'Anti-authority' tech rebels take on ISPs, connect NYC with cheap Wi-Fi
Actual ISP network engineer here: I'm sure these people are having fun and all, but it's insignificant in the larger scheme of things.<p>(correction to original post: I did not at first see an ASN for them, or announcements of their own IP space. They have an ASN and announce two /24s, and peer at one physical location in metro NYC).<p>Real five nines network infrastructure takes significant capital investment.<p>This part is so much unadulerated bullshit:<p>""The internet doesn't really cost you anything, it's just the connection [that has a fee]. So however you can get plugged in — then you're on the internet. Nobody owns the internet, there's no one to pay.""<p>Actual, reliable internet costs real money, both in the salaries of people to engineer and architect it, salaries for 24x7x365 clued-in NOC staff, equipment, salaries and expenses for field technicians to build it. And that's before you get into things like establishing colo at major IX points, serious core routers that cost $15k each (do you really want to deploy something in the year 2018 to take several full BGP tables that doesn't have a 4 million FIB capacity?), etc. The Internet is a significant construction project at OSI layer 1, whether you're putting PTP radios on rooftops, running aerial fiber, or underground fiber. Otherwise you're just piggybacking on something that another, larger entity has already built.<p>I give them an A for enthusiasm and effort. It just needs to be channeled the right way so that they can figure out what it actually costs to run a reliable ISP. I'm all in favor of new startup ISPs.