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w1spfanatic
join:2013-01-11
Screven, GA

w1spfanatic

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Back up to the plate...

Ok guys/gals,

I am back at it. I've done a lot of research and this is what I'm figuring. A local telco will be running fiber to my area soon. This will run me $1,000/mth for 50Mb. When I was last searching I found a Mikrotik router and a couple Ubiquiti Rocket Ms with some sectors for providing access to my customers.

I understand most of the variables except a few.

1.) What kind of numbers am I able to serve with 50Mb if I am looking to offer a 1.5Mb/512kbps and a 3.0Mb/1.0 tier?
(I've always heard to over-sub but not sure how many I am looking to push with this.)

2.) What software titles would you guys recommend when it comes to monitoring traffic and throttling etc.?

Thanks in advance!

Charlie

WHT
join:2010-03-26
Rosston, TX

WHT

Member

The questions you are asking are pretty much near the end of your "what to ask" list.

Housing density, propagation mapping, incumbent competition, spectrum use...a few things off the top of my head you need to think about.
Newbie
join:2011-04-18

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1. No real solid number here, depends on your demographic. If it were me personally with those speeds I would be ok with +\-100 subs. Some of my towers would be fine with that, others with younger "netflixers" would kill it. Very hard to guess. IMHO when you run out of bandwidth you are doing well enough to buy more

2. Mikrotik with Butch's script

WHT
join:2010-03-26
Rosston, TX

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What if the incumbents are offering 5 Mbps? Where is the perceived value here?
jcremin
join:2009-12-22
Siren, WI

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said by w1spfanatic:

1.) What kind of numbers am I able to serve with 50Mb if I am looking to offer a 1.5Mb/512kbps and a 3.0Mb/1.0 tier?
(I've always heard to over-sub but not sure how many I am looking to push with this.)

I'm currently purchasing 50 megs, providing to about 300 accounts, and using just over 40 megs during peak times. A lot of my customers are still 768k or 1 meg connections since over half of my customers are 900mhz, but my 2.4/5.8ghz customers are on 1.5, 3, and 5 meg plans. If every customer had a starting point of 1.5 or 3 megs, I would guess that my customers would be maxing out my 50 megs by the time I got to around 200 accounts (250 tops), but as pointed out, it really depends on your customer base, some would only be able to get 100 accounts on that if they are mostly heavy users.

Smokeshow
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join:2009-02-26
Cold Lake, AB

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5 years ago we had about 500 clients on a 20mb connection. Today we have a 200mb connection, and about 750 clients. Our peak inbound traffic is somewhere around 100-120mbps most days, however it does get up around 150mbps in the winter months. People's usage habits have changed significantly in the last few years. Many customers watch Netflix now. About 10% of our accounts are business which helps. Business clients typically use most of their bandwidth during the day, while residential use it heavily at night.

We do enforce usage caps. We cut speed to 25% when the cap is reached, and give our customers the option to purchase a bigger cap for a small fee, or they can move up to a higher plan if they find they go over most months. This has helped us control our usage, and helps us upgrade our bottlenecks.

WHT
join:2010-03-26
Rosston, TX

WHT

Member

said by Smokeshow:

People's usage habits have changed significantly in the last few years.

I've called that as the day after the 2010 Black Friday sale when people turned on their new internet ready entertainment centers. Night time speeds were affected. After Christmas, speeds were dropping even during the day.
w1spfanatic
join:2013-01-11
Screven, GA

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The housing density is one factor I have checked on. I am however familiar with the county layout and know where most of the population reside that will benefit from this service.

Propagation mapping is another factor I have not extensively researched. I've done a few tests and slight number crunching but nothing thorough.

Competition is down to a cable co, which doesn't reach out too far and DSL from AT&T. AT&T hasn't done any upgrading in the area in years. VZW recently lit-up a LTE tower, but there are families that live out in unserved areas of the county that either go over data limits or pay too much. LTE service is only covered within the city limits.

Spectrum use will be the 2.4 band, sorry for not clarifying this.
w1spfanatic

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What software do you use to throttle speed?

