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Theoretical Internet without ISP

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by winthrop.polk

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I know there has to be a way to connect to the internet at high speeds without an ISP. How do I do this; or, how does AT&T and Comcast do this. The internet is big, and AT&T, comcast and others all provide the exact same content which leads me to beleive there is an underlieing principle of net neutrality and free information access somewhere on the backbone of the internet.

Okay, so we supposedly live in a free market society. So how do I become my own ISP. If I know what IP adresses I want to connect to (perhaps using my personalized DNS), how do I do this. Imagin that cost is no option. Could I run a T1 line directly to a google server? But then, does google have an ISP? Comcast is an ISP, but who does comcast pay? If they don't pay anyone, then I should be able to set up my own ISP just by replicateing their system.

31 replies

by larryd4

ISP's have GSP's or Global Service Providers for their needs.

AT&T. MCI, Sprint Net all are GSP's. You can't buy a fiber drop from a GSP, you need to go through your local telecommunications company for a Fiber drop.

ISP=IP Block
If you want to be an ISP you will need to lease or purchase an IP block. I don't think its actually possible to buy a block anymore. Well that should change once IPv6 is out. In most cases you would just lease a block of addresses from a company like AT&T and that leased block will become the IP addresses you dole out to your customers.

This is not something you can just do. You need to register with the IANA, IEEE, and the internet dudes, (lol can't remember the offical name off the cuff).

It's a big world out their and if you want to be your own ISP I would talk to the business side of your phone company.
In New Jersey its Verizon as well as in many other places.

You can run an ISP off of a cable or fiber(FIOS) connection, as long as your careful, and have smart engineers.

But either way you should start doing a lot of research on how enterprise routing works, PoPs, and redundcy plannig for your ISP.

by winthrop.polk

Okay, so comcast-to-AT&T is like a "electric company"-to-"power plant"? THey sort of contract the local distribution out and comcast/electric-company gets a piece? If this is the case, wouldn't there be a comflict of interest since AT&T is also an ISP as well as a GSP? So AT&T would be competing with it's own subcontractor?

Also, how does the AT&T system really work? Since this is supposedly a freemarket society, there has to be a way to become a GSP (imagin I am Bill Gates).

Where is the main DNS for the internet as a whole. Very confusing.

Appended resulting from preious post edit
-----------------------------------------

Thats right, I forgot about the IP block split up and such. They should be requiring to sell these blocks. if our society is capitalism, then if they don't sell anymore blocks, there will never be any new competitors and capitalism becomes communism when competition fails to exist. With only a few GSPs and even ISPs out there, it is easy to use loop wholes and internal collaboration to fix price and such.

by stealthwifi

DNS is not housed in one location run by one entity. There are a few large authoritive DNS's out their. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_name_system)

If the Gov get's it's way with the DNS flaw the government might just be controlling all the DNS servers. Imagine 1984.

Anywho, if your looking for a flaw in the system to get free internet, go to Starbucks.

If you seriously want to start your own ISP or GSP then go to school and get start a company and hire a team of WAN engineers.

P.S. as to your above post if I imagined you were Bill Gates I would have to assume any inoformation I suggest will be stolen and used against me for your own profit LOL

Cheers,

by 1bn0

String Fiber across country(ies)/ocean(s)/planet.

The telecoms are GSP because THEY HAVE THE BACKBONE NETWORK. The telecoms were carrying data long before the internet was an idea. They also have the majority of the connections to the customers.

You need connections between point a and pointb. They called it the World Wide Web for a reason. Only you would need a 3 dimensial web to try to properly represent it. It works because all of the GSP's conect to each other.

by larryd4

AT&T is not the only GSP, but AT&T is one of the few telecommunications companies that have wiring spanning the globe.

Globaly their are about 20 true "GSPs"

GSP's are simply large scale telephone companies. They have their own routes for communications across the country, continent, globe. Whether its land line copper,fiber backbones, oceanic cabling. or cross continent satelite, they have a means to get your network packets from one place to another.

Most ISP's will have atleast two GSP's, the "Main" account and the backup. The billing cycle on these types of account can be based on bandwidth usage or could be a flat rate for a certain sized pipe. Usually, in an ISP, your main "pipe" is a flat rate and your backup is a per bandwidth charge. So while your not using your backup the fee is nominal.

The lines between ISP and GSP are getting vague. You need a boat load of money to setup a true ISP and from what I have seen lately, most ISPs contract out their actual server farm and bandwidth provisioning.

Their are tons of server farm companies out their and a lot of them have the money, size and need to actually be a ISP and have multiple GSP connections as backup and alternate GSP's for connections to different continents. So in theory you can setup an ISP in your office and never need to buy any hardware.

But I'm geting off the subject.

The internet itself is not owned in any way shape or form by the government. In essence the Internet is an interconnection of different companies telecommunications networks. They all agree to pass packets back and forth to each other to allow "commerce" to occur between competing Telecommunication networks. But their is really no rules on how to act.

Hence the big fiasco with Vonage and Verizon and the process of prioritizing packets for VoIP phone calls for your users.

Is the internet free? Sure.

If you have about 750 million to buy the hardware, lease the satelite bandwidth, or just launch your own!

Then you too can become a GSP!

by charliespencer

"They should be requiring to sell these blocks. if our society is capitalism, then if they don't sell anymore blocks, there will never be any new competitors..."

Capitalism doesn't REQUIRE someone to sell an asset. It also doesn't require assisting the development of new competitors, only not blocking that development or the continuation of existing competitors (at least as we implement capitalism in the U.S.)

by ---tk---

They made it a pain in the a$$ for a reason. (so we couldn't be DYI's) So here is a thought, kind of a work around to your idea... Find the fastest ISP in your area.. Get a wireless router, and "make" a High Gain Omni-Directional Antenna backed with an amp to increase the signal strength (a whole lot stronger). I was reading about this home project, and apparently they were able to stretch a wireless network 4 miles when done right and it needs to be with in line of site... Set up WPA encryption, if you have a whole lot of neighbors GIVE them access, but to get the password they have to buy the piece of paper their username and password is written on each month... Configure a Proxy and have them authenticate with LDAP or Active directory to get past the proxy...

by winthrop.polk

Yes this is possible but nothing new and still ultimately requires an ISP. If I wanted to, I could just get a T1 line run to a transmitting tower and braudcast directionaly or indirectional depending on what area's I wanted to cover. In theory you could use repeaters and do this allover the globe (just gave me a ham project to work on), but I am sure they would figure out a way to outlaw this quickly after it started by saying these people are stealing my service even though I want them to.

I'm not trying to get free internet or piggy back off someone elses ISP so please don't respond by telling me to go to starbucks, lol, not saying that the previous post did. I guess I am really just trying to come to terms with the fact that capitalism is dead when companies get as powerful and large as they are today and to determine what these ISPs and GSPs really do and what resources are theirs, the governements, or other ISPs.

by ---tk---

I wasn't planing on telling you to go to starbucks.... They have T-mobile which you have to pay for...

LOL, can they prove the users are stealing or using anything? From my knowledge WPA encryption hasn't been broken... Also if you config. your routers (two) correctly the ISP can not get past the second router and see whats going on... so... hm... LOL somehow you will get screwed though, they always win some how or another...

by stealthwifi

When it comes to Telcoms capitalism is dead. Ma Bell took it out back like Old Yeller.

In the beginning there were universities and nerds. These nerds wanted to improve the sneeker network way of transfering data (walking it to where it needs to go). These bright young minds though of an idea, using a "network" similar to that of "power lines" we will connect our college with the college down the road and share our findings with them.

Well loe and behold it worked, the first modems were born and the colleges started to connect to each other.

Uncle Sam sees this and says, hey wait a minute, I like that, were going to steel it, set controls on it and claim we invented it.
And DARPA NET is born.

Now, take that into though, the internet is just a bunch of servers/computers... connected to each other hence a network.

Start a buisness (FreeMarketISP's Inc), run Fiber Cable accross the country for shit loads of $$$ and connect into the backbones (Road Runner...) of other ISP's (just like the original guys connected to other colleges).

What you are paying for is the use of all the connected equipment your ISP has connected. They allready make deals with other backbone providers to lease/share there connections so you will have to do the same. Unless you can convince people to use you as a backbone network and sell and lease off your allready rund connections which would be hard to do since you wouldn't have any one connected to the Global net in the first place.

You can run your own fiber lines under the ocean, you can run it accross the country. The problum is getting the other guys to play nice and allow you to connect to them and vise versa. If you don't then you just have tons of lines run that connect to nothing. The GOV (read FCC) controls who can connect to the Global Net so your better off making a deal with a backbone ISP than comming up with a new Spectrum to use and getting it approveed.

Hope that helped clear up any confusion. Below is a link you may find intersting.

P.S As far as I am concerned MaBell is living large, welcome to 1984.

Cheers,

http://www.isp-planet.com/resources/isp_guide/1_start.html

by winthrop.polk

It is true that the backbone is there and that it has been used for years by the ISPs before the interenet was even invented. However, I do not think that the phone companies actually paid for this most of this(more research needed). I am pretty sure that governments pays for these intercontinental connections (probably first set up for military use) just as they pay for the power lines (more research need to verify this, but they definitely pay for portions such as some lines used by TVA [government power company]) and roads. However true ownership of these systems has become convoluted.

