Best posts made by bigbear

@nerdydad said in I am going to start an ISP:

Yes, that is correct. I am going to start an ISP.

In my town, we have a highway running through it. Half of the town has good Internet, and the other half is just terrible. The current BIG ISPs have had enough time to come in and either upgrade what is already there or to replace. It looks like they are not interested in providing rural people with decent Internet because of population density per sub. Its not economically advantageous for them to expand out that way.

Therefore, I am going to start a WISP. I have already been talking to other WISPs out there and have been getting tips. I am also going to take @scottalanmiller's advice on inappropriate coupling of services. Therefore, I will not be offering email, VoIP, AV, or storage for my customers. Just Internet and a side retail of products that the customer could buy from me in order to establish their own private network. I am also planning on expanding into consulting for the community after the ISP is already established and running.

Internally, I am going to go all Vultr for the servers necessary with Debian 9.1 and Fedora as appropriate and FreePBX.

I believe @JaredBusch said one time that WISPs are worth while if they are done right. I was hoping he can expand on that a little bit if possible.

While I just watched @scottalanmiller's video, and agree from the perspective of not buying bundled services especially where the ISP hosts a softswitch in their local data center, as a business you definitely want to bundle and sell Hosted PBX.

To be clear... If you like money, and want to make some as a WISP targeting commercial businesses, you have to offer Hosted PBX.

How bout that Ed Sheeran Lannister cameo?

I kept hoping Arya would kill him and take his face as a mask, then every murder by arya stark would be ed sheeran killing someone.

I actually like these videos and have them added to my subscribed for my tv in my home office.

Glad it's still happening.

Would be really cool if ML had a weekly cast like vuc.me with other people chiming in

I am using FreePBX and having trouble with blind transfers on 38G phones. 48g phones work fine.

You hit transfer, dial the extension, hit transfer again and the call shows (Oh Hold) while it is transferred to the extension. When that call ends it returns a "Transfer Failed" to the original operator.

Transfer Settings on my 48g and 38g are identical.

Tested across several active FreePBX deployments with the same results. Using firmware 38.70.0.185

@scottalanmiller said in I am going to start an ISP:

@bigbear said in I am going to start an ISP:

@nerdydad said in I am going to start an ISP:

Yes, that is correct. I am going to start an ISP.

In my town, we have a highway running through it. Half of the town has good Internet, and the other half is just terrible. The current BIG ISPs have had enough time to come in and either upgrade what is already there or to replace. It looks like they are not interested in providing rural people with decent Internet because of population density per sub. Its not economically advantageous for them to expand out that way.

Therefore, I am going to start a WISP. I have already been talking to other WISPs out there and have been getting tips. I am also going to take @scottalanmiller's advice on inappropriate coupling of services. Therefore, I will not be offering email, VoIP, AV, or storage for my customers. Just Internet and a side retail of products that the customer could buy from me in order to establish their own private network. I am also planning on expanding into consulting for the community after the ISP is already established and running.

Internally, I am going to go all Vultr for the servers necessary with Debian 9.1 and Fedora as appropriate and FreePBX.

I believe @JaredBusch said one time that WISPs are worth while if they are done right. I was hoping he can expand on that a little bit if possible.

While I just watched @scottalanmiller's video, and agree from the perspective of not buying bundled services especially where the ISP hosts a softswitch in their local data center, as a business you definitely want to bundle and sell Hosted PBX.

To be clear... If you like money, and want to make some as a WISP targeting commercial businesses, you have to offer Hosted PBX.

Right, what is bad for the consumer is good for the vendor. And loads and loads of consumers actually like being taken advantage of. Don't disappoint them.

As long as the services are not proprietary to the internet offering, network or connection I dont see the issue here. I see where scott is coming from but no serious ISP would leave out a voice offering. And I am talking about IP PBX not trunks or home service.

Even if you have to partner out to offer it, there are a million options. There are ways to do it where its not "coupled", even if you allow the customer to cancel internet and keep voice.

@quixoticjeremy said in I can't even:

Lived with my parents until I went off to college at 17, didn't live with them again after that.

Same here. However I have made it clear to all 4 of my kids, especially my daughters, that I hope they stay until they are 30. lol

I remember reading somewhere about a tribe in Africa, or perhaps common across countries on that continent, boys saved into their late 20's so they could buy a farm and have financially stability to offer a women.

While that isnt very feminist, I would rather see my kids going to college, jumpstarting their career and saving money so they can start life ahead of the bank/credit game.

With T56 series here the 48s dropped down to $170 range, everything else has gotten even cheaper.

The t56a is the cost that Yealink 48s was a month ago, and it is android. About $199.

I got Ubiquiti phones in to test and have updated them a couple times. At last pass they still couldn't park or use BLF reliably.

I can't imagine leaving Yealink.

Some tips...

1.) Never even think about building a tower. Make a deal for a building top or get with American Tower (http://www.americantower.com) if you cant get high enough.

Tower building and maintenance is a whole other business, any tower would end up costing 3 times what you are talking about.

