Balancing, customer needs, limitation of hardware/infrastructure. Copper doesn’t handle symmetrical download and upload as well (this is where fiber comes in). There can be too much noise resulting in degraded consistency. Its prone to interference and leaks. To improve reliability, you get asymmetrical plans. Most people just want download. Which has historically been the cheaper choice. An example local to my area, a home plan will be 800 down and 20 up. A business plan will be 500 down and 300 up. The business plan costs more.
Yeah, but nowadays with self hosting, cloud synced apps, peer to peer game matchmaking, and working from home… Cable is practically useless, yet still the only option in some places.
I switched to 5G. Get the same download and was more upload for less money. Latency is a little lame sometimes. It’s not terrific for online gaming. But it’s better for everything else.
I love my UnRaid server and my local smart home and my PiHole and everything. But I’m one of two in my extended family and one of <10 in my extended friend group that even knows what the words you said mean. Most people don’t care about those things. (or at least don’t care / know enough to set them up)
Most people know 5G is bigger than 4G. Or 7>6 for WiFi. Unless they’re streaming upload speed tends not to register.
Working from home is certainly not super-niche not for the past 4 years or so. Most of my WFH users that complain all the time are on cable ISPs. Reason being is because it’s easy to saturate upload, between system backups and people trying to put large files on shares and whatnot. And when upload is fully saturated, that can negatively impact download – especially when the VPN platform or users Internet connection doesn’t support IPsec or DTLS (see one of my other comments in this page for technical reasoning).
Not to mention, if they’re using a cable wifi gateway, the ISP can traffic shape them. I had the Comcast xfinity tower thing when I first switched, all my devices topped out at 10Mbps upload even if it was the only thing connected at the time. Swapped it for a surfboard and my own x86 router using openwrt and topped out at the max (at the time) 40 Mbps.
I was seriously considering startong a WISP after I found out Comcast was the only option in my new neighborhood (checking what ISPs are available is now part of my home-buying criteria).
The 6Mbps upload was borderline unusable once COVID came and I started working from home. There were days when it would have seriously been faster for me to drive an hour in each way to transfer some large files.
Fortunately 5G came available in my neighborhood. My upload is more than 10x what was before, my download slightly improved, and my monthly cost is lower. At the cost of a bit of latency.
E: allow me to elaborate. I understood you meant to open your own WISP. Maybe I misunderstood, but if I haven’t, I was wondering how one would go about doing this.
The middle bit is the part that is daunting to me. How do you jack in without the intermediary ISP. How does the upstream ISP jack in? Where’s the source?
You’d either have the bulk of your infrastructure in a colo or carrier hotel, or you’d hopefully be able to host your own data center somewhere where there’s fiber run to a nearby carrier hotel.
Then it’s a matter of getting the signal to your transceivers.
You’d probably be setting up to peer with big tier 1 ISPs (in the US, these are Lumen, Cogent, AT&T, GTT, Verizon, or Zayo) and/or tier 2 ISPs (such as Hurricane or Comcast). You may even want to peer with other services such as Amazon or Netflix or Microsoft.
Balancing, customer needs, limitation of hardware/infrastructure. Copper doesn’t handle symmetrical download and upload as well (this is where fiber comes in). There can be too much noise resulting in degraded consistency. Its prone to interference and leaks. To improve reliability, you get asymmetrical plans. Most people just want download. Which has historically been the cheaper choice. An example local to my area, a home plan will be 800 down and 20 up. A business plan will be 500 down and 300 up. The business plan costs more.
Yeah, but nowadays with self hosting, cloud synced apps, peer to peer game matchmaking, and working from home… Cable is practically useless, yet still the only option in some places.
I switched to 5G. Get the same download and was more upload for less money. Latency is a little lame sometimes. It’s not terrific for online gaming. But it’s better for everything else.
Which is super niche.
I love my UnRaid server and my local smart home and my PiHole and everything. But I’m one of two in my extended family and one of <10 in my extended friend group that even knows what the words you said mean. Most people don’t care about those things. (or at least don’t care / know enough to set them up)
Most people know 5G is bigger than 4G. Or 7>6 for WiFi. Unless they’re streaming upload speed tends not to register.
Working from home is certainly not super-niche not for the past 4 years or so. Most of my WFH users that complain all the time are on cable ISPs. Reason being is because it’s easy to saturate upload, between system backups and people trying to put large files on shares and whatnot. And when upload is fully saturated, that can negatively impact download – especially when the VPN platform or users Internet connection doesn’t support IPsec or DTLS (see one of my other comments in this page for technical reasoning).
Not to mention, if they’re using a cable wifi gateway, the ISP can traffic shape them. I had the Comcast xfinity tower thing when I first switched, all my devices topped out at 10Mbps upload even if it was the only thing connected at the time. Swapped it for a surfboard and my own x86 router using openwrt and topped out at the max (at the time) 40 Mbps.
If you want better, diy.
And I don’t mean lbbby your city government or whatever; municipal broadband is illegal most places. Only way out of this one is syndicalism.
I was seriously considering startong a WISP after I found out Comcast was the only option in my new neighborhood (checking what ISPs are available is now part of my home-buying criteria).
The 6Mbps upload was borderline unusable once COVID came and I started working from home. There were days when it would have seriously been faster for me to drive an hour in each way to transfer some large files.
Fortunately 5G came available in my neighborhood. My upload is more than 10x what was before, my download slightly improved, and my monthly cost is lower. At the cost of a bit of latency.
How would one go about establishing a WISP?
E: allow me to elaborate. I understood you meant to open your own WISP. Maybe I misunderstood, but if I haven’t, I was wondering how one would go about doing this.
With a lot of technical backing and startup capital. Network equipment isn’t cheap (but there are economical options available, like Mikrotik).
Then it’s a matter of acquiring an IP block, an upstream ISP, and tower rights.
Beyond that, basic business stuff like billing and asset management. Help desk, accounts payable, etc.
The middle bit is the part that is daunting to me. How do you jack in without the intermediary ISP. How does the upstream ISP jack in? Where’s the source?
You’d either have the bulk of your infrastructure in a colo or carrier hotel, or you’d hopefully be able to host your own data center somewhere where there’s fiber run to a nearby carrier hotel.
Then it’s a matter of getting the signal to your transceivers.
You’d probably be setting up to peer with big tier 1 ISPs (in the US, these are Lumen, Cogent, AT&T, GTT, Verizon, or Zayo) and/or tier 2 ISPs (such as Hurricane or Comcast). You may even want to peer with other services such as Amazon or Netflix or Microsoft.
Removed by mod