31 ms·

I wish I could upvote this many times. Great reply. Agree 100% and thanks for speaking for us that work behind the scenes to make things happen.

by niroze 8y ago

nycmesh 8y ago
you are upvoting [things that are not true about us]
- mediocrejoker 8y ago
  > you are upvoting nonsense I don't think this is a helpful reply. Since it sounds like you're associated with the project, can you address some of the specific concerns mentioned, like reliability? Do you disagree that hundreds of thousands of dollars are required for five nines connectivity? Do you disagree that that level of reliability is required for your customers etc.
  - bigiain 8y ago
    FWIW, I have many many companies as customers for whom I've offered pricing for three, four, and five nines of reliability (for mobile app backends, not residential ISP service, but lets run with it any way). Not a single one of them has ever signed up for anything more expensive than three nines. Only a few have even discussed the differences between 3 and 4 nines solutions. I'm reasonably sure I'd choose the same for my home internet connection - if offered representative pricing based on costs of providing 3, 4, or 5 nines, or possibly even 2 nines - I'd choose the least expensive because losing a few minutes or even occasionally 15mins a day of connectivity at home (or maybe more realistically an ~8 hour outage per month) really isn't going to bug me greatly - not if it's two or more orders of magnitude cheaper than a four of five nines connection.
  - nycmesh 8y ago
    No you don't need hundreds of thousands. You do need tens of thousands. We've had no downtime this year at supernode1. Yes reliability is a big priority, but it is not a big priority for the big ISPs in NYC. Time Warner Cable (now Spectrum) has barely two nines. In Manhattan it would go down in the East Village after every large storm. We are already providing faster more reliable connections than this.
    - mediocrejoker 8y ago
      Thanks. This seems like a cool project. Do you know what the cost per user is currently? What frequency do the point-to-point links run at? Have you considered using some sort of lower frequency packet radio for longer distance links, perhaps to other nearby nodes?
      - nycmesh 8y ago
        Our recurring costs are only for the lease at supernode1, which is around $1000/month. Divide that by our member node count (158) multiplied by users of each node ~4, 1000/(158*4)gives you under $2/month per user. Members usually pay for their own routers so that isn't included. To set up the supernode was about a $10K one-off charge for install fees, servers and antennas. DE-CIX, our IXP, donated bandwidth to us, and we have transit also donated from Packet Host and WebAir. We actually pay nothing for bandwidth. Probably one day we will pay but it is not that expensive if you do this at an IXP and use peering. We have an AirFiber pair that is 24Ghz, but all of our sectors are 5Ghz wifi.
        eric_h 8y ago
        > DE-CIX, our IXP, donated bandwidth to us, and we have transit also donated from Packet Host and WebAir. What is the incentive for them to donate bandwidth/transit to you? Your non-profit status? Do they get something else in return?
        nycmesh 8y ago
        We get a lot of support from the NYC networking community, and we have a lot of friends at the NYNOG meetups. Everyone is very helpful and they also want the big ISPs to have some competition, so we get donations from quite a few people. Some also join our network and get nodes on their own roofs and help with other installs! DE-CIX is the biggest IXP and they measure their network in terabits/sec. It is not a big deal for them to donate us a 1 gig connection. (it's a big deal for us!) Eventually we may upgrade it to 10 gig.

I wish I could upvote this many times. Great reply. Agree 100% and thanks for speaking for us that work behind the scenes to make things happen.

by niroze 8y ago

I wish I could upvote this many times. Great reply. Agree 100% and thanks for speaking for us that work behind the scenes to make things happen.

nycmesh 8y ago

you are upvoting [things that are not true about us]

mediocrejoker 8y ago
> you are upvoting nonsense I don't think this is a helpful reply. Since it sounds like you're associated with the project, can you address some of the specific concerns mentioned, like reliability? Do you disagree that hundreds of thousands of dollars are required for five nines connectivity? Do you disagree that that level of reliability is required for your customers etc.
- bigiain 8y ago
  FWIW, I have many many companies as customers for whom I've offered pricing for three, four, and five nines of reliability (for mobile app backends, not residential ISP service, but lets run with it any way). Not a single one of them has ever signed up for anything more expensive than three nines. Only a few have even discussed the differences between 3 and 4 nines solutions. I'm reasonably sure I'd choose the same for my home internet connection - if offered representative pricing based on costs of providing 3, 4, or 5 nines, or possibly even 2 nines - I'd choose the least expensive because losing a few minutes or even occasionally 15mins a day of connectivity at home (or maybe more realistically an ~8 hour outage per month) really isn't going to bug me greatly - not if it's two or more orders of magnitude cheaper than a four of five nines connection.
- nycmesh 8y ago
  No you don't need hundreds of thousands. You do need tens of thousands. We've had no downtime this year at supernode1. Yes reliability is a big priority, but it is not a big priority for the big ISPs in NYC. Time Warner Cable (now Spectrum) has barely two nines. In Manhattan it would go down in the East Village after every large storm. We are already providing faster more reliable connections than this.
  - mediocrejoker 8y ago
    Thanks. This seems like a cool project. Do you know what the cost per user is currently? What frequency do the point-to-point links run at? Have you considered using some sort of lower frequency packet radio for longer distance links, perhaps to other nearby nodes?
    - nycmesh 8y ago
      Our recurring costs are only for the lease at supernode1, which is around $1000/month. Divide that by our member node count (158) multiplied by users of each node ~4, 1000/(158*4)gives you under $2/month per user. Members usually pay for their own routers so that isn't included. To set up the supernode was about a $10K one-off charge for install fees, servers and antennas. DE-CIX, our IXP, donated bandwidth to us, and we have transit also donated from Packet Host and WebAir. We actually pay nothing for bandwidth. Probably one day we will pay but it is not that expensive if you do this at an IXP and use peering. We have an AirFiber pair that is 24Ghz, but all of our sectors are 5Ghz wifi.
      - eric_h 8y ago
        > DE-CIX, our IXP, donated bandwidth to us, and we have transit also donated from Packet Host and WebAir. What is the incentive for them to donate bandwidth/transit to you? Your non-profit status? Do they get something else in return?
        nycmesh 8y ago
        We get a lot of support from the NYC networking community, and we have a lot of friends at the NYNOG meetups. Everyone is very helpful and they also want the big ISPs to have some competition, so we get donations from quite a few people. Some also join our network and get nodes on their own roofs and help with other installs! DE-CIX is the biggest IXP and they measure their network in terabits/sec. It is not a big deal for them to donate us a 1 gig connection. (it's a big deal for us!) Eventually we may upgrade it to 10 gig.