Just wondering

[DualZone]

so i started thinking, i know it would be a lot of money and that it is a lot harder than this but what is stopping someone like me an average everyday citizen from making my own internet company so i dont have to pay for internet. i could also have all the freedom i want and make any server i want and if i wanted to i could start charging other people to use my internet. i mean cox and the big internet companies had to start from somewhere so what is stopping me from becoming the next cox. Theoretically what would i have to do to make this happen?

[LonkFromPA]

 I watched this a while back, hope it helps!

[Ya_Mi]

First of all.

Wake up

[KuJoe]

Basically you would need to rent fiber from the ISPs in your area. There are actual laws in place that make it extremely expensive to compete with existing ISPs because local governments can't just let people run their own fiber (Google found this out the hard way and if they can't do it with their billions it'll be impossible for somebody like you or I to do it).

 

That being said, the easiest solution is to start your own WISP (Wireless ISP) which is not as uncommon as you think. Ubiquiti equipment is excellent for this and searching their forums will give you a ton of information about starting your own WISP. I actually know somebody who started their own ISP this way, they found a public data center that let you lease "roof rights" so they could place a high powered Point to Point dish on the roof, piped in internet from the data center to local apartment buildings, and then charged the residents to access WiFi access points throughout the building.

[KuJoe]

4 minutes ago, LonkFromPA said:

 I watched this a while back, hope it helps!

This isn't what he's asking. He's asking about becoming an ISP, not reinventing the internet.

[LonkFromPA]

Whoops, just realized my video was a bit off-topic from what you were talking about, I apologize.

[LonkFromPA]

Just now, KuJoe said:

This isn't what he's asking. He's asking about becoming an ISP, not reinventing the internet.

Yep, just realized it

[KuJoe]

Just now, LonkFromPA said:

Yep, just realized it

Still an interesting video I can share with people who don't know how the internet works.

[DualZone]

i guess what saying is that verizon or atat or tmobile havent always been huge multi billion dollar companies, so how did they climb their way up the ladder of popularity and why cant someone like us do that also. if money were no object; obviously it takes lots and lots of money to kickstart a company like that.

[KuJoe]

6 minutes ago, DualZone said:

i guess what saying is that verizon or atat or tmobile havent always been huge multi billion dollar companies, so how did they climb their way up the ladder of popularity and why cant someone like us do that also. if money were no object; obviously it takes lots and lots of money to kickstart a company like that.

They either owned the fiber to start with or acquired companies that owned fiber. Like I said, Google tried this with Google Fiber and failed because there are laws in place preventing new competition (even local governments have tried to create a public ISP for their citizens but weren't legally able to do it).

[DualZone]

Just now, KuJoe said:

They either owned the fiber to start with or acquired companies that owned fiber. Like I said, Google tried this with Google Fiber and failed because there are laws in place preventing new competition (even local governments have tried to create a public ISP for their citizens but weren't legally able to do it).

so are you indirectly saying that the isp's that are on the market today are the ones we have for close to forever

[Mornincupofhate]

You can't just generate an internet connection. That's not how the internet works.

Your ISP pays a different ISP to let them plug in their fiber cables to their edge routers and rents a block of IP addresses from them and vice versa. Your ISP then gets paid to run cables to your house. That's how the internet works.

 

As the other guy said, wake up. Unless you have millions of dollars and powerful lawyers, it's not gonna happen.

[Mornincupofhate]

19 minutes ago, DualZone said:

i guess what saying is that verizon or atat or tmobile havent always been huge multi billion dollar companies, so how did they climb their way up the ladder of popularity and why cant someone like us do that also. if money were no object; obviously it takes lots and lots of money to kickstart a company like that.

No, The owners of T-Mobile and AT&T have shitloads of cash to give people that dig ditches to put their cables in. That's why they're so big.

[DualZone]

5 minutes ago, Mornincupofhate said:

You can't just generate an internet connection. That's not how the internet works.

