
How a group of neighbors created their own Internet service - Deinos
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/11/how-a-group-of-neighbors-created-their-own-internet-service/
======
JoshTriplett
> “We monitor all the connections and if someone is using a lot of bandwidth
> for a long period of time, we talk to them and figure out what they are
> doing,” Sutton said. “Often times it's people watching Netflix and then
> falling asleep and then it keep auto-playing things all night long.”

This is the kind of statement that makes me long for a faceless, impersonal
ISP. As much as I'm impressed by a neighborhood banding together and coming up
with a solution, the idea of a neighbor trying to "figure out" usage or "talk
to" customers about it is horrifying.

Hopefully they have a mechanism in place to allow everyone to burst to
available bandwidth, but to throttle people to a sustainable proportion
otherwise. Such a mechanism seems both necessary and sufficient, and given the
professional equipment they're using, it seems quite likely to be available.

When Comcast sends bandwidth usage nastygrams, people get up in arms about it;
we talk about "network neutrality", and that ISPs should remain "dumb pipes".

While the ability to introspect traffic at all is a bug that needs fixing in
client and server software, to combat surveillance, at least with an ISP I'm
reasonably confident that only 1) a trusted subset of ISP staff and 2) the
government (hopefully with a warrant) have access.

By contrast, would you want your neighborhood association looking at your ISP
logs? Or _anyone_ you know personally? And making it their business how much
bandwidth you use and for what purpose?

(On a separate note, I wonder how much Netflix's and YouTube's CDN boxes cost,
given that Netflix and YouTube tend to subsidize them.)

~~~
amazon_not
In addition to the Big Brother stuff, I wonder why they even care how much
bandwidth their users use.

As long as the links aren't congested, why care at all? Bandwidth is cheap and
it's not like they are charged by the GB in any case.

Their upstream either charges a flat fee or by the 95th percentile. The
Netflix example is really wierd, as usage is at it's lowest during the night.

~~~
dotBen
Probably because their wireless equipment is the bottleneck and they are
utilizing a mesh network topography which means bottlenecks impact other
customers. The article stated that their backhaul uplink was on 70Mbps for the
whole island.

Seeing as they're using Ubiquiti equipment, I'm not sure why they are not
using of their Gbps setups for the backhaul at least.

~~~
amazon_not
Probably because they can't afford the backhaul. They pay $900 for 100M.

According to the network diagram in the article they do not appear to run a
mesh topology. They run a hub and spoke topology. Each repeater has multiple
radios.

Even so, they have serious problems if they can't sustain their 30 Mbps peak
usage with their wireless equipment.

------
throwawy_wifi9
FYI: most businesses in the tourist areas of Bali, Indonesia rely on wireless
Internet by a small comapny owned by the Mega Internet cafe.

The national telco, Telkom, offers Speedy DSL, but it's not speedy or
reliable, and Biznet offers FTTH only to dense commercial areas. (which is
still more than Silicon Valley has!)

I had a tour of Mega a decade ago, and they have a tower pointed at Singapore.
At the time they were using Linux LEAF distro for mgmt. and Soekris boards,
but likely that has changed. Torrential rains do affect reception, but that
also affects the Speedy landlines.

Also, outside North America, GSM rules. Which means you can go to the Borneo
jungle and get 5 bars, which often doesn't happen in say, Sunnyvale. And 5
bars means adequate EGPRS data communications - everywhere.

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KeytarHero
I guess the residents of the San Juan Islands must be quite a different
demographic from the Canadian islands just across the border. This would never
happen on one of the Canadian Gulf Islands, because too many residents are
worried about the "wireless radiation" causing headaches or cancer. (This is
also where 1 in 6 residents refused a smart power meter [1], mostly out of
supposed safety concerns.)

[1] "Gulf Islanders 15 times more likely to oppose BC Hydro smart meters than
Vancouverites"
[http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Gulf+Islanders+times+...](http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Gulf+Islanders+times+more+likely+oppose+Hydro+smart+meters+than+Vancouverites/8780345/story.html)

~~~
jrapdx3
Beautiful place, I was there last summer. AFAIK suspicions about wireless
radiation having adverse health effects have not been substantiated.

The subject comes up in places distant from BC. Considering the upcoming
election year, here in Portland we usually have a few "fringe" candidates for
local office asserting WiFi in public schools is "damaging" children, causing
them to misbehave, etc.

Obviously most of the population is unconcerned about such risk. I suppose if
it turned out that wireless signals really do cause some obscure deleterious
effects, the "tinfoil hat" crowd will say they told us so. I'd go with the
odds that's even less likely than winning the Megabucks lottery 3 times in a
row.

~~~
KeytarHero
Yeah, the only "proof" that people tend to cite is that the WHO has classified
EM radiation in a class that basically means "we have no idea if it causes
cancer or not, but it might", along with just about everything [1].

I lived in Victoria for a few years. My landlords there had refused a smart
meter - yet they had WiFi, and both had cell phones.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_IARC_Group_2B_carcinog...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_IARC_Group_2B_carcinogens)

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acd
Here is one equipment from Ubiquity that you can use to built speedy point to
point connection. 1.2Gbps on 100km link.

[https://www.ubnt.com/airfiber/airfiber5/](https://www.ubnt.com/airfiber/airfiber5/)

~~~
lordnacho
How do you aim it at the other end? It's 100km away?

~~~
amazon_not
GPS.

