I want to become my own ISP. Where do I get my connection?

Question

What do I need to do for this?
Do I need any special equipment to do this.
I also want to know what a multigrade carrier provider is?
Can I run my services on more than one line etc?
Many thanks Wayne

Answer 1

If you want to BE an ISP, you need a BACKBONE connection to the internet. This will need to be 100mb+

How many customers you planning to service ? Small building ? General populace ? If more than a building you need to invest in equipment in loacl exchanges, so contact a phone Co

If you don't know what you are doing, chance of achieving this is NIL !

Answer 2

To be ab ISP, you need a dedicated line, usually a T1 (minimum) or higher. You can rent the use of a T1 line from the phone company for about $4000-$5000 dollars a month.

You will need to have enough servers (high capacity computers running the "server" version of Windows) to guarantee your customers that you can provide service 24/7 365 days a year.

"Multigrade" means that you subdivide the T1 line for usage by others, offering different "grades' or speeds for different prices.

You can run your service on more than one line, but then means leasing additional T1 lines or a higher capacity line like a T3.

Answer 3

I run an ISP in New York City. We service hundreds of T1 customers and dozens of MLAN customers. A T1 does not cost thousands of dollars per month. Depending on how far you are from the CLEC, the prices vary.

An ISP requires that you have to consider first, what grade of service do you want to provide? DSL? T1? Wifi? Fiber/MLAN? DIalup? Once you figure out that question, then you need to know what equipment is required.

For Dialup, you need at least 24 dialup POTS lines to service 24 customers, a Dialup server (usually a RADIUS server) to service your customers. You will need to acquire at least 28 IP Addresses from ARIN and you will need a T1 (1.54Mb/s) as a backbone. Maybe 2 T1's for multiple routing support. Startup cost is about $5k and this can be done from your home, office or a colo center.

For T1 customers, you need at least a T3 (45Mb/s) as a backbone, a device such as a Cisco 7200 router with a PA-MC-T3 card to connect to customers with an enterprise account to the local telco to get the CLEC local loops to customers. You will also need to provide Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) which are routers and CSU/DSU units. Startup for this is about $50k to $100k and this can be done from an office or colo center.

Wifi is a totally different animal that requires much consideration. More than can be provided here.

MLAN/Fiber is a monster. Startup costs is at least $250k and requires a colo center to keep the costs low. The connection to the backbone must be at least a Gig-E and the equipment will vary. An enterprise-level agreement with local telco's for fiber/MLAN circuits will be required.

Starting an ISP is no small deal, you really need to learn about Wide Area Networking before even considering such a venture.