Your ISP pays a different ISP to let them plug in their cables to their servers and vice versa. Your ISP then gets paid to run cables to your house. That's how the internet works.

what your saying is that you have to have an isp to generate an isp, but this isnt ture because that isp had to come from somewhere and that isp's isp had to get its internet from somewhere so what im asking is how did the first isp get its internet because internet wasnt a thing back in the early 1900's so it came from somewhere, your right internet isnt just pulled from thin air, but it had to come from somewhere

 

and also im pretty awake, im not trying to do this my self im in no financial position to do anything close to this but that doesnt have to keep me from wondering what it would take to do it.

[Mornincupofhate]

Just now, DualZone said:

what your saying is that you have to have an isp to generate an isp, but this isnt ture because that isp had to come from somewhere and that isp's isp had to get its internet from somewhere so what im asking is how did the first isp get its internet because internet wasnt a thing back in the early 1900's so it came from somewhere, your right internet isnt just pulled from thin air, but it had to come from somewhere

Back in the 1990s the internet wasn't planned on being anything but connecting schools and universities so they could share documents. It was never meant to be available to people at home, hence why we ran out of IPV4 addresses.

 

If I have one central router and I connect it to another router, I get a network. What happens when I add a few more? Does this answer your question?

[DualZone]

Just now, Mornincupofhate said:

Back in the 1990s the internet wasn't planned on being anything but connecting schools and universities so they could share documents. It was never meant to be available to people at home, hence why we ran out of IPV4 addresses.

 

If I have one central router and I connect it to another router, I get a network. What happens when I add a few more? Does this answer your question?

then how does your central router get its internet to give to the other ones? thats my question

[Mornincupofhate]

5 minutes ago, DualZone said:

then how does your central router get its internet to give to the other ones? thats my question

Let's just get this straight, I'm no network engineer, nor am I old enough to even have a job.

 

The "Main ISP" Is the one who controls and hands out all of the IP addresses. When a different router is connected to that, the "Main ISP" can give him a range of IP addresses that he can use. The bandwidth (speed) is limited by the processing power of the routers and the quality of the cables (Most ISPs today run cables in increments of 40gbps - 100gbps.) All routers also hold a BGP routing table of the entire internet which is basically a phone book of the internet, it forwards data packets where they need to go.

 

If the "Main ISP's router" doesn't assign a router an IP or a group of IP addresses, there's no way it can have internet or talk to other machines over the net. (It wont have internet access.)

[DualZone]

2 minutes ago, Mornincupofhate said:

Let's just get this straight, I'm no network engineer, nor am I old enough to even have a job.

 

The "Main ISP" Is the one who controls and hands out all of the IP addresses. When a different router is connected to that, the "Main ISP" can give him a range of IP addresses that he can use. The bandwidth (speed) is limited by the processing power of the routers and the quality of the cables (Most ISPs today run cables in increments of 40gbps - 100gbps.) All routers also hold a BGP routing table of the entire internet which is basically a phone book of the internet, it forwards data packets where they need to go.

 

If the "Main ISP's router" doesn't assign a router an IP or a group of IP addresses, there's no way it can have internet or talk to other machines over the net.

to be honest you may be answering my question and i just dont understand, you keep saying main ISP, this main isp has to generate its ip's to give out to other routers, how does it do this

 

[Mornincupofhate]

3 minutes ago, DualZone said:

to be honest you may be answering my question and i just dont understand, you keep saying main ISP, this main isp has to generate its ip's to give out to other routers, how does it do this

 

There is no "Main ISP", just like there is no center of the internet. If it went down, everyone would lose internet access. I personally have no clue how IP addresses were first assigned and who they were first assigned to. Hopefully someone else can answer that for you.

 

If you're curious about this kind of stuff, open up cmd and play with the tracert command. It will show you all the routes it took to deliver that packet.

