ISP Startup

[truong]

I want to setup a startup ISP in a small town. What Equipments and all other related items that I will need to have to do this? What website would have a good resources to learn about this? What would be the cost I need to consider?
Please response to truonghm@hotmail.com

 

[GunJack]

Hey Truong,

My first question would be what type of service do you intend to offer? I think the hardest service to start is dial-up at this point because of the many companies already offering it. If you are in a small town where you'll be the first dial-up provider, you're in a much difference scenario. You'll obviously have the only game in town and can do quite well assuming you can offer reliable service without too many busy signals. The easiest service to startup IMO is web-hosting and design services. You can do this with practically no investment in equipment. Just rent space on someone else's servers until you grow enough that you can afford your own equipment. If you intend to offer dial-up though in an area where there are already companies offering it, you really need to have a very well thought out business plan in order to succeed.

If you want to run your own equipment facility (required for dial-up) meaning you have a dedicated connection to the Internet, your single biggest cost will be your point-to-point line (T1) to your up-stream provider. If you are in a remote location, this will likely be very expensive and you may have to use a frame relay connection instead of a true point-to-point T1. We pay about $780 a month for our ptp T1 and it only runs about 25 miles to our up-stream provider.

You may want to check out

http://isp-planet.com/

as this is a good resource for ISPs. If you want, contact me at GunJack@atlbiz.com and I can go into further detail on what you'll need and likely encounter. We can probably even get you a quote of what your connection would run into one of the backbone providers from your location.

I'll go ahead and give you a very general list of what you'll need but the answer to your question is much more than what I've said here.

Good luck,
GJ

Web hosting - rented from others
- no equipment or software required

Web hosting and/or Dial-Up from your location
- 1 Pri initially (dial-in lines for your subscribers) only needed for Dial-up service
provides 23 or 24 lines depending on config. 23 if ISDN service will be offered
keep a 4-1 subscriber-to-line ratio initially
- 1 dial-in server
- 1 Dedicated Internet connection
either a T1 connection or Frame relay connection to another ISP
or backbone provider
- 1 Router (highly recommend Cisco)
- 1 Hub or Switch (recommend 3Com)
- 1 Web server + software (recommend Dell 1300 + NT)
any Pentium machine w/ 64M and Linux will work though
recommend dumping NT and using Linux as you become experienced.
- 2 DNS servers (recommend Bind on Linux) any 486 box or better will do.
- 1 E-mail server (recommend Sendmail on Linux) any Pentium box will do
- 1 News group server
no experience here. I always use our upstream providers news group feed.
very bandwidth intensive if you run your own.