2.) You will register with IANA as an autonomous network and get your own IP address range assignment. Its illegal to resell internet from Spectrum, etc

3.) Plenty of Tier 1 internet to contract with to your main tower site. Start with 2 connections, they will be redundant as your ip range will be hooked to a BGP. Any teir 1 internet provider will gladly walk you through all this to get your business

4.) Make sure your first site is as HIGH as possible.

5.) If you are going to bootstrap it (which is what UBNT is all about) you really should be thinking about any capital investments out of the wireless equipment.

@wrx7m said in YouTube TV:

@bigbear What type of "TV" is it? Does it have network channels?

Youtube TV is live TV with cloud
https://tv.youtube.com

The app for smart TV's just came out and that is what is cementing this for me as a permanent solution.

@Dashrender said in Azure AD and OnPrem Windows Server 2016:

Can you lay out the setup you put together.
Thanks

Yea I will definitely post up what I did. At the moment I am trying to connect a site to site VPN to a Vultr instance as Azure VM pricing is actually a lot higher now that I am comparing config details.

You have to deploy all this using the ASM model, it doesnt work in ARM. So using the classic GUI or ASM Powershell commands both seem to work.

1.) Create a classic vnet and subnet range in the data center where you will deploy servers that will joing AAD

2.) If you dont have Azure AD, deploy it. Its already deployed as Basic if you have Office 365. Under you AAD in the Classic Portal create a group with EXACTLY this name AAD DC Administrators Add your AAD users that will have permission to join servers to AAD, or that will manage AAD through the AD snap-ins.

3.) Under your AAD in the classic portal, go to configure. Half way down the page there is an option under domain services called Enable Domain Services For This Directory This is what provides Kueberos/NTLM to Azure AD.

Enable this and select the virtual network you created.

Eventually, under DNS Servers two IP addresses will appear. This took forever, like 20 minutes

4.) Go back to your virtual network and place those two DNS servers in your new virtual network. These will then be added to your virtual machines and are your AAD DNS Servers.

5.) At this point, for no known reason, you need to change your the Office 365 work password you are using if you have recently enabled password sync and/or user password management. I am not referring to syncing to a premise AD, that is not required. It appears to be for syncing AAD with Office 365 accounts.

6.) Deploy a Server 2016 VM in Classic Mode or using ASM powershell commands. It seems 2016 and 2012 are able to join Azure AD.

7.) Once you are in your new VM, use the FQDN (domain.com) of your active directory domain to join the domain. It will pop up for authentication. Use the UPN model without the .com. = domain\username and password. This would be any AAD user that was added to the special admin group you created above.

When you reboot you can login with your UPN or your email address if it matches the UPN model.

8.) From there, I deployed a basic RDS server and its been working great. A litty pricier than I first though, but I am working on linking the ASM Virtual Network to a VULTR deployed pfsense instance with a site to site VPN. So if that works an on premise server could also be joined. However I am sure not if this would be feasible given then any drop in internet or VPN connection would cause user's havoc.

@bigbear said in I am going to start an ISP:

Some tips...

1.) Never even think about building a tower. Make a deal for a building top or get with American Tower (http://www.americantower.com) if you cant get high enough.

Tower building and maintenance is a whole other business, any tower would end up costing 3 times what you are talking about.

2.) You will register with IANA as an autonomous network and get your own IP address range assignment. Its illegal to resell internet from Spectrum, etc

3.) Plenty of Tier 1 internet to contract with to your main tower site. Start with 2 connections, they will be redundant as your ip range will be hooked to a BGP. Any teir 1 internet provider will gladly walk you through all this to get your business

4.) Make sure your first site is as HIGH as possible.

5.) If you are going to bootstrap it (which is what UBNT is all about) you really should be thinking about any capital investments out of the wireless equipment.

And I would add to this, almost certainly you can lease a space in a tall building and get roof access, sometimes just for trading internet access to the building manager if they have offices on premise. You can also sell internet down through said building, link backhaul to nearby buildings and do the same.

@eddiejennings said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@eddiejennings said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@bigbear said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@eddiejennings said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@bigbear said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@eddiejennings said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

Reading RHCSA book before teaching today’s saxophone lesson.

What kind of job are you going for with all the Linux stuff, just curious?

System administrator, but that’s a long way off.

Sounds like you have the drive to get there.

I’ve flirted with the thought of developmenr; however, I cannot seem to take the plunge.

That's a pretty huge change. That's a full career change, as opposed to a role change.

Not as much as leaving teaching :P. It’s the problem of being interested in everything — something I’ve dealt with for the last 35 years. However, I know I don’t have the drive to become good in the dev world.

I started when I was 8, but have mostly drifted in to sysadmin or telecom/internet. I spent a lot of time in Java, then even more in Ruby, and now that I am working on things again I am having to really get in to Node.js, so at least with sysadmin stuff the knowledge and experience is cumulative as your career grows.

