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Fixed Wireless Business

More Mileage from ISP Infrastructure

Putting expertise and infrastructure to work providing value-adds to Internet connection customers is—or, we always thought, should be—a concern for ISPs. Some enterprising providers present their ideas.

[July 8, 2003]

In a general appeal on ISP-Wireless last March, MH said:

"I was trying to think of other uses for my wireless infrastructure. Things I have considered are VPN linking buildings, remote monitoring\surveillance with Net cams, and the SCADIA deals. Any other ideas out there? Has anyone tried\looked into those mentioned?"

[JL was not encouraging] "I tried running streaming cameras with ADSL and DSL lines, but the upload was too slow to get a descent stream going. That's what got me interested in the WISP business."

[DR, on the other hand, was encouraging] "I have customers that I provide VPN services for. It is a replacement for Frame Relay circuits that they were purchasing from the local Telco. I also provide a VPN for a guy who owns two food stores in different towns. He can log in to his servers at the stores and check on things. He can even log into his video camera systems and view the surveillance if he wishes. Another client we have a VPN for is a law firm. If need be, they can work from home and access files on their server at the office. This came in very handy when one of the female attorneys had a baby and while recovering, she could still work on cases from home.

These are just a few. It is a money maker. I charge extra for WAN services, and even though it takes up bandwidth on my backhaul network, it does not take up bandwidth on my Internet connection. It can be marketed to anyone who would like to or needs to work from home. Example: a customer had a 256 Kbps PtP data circuit from the local Telco for about $380 per month between two towns about 17 air miles apart, and they had to purchase Internet access on top of that. I can provide them a 384 Kbps circuit for the PtP and include Internet access for less than they are spending now. Less equipment, faster speed. They love it . . . and so do I."

[RH inquired] "Would you mind explaining how you have this set up? Is this a wireless PtP link or does it go through your NOC?

I am looking at using a SOHO router with VPN to do this."

[DR elaborated] "We set up a VPN using Netopia R910 routers. Our network is still small enough at this point that we can get by with it being bridged (soon to change). The Netopia allows us to use IPsec tunneling for the VPN. The customer's WAN traffic is routed to the tunnel and his Internet is routed to our router at our NOC. I have heard that there are cheaper routers out there that will do VPN, but the Netopia was recommended to us when we first started providing these by someone I trust and we have stayed with them. They work fine."

[MS jumped in out of left field] "Two words: Netgear FVS318. 8 VPN channels, NAT, and stateful firewall for $150!"

[AC, in response to MS, asked] "And no DHCP server? 8-( "

[MS hastily corrected] "Complete with DHCP. I just didn't mention it because it was assumed with any broadband router.

[JO wanted to know] "Does the VPN connect to standard VPN servers or is it a proprietary?

[MS responded] "I use them in pairs, so I don't know.

I do know they support the standard DES, 3DES, ESP, key exchange, MD5, etc., protocols.

I doubt that they would link and pull down IP address info from a Cisco box, like a Cisco client could.

In other words, standard network-to-network tunnels yes; proprietary client features no."

—End