I’ve been reading lately about how [Jared Mauch](https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/01/jared-mauch-didnt-have-good-broadband-so-he-built-his-own-fiber-isp/) created his own ISP, but none of the articles seem to mention how that actually connects to the internet… I can’t seem to wrap my head around it. Wouldn’t he have to connect to a “backbone” or something?
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He paid to have several miles of fiber cables installed to connect him to where an internet connection *was* available. He wasn’t able to get good internet before because none of the ISPs wanted to bother running that many cables and didn’t care that they could’ve gotten some customers out of it.
> Mauch buys Internet connectivity and bandwidth for his ISP from ACD.net, a large network provider, but ACD.net hasn’t deployed fiber lines to Mauch’s neighborhood.
There’s your answer.
>Mauch buys Internet connectivity and bandwidth for his ISP from ACD.net, a large network provider, but ACD.net hasn’t deployed fiber lines to Mauch’s neighborhood. Mauch thus installed two miles of fiber from his home to ACD.net’s closest underground cable vaults, where he connected his fiber to their network.
So yes, he did have to connect to a higher tier provider… and he pays $$$$/month for that connection (besides having to string all the fiber from there to his home, and from his home to his neighborhood and his customers).
BUt, having said that, the link that he buys from ACD.net is probably really phat (lots of GB/s), and is probably only a few thousand $$/month (its the stringing the cable that $kills$you$). Split enough ways, that monthly fee becomes really manageable really quick, so all he has to do is keep adding customers in his neighborhood and everyones individual cost share comes down. And the nice thing about fibre is it can carry a much higher bandwidth than cable (if you upgrade the equipment at either end appropriately), so a fiber wired neighborhood is reasonably future proof.
As others have said, he paid to run to run fiber, but there are other ways. Wireless ISPs (WISPS) will set up microwave backhauls from a place where there is good connectivity and create a routed set of tower sites to bring the connection in and distribute it through access points mounted on towers.
The Internet is many networks interconnected.
There are IPS that conned to the consumer. There is other companies that connect different ISPs together. A bit simplified is a IPS need to have an agreement with those networks that bind everything together
There is what is called https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tier_1_network that is the major operators as internet backbone connector.
There is an Internet exchange point (IXP) that is a location where multiple networks can interconnect there is a long list that contains a lot of them [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_exchange_points](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_exchange_points)
So a bit simplified is for you to be a ISP you need to connect to a IXP where you can change traffic with others. So you need to dig down fiber to a location like that or rent a fiber that someone else has already fiber in the ground.
The company Jared set up is called Washtenaw Fiber Properties and if you search for it and IXP you get the following hit [https://www.detroitix.com/](https://www.detroitix.com/) They have a 10Gbit connection to the IXP as stated in the article.
1. Apply to your countries board of regulators to make sure you comply to the various laws, permits, etc required
2. Apply to your local IP organization (ARIN in North America) for IP Address space
3. Negotiate peering arrangements with other ISPs to connect your ISP to the rest of the internet (Probably Hurricane electric)
4. buy a lot of network hardware, and hire people that know how to install and maintain it, not to mention space to run it
5. run a lot of cables, fiber, wireless dishes, or other forms of connectivity to peoples homes and businesses
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