~~~
dingaling
Not sufficient. Civilian NavStar/ GPS has a 95th percentile accuracy of 7.5
metres and a best-case of around 2 metres.

That's more than enough to miss by several dozen dish diameters at 100km.

~~~
amazon_not
Main alignment with GPS and then finetune to get maximum performance. At 100km
the main signal lobe is quite large, so being off by a few dozen dish
diameters isn't large enough of an error to not to be able to get started.

------
lordnacho
This is pretty awesome, but I wonder if it could have been done had there not
been a network guy in the group? I've done a lot of network code/config over
the years, and I wouldn't say it was particularly easy. The guy seems to say
it was easy.

Unbelievably fiddly is more like it. Just the nature of it makes it annoying:
before you have a connection through, you have a chain of links that doesn't
work. You have to fix every single link before Eureka.

~~~
martin-adams
> but I wonder if it could have been done had there not been a network guy in
> the group?

More to the point, what happens if he moves away or is unable to support it.

I do wonder if there is a business model to implement and support this type of
network for small towns.

~~~
amazon_not
> I do wonder if there is a business model to implement and support this type
> of network for small towns.

Well, you can outsource the NOC, but no amount of remote handwaving is going
to help when you need hands on-site. In the end you get what you pay for.

~~~
0898
>In the end you get what you pay for.

Well, they were paying for CenturyLink and got a 10 day outage.

~~~
amazon_not
In all fairness that outage was due to a subsea cable break and those require
both specialized equipment and time to get the equipment on-site.

... and it's a really good example of getting what you pay for. I really do
not think the islanders are paying Centurylink enough to be able to fix subsea
cable faults with a 4 hour lead time.

That being said Centrylink's lack of redundancy and fallover links is another
matter.

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privong
> The rural Orcas Island has a lot of hills and obstacles that could disrupt
> the wireless signals, and it would have been "prohibitively expensive" for
> DBIUA to install its own towers. As such, many of the radios had to be
> installed in trees.

Presumably there will be movement of antennae as trees grow. One could monitor
the alignment by periodically checking the signal strength between links. I
wonder how often things will need to be realigned because the "tower" on which
the radios sit changes with time.

~~~
cortesoft
Depends on now close to the top of the tree the antennae is placed. Trees grow
from the top, so anything below that won't move as the tree grows.

~~~
Swannie
As the tree grows, the weight distribution changes, and things move. Trees
grow from the leaves. Leaves are not just at "the top".

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irixusr
Once they pay off their loan, they could end up with the cheapest and faster
internet services in the area.

The irony.

~~~
fraserharris
Well, a business would take the free cash flow and invest in expansion. Then
again, a business would be paying the island's network operator and there
would likely be no free cash flow.

~~~
irixusr
I think what may happen is a big operator will invest a lot of money to make
service there incredibly cheap and fast, killing the service.

As a lesson to all you out there who'd dare challenge a communication company.

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allpratik
This is really cool!! I always wish to setup such network amongst peers and
get everybody connected with good b/w, especially in India. This kinda stuff
can create marvels in emerging economies whose existing infrastructure is
heavily loaded.

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jaflo
This is really cool. Honestly I'm surprised they still get 20Mbps after the
data goes through multiple relays and a microwave connection. Are microwave
links in widespread use for internet communication?

~~~
mikeyouse
There's a whole group of companies called "Wireless ISPs" [1] that make
extensive use of microwave products from companies like Ubiqti and Mimosa.
Depending on the backhaul, you can get gigabit speeds over unlicensed
microwave spectrum in many locations. There's a WISP in San Francisco called
Monkey Brains that is a really good alternative to Comcast if you have the
space for a microwave antenna on your house. [2]

[1] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_Internet_service_prov...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_Internet_service_provider)

[2] -
[https://www.monkeybrains.net/wireless.html](https://www.monkeybrains.net/wireless.html)

~~~
GeneralMayhem
In SF, I'd also recommend Webpass [1], which uses point-to-point microwave to
get to apartment buildings and then piggybacks on phone data lines within the
building. They're cheap (by American standards - $500/yr), fast (from 100/100
to 500/500 depending on the building, usually 5ms ping), and have great
service (no installation fee, tech was on time to the minute and extremely
knowledgeable).

[1] [https://www.webpass.net](https://www.webpass.net)

~~~
tlrobinson
I'm also super happy with WebPass. My current building gets about 400 Mbps
up/down.

