Notify Me wrote:
That being said, some people who have a lot more faith in my abilities than I do seem to think I am the go-to guy for network information. And they foolishly asked me for assistance in putting together a small ISP network which is supposed to cater for home users inside of a residential area, very likely wireless (wifi/WIMAX).
A key question: is this going to be a commercial service run as a business, or an internal operation like a campus network? The operations aren't that different, but the scope and organiation can be different. Another key question: Are you focusing just on the infrastructure (wireless IP) or will you be providing email, hosting services, and so forth?
I confess I am really interested in helping my questioners put this together, not just for whatever material gain (which is unlikely at this point), but just for the experience which is very valuable to me. I also have to state that I live in Nigeria, so whatever advice you offer has to be fourth-world applicable.
I admit that your query raised my interest, so I did a little looking, and found this: http://www.fnbc.info/sites/default/files/fck-uploads/file/fntc/ISP%20Guide%2... A guide put together by the "First Nations Technology Council" - on how to put together an ISP on tribal lands in Canada - which might be somewhat analogous to your situation. It's somewhat basic, but gives an overview - then you can start looking into the individual topics it talks about. You might drop them an email. There's also been a lot of work on US tribal reservations that might apply - you'll have to do some googling to find resources. Now the guy you really want to talk to is Dave Hughes, of Big Sky Telegraph - who used to do a lot of network building for rural areas in the US and remote areas around the world - unfortunately he's long retired - but two sources you could look at that might give you a lot of background: http://www.bigskytelegraph.com/ (which now seems to lead to the Dillon Center of Excellence, focusing on best practices for rural America, including networking) and http://www.davehugheslegacy.net/ There used to be an "Association for Community Networking" - folks involved in building cooperative local networks (used to be a lot of what I was involved in the 1990s) but that kind of activity has dried up as more and more commercial players entered the market. And an "Organization for Community Networks" (http://ofcn.org/) - but their web site seems to be kind of dead (some useful links, though). If you google "community network" you'll find a buch of current operations - and you might want to contact some of them. There are also a growing number of community mesh networks in various places - WikiPedia's page on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_community_network might be a good starting point. There's also an association of wireless ISPs http://www.wispa.org/ Then there's this guy: https://www.facebook.com/theispguy - who seems to have written a book on "so you want to be an ISP" - can't say anything about how good it is. Or.. you might just go looking for other ISPs in Nigeria (of which there are quite a few) and see if you can get some advice (amazing what you can learn over a few beers). Maybe contact the networking people at the nearest college or university. I don't know what it's like in Nigeria, but in the US, the academic community was really active in getting a lot of early ISPs started - particularly in smaller communities. One other thought: there are quite a few software packages floating around for managing aspects of ISP operations (see https://wiki.debian.org/HostingControlPanels for starters) - I expect their user communities (and email lists) would be excellent sources of information. Hope this helps. Regards, Miles Fidelman -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra