How to begin making my own ISP?

Fri Sep 16 18:42:18 UTC 2011

On Fri, Sep 16, 2011 at 02:10:29PM -0400, hasserw at hushmail.com wrote:
> No one replied with any useful information. I guess no one wants 
> competition on this list? Pretty poor tactic.
> 
> On Sat, 10 Sep 2011 21:55:01 -0400 hasserw at hushmail.com wrote:
> >I want to begin making my own ISP, mainly for high speed servers 
> >and such, but also branching out to residential customers. I'm 
> >going to be in Germany for the next school year (probably either 
> >Frankfurt am Main or Berlin); any suggestions on what sort of 
> >classes I can take there that will be in English and will teach me 
> >
> >all I need to know on how to build and manage my own ISP, AS, etc? 
> >
> >Thanks.
> 

	"... First,  You make a roux!"  - Julia Childs

Clearly its not a easy/simple as it used to be but its not rocket science either.

you have to decide where you want to start;   eyeballs, content, or get others to defray 
the cost of yur access.

Once you select which target you are after, then you can pick your gear.  I am going to
presume OSS and fully depricated kit to keep your costs down and to boost your learning
skills.

On the presumption you want to run BGP I suggest you invest in some colo space at/near
a public internet exchange w/ a large number of players..  SIX was good, Telx was good,
and the S&D pops were as well - at least four/five years ago.

slip you old HP laptop into the rack and buy a cross connect to the exchange fabric.
replace the OS on the laptop w/ FreeBSD or CentOS, from ports, add SSH and Quagga.

Chat up potential peers at the exchange and see whom will peer w/ you using a Private ASN.

Contact ARIN or third party broker to lease some IP space and an ASN.  If you can't find/justify
the resources 'cause your just starting out,  there is private space and private ASN.

Configure Quagga w/ the obtained ASN and announce the IP prefix(es).

TaDa ...  You are an ISP!

/bill