensive it's going to be. There's a lot of value in learning a lot of these basic mistakes first on someone else's dime. Sure, you don't need to be a trained chef to start a restaurant, but if you dont know that undercooking pork is going to make your customers sick, you probably should be hiring someone else to do the cooking.

crmd 5y ago
> Changing your network stack is like changing the foundations of the building. Same thing with data storage. Platform changes are like open heart surgery on data centers.

windexh8er 5y ago

The WISPs that are started by people with no/little background in NOC operations leave themselves to build, not only insecure, but inefficient networks rather quickly. I started my career on the network side and have worked for a number of ISPs (small and large). And while a WISP creator can make it - they can also just as easily create a bad product unknowingly. Case in point... I have family that only had one option for Internet service. Long story short a utility owned a WISP and no longer wanted to run it (they ran it OK, but made a number of mistakes when choosing architecture and products to go to market with). One of their employees bought it out and started making worse choices. The owner clearly had never scaled a network nor did this person have any formal training in networks or the protocols he'd have to manage and monitor. I've submitted no less than a dozen vulnerabilities within their network and have had to install a monitoring stack for said family members to show the owner of the WISP that during peak hours they were dropping a significant percentage of packets, latency was spiking and SLAs were not being remotely met. The owner has refused to acknowledge any and all data I've provided to them, saying that "things are working well". Yet, I have now a years worth of logged data in a very consumable format that shows otherwise. The reality is I ended up randomly meeting someone who had worked for them and the conversation was such that the owner was furiously trying to figure out how to fix the problems, but had neither the technical skills to do so or the budget to revamp the architectural flaws. Starting a WISP almost certainly is not for everyone. Getting it working correctly is only one aspect, but keeping an open network secure for your users is not trivial. Not only do you need a working knowledge of multi-user networks but also a decent perspective with regard to the threat models involved. If you can't, minimally, check those two boxes it seems (to me) a bit egregious to expect others to fork over money and trust you for said services.

tinus_hn 5y ago
> I have family that only had one option for Internet service. Long story short Long story short: nobody cares if they are the only game in town

fragbait65 5y ago

I think your analogy with restaurants is flawed. There's a reason a lot of newly started restaurants fail. You most definitely need some form of experience from the restaurant business to succeed as a restaurant owner, unless you are really lucky. Your analogy make it seem as being a chef is the only job that exist in the restaurant business. Sure, you can succeed without experience, but your chances to do so increases dramatically with experience.

walrus01 5y ago
I was also referring to the role of restaurant general manager and owner (Sometimes same person, sometimes not), not just chef.
grahamburger 5y ago
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].

dboreham 5y ago

All that, and: a business where you extract cash from regular people and provide them technical support can be more painful than you ever imagined.