Analogy time:
Roads- the internet is like the system of roads. major roads are paid for by the government or often companies, driveways are paid by the homeowner, etc. If you want to send anything on the roads you have to rent frieght from a frieght company (the ISP) or get your own truck (my theoretical ISP).

Power- the grid is like the internet. electric companies are like the ISPs. But, If I really want to and I am rich, I can contract a direct line from a power plant that, in effect, is still part of the grid but eliminates the middle man of the electric company.

There has to be a way to do this. Otherwise, ower ecconomy simply isn't run on capitalism but, instead, a sort of corporate communism.

by ---tk---

In the beginning there was ARPANET which was put up by the US defense department, who also came up with the wonderful so easy to trace TCP/IP...

by 1bn0

Paid for by taxes. For the express purpose of providing access to the raveling public. Even then there are TOLL roads where they charge you extra.

Communication links in N.A. are majority privately owned. By the Telcos. Even in those countries where the Governemnt "owns" the telco. The telco is generally run as a commercial entity and "owns" its infrastructure under that corporation.

by oh smeg

The problem isn't in replicating their Computer system but in replicating their Telco System as what makes a ISP a thing to use is the ability to deliver infrastructure to peoples door or inside their house.

Assuming that you have deep enough pockets you could I suppose buy some Bandwidth on the Radio Spectrum and use that to communicate to the Net.

You don't so much need the hardware to connect tot he net but a way to make that connection. The Big ISP's either use existing Telco infrastructure by renting it in large chunks or provide their own infrastructure. In the case of the RF Sprectum it's the Government who gets the money for allowing the use of this part of the Air Waves. I'm not sure who gets paid for hardware erected on Government land in the form of Footpaths with Cables running either above or under them but somewhere along the line the Federal Government will have it's hand out wanting their share.

Col

by winthrop.polk

Okay. I understand this a good bit better now. I would like to change this to a discussion rather than a question, but maintain this page and link them together some how so that everyone who gave input is aware of the discussion page. Anyone know how to do this, I'm fairly new to TechRepub.

by winthrop.polk

There are monopoly laws to prevent any one company from providing any single service or product. There are also laws to prevent companies from working together to price fix. The problem is, when companies get as large as they are today by gobbliing up the smaller companys, you end up with only a few companies providing the service. Price fixing then becomes almost impossible to enforce. When these large companies start working together to determine a price for their service, we cease to have capitalism but instead, something new never before seen.

You say "It also doesn't require assisting the development of new competitors, only not blocking that development or the continuation of existing competitors". If they only sell the blocks to established GSPs, don't you consider this blocking the development of new competitors?

by charliespencer

There are monopoly laws to prevent a company from eliminating the competition. If I'm the only one selling bronzed wolf snot, and no one else wants to go into the bronzed wolf snot business, I have a perfectly legal monopoly.

"If they only sell the blocks to established GSPs, don't you consider this blocking the development of new competitors?"

The government doesn't sell bandwidth only to established companies. It sells to the highest bidder. If a new company cannot afford to purchase bandwidth, that's tough, but the government's job is to get the most money available for a shared resource. No one is being 'blocked'. McDonald's doesn't give away franchises if you can't afford the start-up fees.

by p51mustang23

Communism is when government owns and runs industry/property. Pure capitalism is when the gov has zero economic involvment.

In reality the USA is neither; but instead some of both.

Pure capitalism wouldnt work well; it's essentially defined by...anarchy.

by sachin_vs

"The secret behind Sigbritt's ultra-fast connection is a new modulation technique which allows data to be transferred directly between two routers up to 2,000 kilometres apart, with no intermediary transponders."

Taken from that article, that's the key I think... now, is it possible to connect to your ISP without using the traditional router/modem?

by sachin_vs

oops, sorry, didn't know this article was more than a year old...

by hothog

I theorise that you can travel on the back of FM radio waves to get a non-isp connection. Maybe even short wave or medium wave, but FM is digital.

by kenone

But THIS is interesting
"but FM is digital."
Learn something new everyday.

by seanferd

FM isn't digital by nature. It can be analog or digital.

by seanferd

Piggyback on an existing transmission? And whose transmission? And a transmission to where? This will provide a gateway to the internet how?

by seanferd

But the way I worded my post doesn't really acknowledge the sarcasm, does it? So, my fail.

by tyronescott55

Using 802.16e wireless access points could help. WiMAX as a 5G one that has a range of 30 miles.

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