------
awqrre
I would like to be able to share my home network with my car within a 15+ km
radius of my home... Maybe using a servo-controlled directional antenna on my
car that would always point to my home using some sensors, or an
unidirectional would be even better but I don't know if that is possible using
open-spectrums.

~~~
motoboi
Considering the investment you'll need to make in antenas, equipments and
such, unless you live in a poor coverage area, you'll be better with a 4G.

~~~
awqrre
That remains to be seen but I have a feeling that savings could be seen in the
medium term, or maybe just a few years... 4G is too expensive and data caps
are ridiculous.

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esaym
Hope it works out well for them. I had a horrid time with a local wireless
provider in my area. It was based on the motorola canopy (now cambium
networks) configuration. They had main antennas on every single water tower in
probably a 20-30 mile radius. I live on the edge of the county and there is
not much out here. The water tower antenna that I was pointed to was probably
servicing a ton of people.

When I first got set up, I was told I would get 8mbs down and 2mbs up for $70
a month. It was unlimited, unmonitored, and a "straight static IP into the
internet". For the first 3 months, it was great. I got 8mbs and pings were
80ms. However after those first 3 months things, started to slow down. My
antenna was in front of a tree and since it was now spring, the tree was
covered in thick leaves. I thought that was the reason for my slow down and I
didn't complain. Once winter came again, and all the leaves fell off, there
was no difference. My speed was 8mbs, then it was 7mbs, and now it was hanging
around 6mbs and I could no longer use my VOIP office phone. I could hear fine,
but no one would hear me. And also during the evenings, things were getting
worse, with speeds dipping down in the the 4mbs range, even netflix was
starting to slow way down. Another year goes by and I am looking at a max
speed of 5mbs, but normally it dips down to 1mbs. Another year goes by, and it
was even worse, but now pings are up to 100-200 range.

I then noticed after these three years, ATT u-verse DSL was available. I
managed to get the business class 6mbs for $50 a month (but I get 7mbs down).
I've never been so happy....

In hindsight, I probably should have complained to the customer support, but I
really had no faith in them, it felt too much like an over subscription issue
and I was afraid that their "fix" would be to just install a 50 foot pool in
my yard to put their antenna on which I didn't want.

Other than that, I have always wanted to build my own ISP. But now I don't
know if I would do it wireless or not (but that is pretty much the only
way...)

------
wtracy
_CenturyLink has gone so far as to tell customers who cancel their DSL service
that they will not be able to start it up again, Brems said._

That seems awfully abusive.

~~~
necessity
The costumer doesn't want them because the service constantly fails and they
don't want the customer because he constantly complains. What's abusive about
that? A perfectly healthy non-relation. The only abusive thing would be gov.
getting in the way of it and forcing them to accept the customers or the
costumers to accept the ISP.

------
p1mrx
Now that ARIN's run dry, it's gotten more difficult to start a proper ISP.
Does their network support IPv6?

~~~
JoshTriplett
> Now that ARIN's run dry, it's gotten more difficult to start a proper ISP.

Only if you want _static_ IPv4 addresses. And even then, they aren't
impossible to come by.

~~~
p1mrx
Dynamic addressing only helps if the maximum number of simultaneous users is
significantly less than the total number of subscribers. When you're
connecting houses, that's generally not the case.

~~~
JoshTriplett
You don't need to hand out routable IPs at all. NAT should support roughly 64k
simultaneous connections (not users) per IP.

~~~
p1mrx
The Web is not the Internet. If customers have no means to receive unsolicited
packets, then you're not really an Internet service provider.

------
tkubacki
Is that guy using ubuntu on his laptop ?

~~~
LeonM
It does look like a unity interface, so yes I think so. But why would this
surprise you? The guy is a software engineer after all...

~~~
JetSpiegel
I'd expect Arch...

~~~
mrbill
Why? Lots of us "techies" don't like Arch.

------
laurentoget
I wonder how they set this up w.r.t regulations. I was under the impression
the process to setup an ISP involved a mountain of red tape. Did they get away
with it because they are a non profit?

~~~
jauer
There's very little red tape involved in _starting_ as ISP in the US. The red
tape starts up to 6 months in when you hit the bi-yearly FCC Form 477 filing,
though I'd say the majority of (w)ISPs are flying under the radar by simply
never filing.

If you even think about offering voice services (even VoIP), then you get
buried in paperwork.

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Chris2048
I see the a headline “It wasn't that hard”, Then immediately below a picture
with the caption "Sutton holds a drone he used to analyze potential radio
location"...

------
zz1
They should register here: [http://db.ffdn.org/](http://db.ffdn.org/) !

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pontifk8r
Is 3.65 GHz (mentioned in the article as a way to get away from crowded 2.4
GHz) allowed for unlicensed use in the US now?

------
uberneo
looks good but i believe they can take more learnings from
[http://battlemesh.org/](http://battlemesh.org/) for creating these kind of
adhoc networks