You could almost argue that Windows Server knowledge is a 50% toss out everytime a major version is released where Linux is steady. With your teaching experience you could probably land a nice school admin position. I saw a school librarian convert in the matter of 2 years to district admin (small school district). But she actually become a much better admin than the lazy person they fired who had a lifetime of experience.

@scottalanmiller is right. The bottleneck is always the customer router. And not so much bandwidth as much as packets per second. Your dropbox sync is killing your phone calls 50 to 1 over bandwidth 99% of the time. Your $50 linksys router can't handle a million pps.

Most ISP's are little more than Broadsoft resellers with no interconnects in their local market. Even on the WISP side speeds are so good now that bundling voice isn't relevant.

@coliver said in I am going to start an ISP:

@bigbear said in I am going to start an ISP:

@bigbear said in I am going to start an ISP:

Some tips...

1.) Never even think about building a tower. Make a deal for a building top or get with American Tower (http://www.americantower.com) if you cant get high enough.

Tower building and maintenance is a whole other business, any tower would end up costing 3 times what you are talking about.

2.) You will register with IANA as an autonomous network and get your own IP address range assignment. Its illegal to resell internet from Spectrum, etc

3.) Plenty of Tier 1 internet to contract with to your main tower site. Start with 2 connections, they will be redundant as your ip range will be hooked to a BGP. Any teir 1 internet provider will gladly walk you through all this to get your business

4.) Make sure your first site is as HIGH as possible.

5.) If you are going to bootstrap it (which is what UBNT is all about) you really should be thinking about any capital investments out of the wireless equipment.

And I would add to this, almost certainly you can lease a space in a tall building and get roof access, sometimes just for trading internet access to the building manager if they have offices on premise. You can also sell internet down through said building, link backhaul to nearby buildings and do the same.

I was going to mention that. One of the WISPs does that around here they paid for the backbone into the building and the lease is "free" for them.

first WISP I started circa 2001 we used water towers in a rural area as a starting point. We got it free just because the whole area only had dial up and the city couldnt get Time Warner to bring cable internet int.

The second time we were on top of the tallest building in a 60 mile radius with out initial office lease. Small data center in the building.

American Tower has been crucial for residential expansions. We built a tower site on a government/school leased land and it was a nightmare.

@eddiejennings said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

Maybe I'm just bitter from UGA's meltdown, but it seems like the vultures have landed on this thread.
https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/2085471-the-best-low-cost-cloud-based-phone-system
Guy hasn't had a chance to even tell us requirements, and [insert vendor here] already has the best possible solution for the requirements that haven't been named.

Its funny because I was looking into SW marketing options and from what I can tell all you get is the opportunity to SPAM everyone with your wares.

The only thing worth a damn in terms of comments are other people who have used and recommend a product.

I have been looking at out of band options from the normal google/facebook/twitter ads, specifically paid Youtube content creators. Not paid fake referrals but those who have followers and would do a product run down, unbiased, etc.

On a past project I had a Verge/Vox article bring me a few thousand sign-ups. Then a week or so later some Youtube video was posted, had never heard of them, and we had about 10,000 sign ups overnight. The video only had 24,000 views.

Targeting seems to be everything now. But still I am sure vendors make a little bit from hussling like that, otherwise they wouldnt keep coming back.

I should also mention, for at least 5 years, DID peering has dramatically cut wholesale/CLEC costs on the backend (with no benefit to the retail side).

DID peering means carriers router calls directly to each other before hitting the telephone network. We charge each other .00001 or less for these connections.

@nerdydad said in I am going to start an ISP:

@bigbear said in I am going to start an ISP:

1.) Never even think about building a tower. Make a deal for a building top or get with American Tower (http://www.americantower.com) if you cant get high enough.

Dude, thank you.

No problem, also you should get starting on this for your IP address range. First time around is a long process...

https://www.arin.net/resources/request.html

I could do without all of these grandiose speeches on walking dead...

@bj yeah it's just that you didn't list anything specific that would make me think Palo Alto would bring anything to the table for you. They will still sell you."

I read it and added that, maybe still didn't come off right. You're here on mango lassi so everyone expects a certain level of competence on my first post I got a little but hurt over @JaredBusch but now I prefer it

I'm at the point where I would believe more in a firewall + hosted security service like webroot. But I don't deal with anything outside of connectivity and backend network stuff on a.l daily basis.

@quixoticjeremy said in I am going to start an ISP:

@dustinb3403 said in I am going to start an ISP:

@irj said in I am going to start an ISP:

@dustinb3403 said in I am going to start an ISP:

@irj Try and change her mindset that just because that one is more, is it that much better quality to pay more for it.

I've been winning battles throughout our relationship, but I have yet to win the war. I have gotten her shopping at thrift shops and second hand stores which I know she would have never done before we met.

I have gotten her to see the big picture and she will now buy something for $200 instead of $300, but not $2 instead of $3. Which actually add up to be alot more money in the long run.

Big Picture... you mean you got her to play Steam games with you. . . well played!

Well this is how you know that the war is over and that you have won. This is the end game right?

A successful marriage is completed when one member of the union is deceased.