[DualZone]

Just now, Mornincupofhate said:

There is no "Main ISP", just like there is no center of the internet. If it went down, everyone would lose internet access. I personally have no clue how IP addresses were first assigned and who they were first assigned to. Hopefully someone else can answer that for you.

alright thanks im sure you answered my question and i just didnt understand or somethin

[KuJoe]

36 minutes ago, DualZone said:

so are you indirectly saying that the isp's that are on the market today are the ones we have for close to forever

You'd have to buy an existing ISP if you want to get into the "wired" ISP business. If you're really interested in this then look into starting a WISP. Depending on your location it might actually be a viable and relatively cheap option.

[KuJoe]

23 minutes ago, DualZone said:

then how does your central router get its internet to give to the other ones? thats my question

BGP (Border Gateway Protocol), this is the peering protocol used to tell the rest of the internet "Hey, I'm here". You would use BGP to announce your IPs publicly (which you would need to purchase along with an ASN from ARIN) and you would setting peering sessions with backbone internet providers like Cogent, Level3, TWTC, NTT, etc... (these are the same people who provide bandwidth to most residential ISPs around the world and these backbone providers are the ones who make the internet work between cities, countries, and continents). Once you have your IPs announced to the world via BGP, the external routing is done.

[LAwLz]

The thing is, the Internet is not like apple juice. You can't just buy your own tree, harvest fruit and get delicious Internet juice.

The Internet is one giant network and in order to get access to that, you need to connect to the already established ISPs (be it a tier 1 network, or tier 2 or so on). But they won't let you send traffic through their networks for free, so you need to pay them, usually.

 

In order to get access to the Internet you need to peer with one or more ISPs. Why? Because that's how the Internet works. It's one giant network and you need to plug into it somewhere. You can not reach a website that's behind AT&T's network without having some way of connecting to AT&T.

 

There are typically two types of peering contracts.

Transit - This is when you contact an ISP and say "hey I want to pay you money based on how much bandwidth I need every month". This is essentially just like having a regular ISP like what you got today, except there are other costs, contracts and rules.

 

Peer - This is when two companies both have a large amount of customers/servers behind their networks. For example AT&T and Verizon both send a lot of traffic between each other. It would not make sense for Verizon and AT&T to have transit agreements between each other because the fees would just cancel each other out. So instead they both agree to a peering contract, which essentially says "we are both allowed to send and receive traffic between each other, because that will benefit both of us".

 

On top of having those contracts in place, you need the equipment, knowledge and expertise of setting it up, and IP addresses and an AS number.

To get an IP you are a few decades too late, if we're talking about IPv4. We have run out of them. If you want an IPv6 then you need to contract an organization such as ARIN, which have very strict requirements before they will even sell you addresses.

For an AS number you can once again go to ARIN. But just like with IP addresses, they have strict requirements for who can even request to buy a number.

[brwainer]

The core of the internet (The part that uses the BGP that others keep bringing up) is just a bunch of companies and governments that make agreements to trust each other and carry data for each others customers. If you want to go to a particular website (for traditional websites, I'm not talking about distributed ones like Google or Facebook) your request goes through your ISP to the ISP that the website is connecting to. How it gets from one ISP to another is all done by BGP. How do you get into this trusted circle of people who can talk BGP with each other? You either have to be so big that the other companies want to connect to you, or you have to pay one of them to allow you to connect. This is what is meant when people say "your ISP has to pay another ISP to get to the internet" - your ISP, even if it's a big one like Comcast or Verizon, doesn't have connections to every single website you want to visit - and if they can't make an even deal with a particular other ISP, then they will have to pay that other ISP in order to connect to them. So your ISP doesn't really pay a single other ISP in order to connect to the internet (unless they are very small) - in reality your ISP makes dozens or hundreds of arrangements with other ISPs. In some of these arrangements, your ISP pays, in others your ISP might get paid, but in most cases neither ISP will pay the other at all, since sufficiently large ISPs will often be able to make even connections with each other - meaning that one ISP isn't sending more traffic to the other than it is accepting from the other.