DOs and DONTs for small ISP

Mon Jun 3 13:48:33 UTC 2019

I’m constantly amazed at the number of even medium-sized ISPs that have no network monitoring. An NMS should go in as the first software component — before billing starts and the provider is on the hook to deliver. 

The second lacking component is a ticket system, which is silly because turnkey cloud services are not expensive, and open source solutions abound for budget-limited operators. 

The third component failure is security, including weak and default (!) passwords, failure to use real certificates, and the complete lack of 2FA or MFA. Security also requires data surveillance, in the form of net flow analysis.

The “two guys and a router” business model must be upgraded with more planning and a cohesive operating plan.

 -mel 

> On Jun 3, 2019, at 5:05 AM, Mehmet Akcin <mehmet at akcin.net> wrote:
> 
> hi there,
> 
> I know there are folks from lots of small ISPs here and I wanted to check-in on asking few advice points as I am involved building an ISP from green-field.
> 
> Usually, it's pretty straight forward to cover high-level important things, filters, routing policies, etc.but we all know the devil is in the details. 
> 
> I am putting together a public DOs and DONTs blog post and would love to hear from those who have built ISPs and have recommendations from Billing to Interconnection, Routing policy to Out of the band  & console setup, Software recommendations, etc. Bottom line is that I would like to publish a checklist with these recommendations which I hope will be useful for all. 
> 
> thanks in advance for your help and recommendation.
> 
> Mehmet
> 
> 