WHT
join:2010-03-26
Rosston, TX

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If you go with 2.4, be prepared for a -73 dBm noise floor within quarter mile of your tower site from home wireless stuff.

/added
Never throttle speed, throttle data.
prairiesky
join:2008-12-08
canada

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I use PF sense for routing and bandwidth management. Works decent enough
w1spfanatic
join:2013-01-11
Screven, GA

w1spfanatic

Member

What does some of your guys WISP setup look like? Give me some ideas here. I don't want to give up my first born on price, but I want it to be decent also. The RocketM idea sounds in the 900Mhz for SUs, and maybe the 2.4 for the PtMP link?

WHT
join:2010-03-26
Rosston, TX

1 edit

WHT

Member

It is hard for me to imagine a worse choice of radio types (frequency wise).

/edit
I misread that. I thought you were going to use 900 for the clients and 2.4 for the PtP backhaul. 2.4 PtM requires 2.4 clients, not 900.

Smokeshow
Premium Member
join:2009-02-26
Cold Lake, AB

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said by w1spfanatic:

What software do you use to throttle speed?

We have two custom traffic shapers running ubuntu linux. They handle our traffic shaping, usage monitoring, as well as user authentication. We then have a pfsense box as our primary gateway.

In terms of our infrastructure, we run canopy 900 & 2.4 ap & su's, but we are slowly switching over to ubnt 900/2.4/3.65/5ghz ptmp equipment. We also run a mix of alvarion & canopy 5ghz ptp links, but are slowly moving over to ubnt rocket m5's, as well as a couple air fibers. We also have a few licensed & unlicensed (24ghz) dragonwave ptp links where we need high capacity links. The licenced ones are for the really long shots.
w1spfanatic
join:2013-01-11
Screven, GA

w1spfanatic

Member

Nice. See, I'm not planning on such a big start compared to your infrastructure. I'll be doing swell to start with picking up 10 customers.

I'd really to run 2.4 SU links due to cost of the hardware but the 900Mhz would be better for terrain.

What's a good free LOS/Propagation tool? I was using one a few months back but can't remember the name of it to save my life.
jcremin
join:2009-12-22
Siren, WI

jcremin

Member

said by w1spfanatic:

I'd really to run 2.4 SU links due to cost of the hardware but the 900Mhz would be better for terrain.

Unless there's a serious space issue where you are mounting the antennas, use both. While there are issues with 2.4 ghz due to the number of wireless routers and such out there, 900mhz is usually just as bad or worse since one person with a baby monitor or cordless phone can knock a whole tower or neighborhood offline. Plus if you use smaller channels to avoid frequency overlap and self interference between neighboring towers, you'll quickly run out of capacity, and will want to make sure that any customer who doesn't need to be on 900mhz is on the 2.4 ghz setup.

WHT
join:2010-03-26
Rosston, TX

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Radio Mobile

dongato17
join:2000-07-28
Atlanta, GA

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As a fellow Georgian, I can tell you that the trees are going to be your biggest pain. Caleb (bito) and I started out as a WISP in a rural GA town. We ended up going with more of a repeater approach to hit pockets. Of course that was 13 years ago (eek!) so maybe the trees are kinder now...

Those of you on mountains shooting into valleys just can't fully appreciate how nice it would be to have a low-cost, well-performing mesh system (non-existent as far as I am aware). And those of us here can't fully appreciate the noise floor the rest of you have to deal with.

-Hal
spectrumhead
join:2009-05-03

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You should do PPPoE Termination for the Access Network on the Mikrotik Routers. It handles your bandwidth limitations just fine by design.

For Monitoring, use "The Dude" for Mikrotiks and Aircontrol2 for UBNT stuff.
w1spfanatic
join:2013-01-11
Screven, GA

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I would love nothing more than to speak with you about this adventure I am diving into. I want to have a career in this field but as you know this field is almost non-existent in these areas.

nunya
LXI 483
MVM
join:2000-12-23
O Fallon, MO

1 recommendation

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MVM

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Q: How many customers can a 50 Mb circuit support?
A: One more.