Fastest speeds in the nation. Now What?

H

harrison0550

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 28, 2010
Messages
129
Within the last year or so my area has launched what they call the fastest Internet service in the United States with a 1GB upload and download fiber to the home connection.

Read about it here.....http://articles.cnn.com/2010-09-13/tech/chattanooga.broadband_1_minnie-ingersoll-google-fiber-connections?_s=PM:TECH

It sounds all great and everything but honestly what am I going to do with that speed? At the current monthly rate the only reason to have it is if I could make money with it. I feel like I'm sitting on a great opportunity but unsure how to utilize it. Web hosting maybe or cloud type data storage service. I really just don't know. What do you guys think? If you had access to the same Internet connection and around $20k startup cash what would you do with it?
 
A year old, but yes, it's very fast, how did it turn out?

Wouldn't this be faster than most hard drives can save at? I think it would just be limited to 40-80 MBps or whatever your drive can do anyway
 
not if you have an SSD or decent RAID array.

Although I doubt many servers could give you 1Gbps to be honest. Hosting large server farms from home would be possible though but I expect the T&C cover this.

Here in the UK we can get 100/10 to the home with trails in one tiny area of 1Gbps up and down. Its a shame that the company (virgin) are really poor. I once had a 20/1 with them and got about 0.5/1 out of it and this was cable!
 
Put a datacenter in your basement. Pump the exhaust into your hvac system and enjoy free heat.
 
Hahaha @ Jadams, my power bill is a bit high in the winter! Also I'm sure I can get a static ip but currently have no use for one but I will check into that.

So server farm seems to be the best option right?
I honestly have no idea how to make money with a server farm. Can anyone point me in the right direction to start doing some research.
As it currently stands having an Internet connection that fast is just pointless. I do have ssd's in all my pc's and my htpc and it's quick don't get me wrong but I'm still limited by how fast the servers upload connection is that I'm pulling the data from and if I could find a way to become the one hosting that data with 1GB upload and making a little extra cash at the same time then I'm game.
 
That would rock, assuming you're allowed to run servers off it. Save tons of cash in hosting, and have the biggest infrastructure you could dream of, without paying extra per month for it. Could do a colo/dedi/hosting service. Colo is probably the easiest, as the client is more or less responsible for everything. You'd basically just do the hands on stuff like replace a part that fails or w/e. No need to go super big, maybe like 30 servers. They get 33mbps minimum and up to 1gbps. Say you charge 80/mo for unlimited bandwidth (assuming the isp is not limiting you) then that's 2400/mo coming in. Remove 400 for the added electricity costs. You can't retire on that, but it's a decent chunk of change for hardly doing anything, oh, and you'll save on heating in winter. (well, technically you're still paying for it just in another form)
 
As it currently stands their terms of service are almost non existent. The 1GB speed is a business class speed and is wide open, no bandwidth caps or usage monitoring. The only thing that I could find that would violate any rules would be if I hosted anything that would cause them competition being tv or phone service. Other that I have not read anything to stop me from doing what I want with it. The VP was quoted recently saying he wants individuals in the area to come up with creative ideas to use the bandwidth.
 
Also keep in mind that if you act as a colo you have to let them know what you have so they don't expect too much. Do you intend on getting a UPS for the server in case of a power blip? What happens during an extended power loss? I'm sure you're not interested in dropping a couple on a generator. Not saying that you should be aiming for a datacenter-like experience - just let potential customers what they are getting into.

I was going to say that you could setup some sort of "cloud backup" (hate the term cloud btw) but the main issue you are going to run into with connections between you and another client is that their bandwidth would be the limiting factor (but most people have high download speed which is all that would matter in that case). Pretty much like a VPS.

It's too bad that there are legal issues involved, because if there weren't you could run a hell of a bittorrent server for clients. People could send you a large drive, you connect it to a server running ESXi, mount each client drive as a separate volume running linux, setup a firewall and redirect ports for some sort of remote access software (like Teamviewer) so the client connects on a different port so each user could connect to their own linux VM. They could use bittorrent from there and you could ship the drive back when it was full. Clients could use the Teamviewer File Transfer option if they wanted files in the meantime - they could get their files at whatever download speed they usually get.

Again, there are massive legal issues that could come into play, but I would spend a couple bucks to ship a 3TB drive out, some more for administrative setup (install linux and forward ports), spend some bucks monthly to have it held while I fill it up, then spend some more if I wanted it all back at once or just pull my files off of it at 20Mbps.

Haven't thought all this through so I'm just shooting from the hip.
 
Backup could easily be done as well. The initial backup of a client would eat lot of bandwidth, but after that it would not be so bad. Basically you could even have a little linux box you drop on their site to act as an rsync client that sends the files to your server. Or if they have an existing linux box you set it up on that. Then every day all their data gets synced. If they need to restore they could send you a hard drive or just download it.

Storage is so cheap now days, that's probably the most cost effective thing to do. Could be like 10/mo/TB or something
 
@ brshoemak, running a bittorrent server was actually the very first thing that stood out to me when I talked to my wife about building this. However the legality of it all turned me off from it as well. Oh well.

@ Red Squirrel, I'm not sure who I would be able to sale that to or where to begin. I of course like the profit it could generate but wouldn't most businesses already have a backup server in place with redundancy set up for their data or would I be looking for more of a consumer base backup service.

I don't know really it just seems their has to be some way "legally" to turn a profit with such a fast connection.
 
A fast internet connection is nice but you need a lot more than that if you are going to host "cloud" based services. Just my opinion and I could be way off. But from the questions you are asking you have no business offering someone these services unless you hire someone on to run it.
 
schapman43 said:
A fast internet connection is nice but you need a lot more than that if you are going to host "cloud" based services. Just my opinion and I could be way off. But from the questions you are asking you have no business offering someone these services unless you hire someone on to run it.
Click to expand...

Agreed but still interesting to learn what I could do with it. Didn't say I was going to try and set it up this weekend or anything. Hiring someone could be a possibility if long term it would turn a profit. You looking for a job? We could use your idea , wait what was your idea again?
 
A lot of the stuff like generator, hvac you can get over time as you make money. No need to go super fancy right away. hvac is easy in winter, in summer you'd need a big AC unit though.
 
the possibilities are pretty much endless. I'd consider moving there strictly for the internet if Missouri wasn't in sub a bore hole part of the county.
 
With all due respect, allow me to interject a little reality to the situation... How many others in your area with access to the same 1Gbps connection are thinking the same thing? How long before those users abuse the crap out of the backbone(s) and send it running home to mommy and or crash the entire thing? This forces the ISP to change their TOS, adjust tiers, implement data caps, etc, which in turn forces you to continually adjust your business model to fit those evolving changes. If you make a huge investment and find out the effectively block your business model... Before I'd get too far along in planning, I'd get more info about the connection and it's structure, and see if you can secure some sort of agreement with the ISP surrounding your proposed useage so they can't block you down the road.
 
Nate7311 said:
With all due respect, allow me to interject a little reality to the situation... How many others in your area with access to the same 1Gbps connection are thinking the same thing? How long before those users abuse the crap out of the backbone(s) and send it running home to mommy and or crash the entire thing? This forces the ISP to change their TOS, adjust tiers, implement data caps, etc, which in turn forces you to continually adjust your business model to fit those evolving changes. If you make a huge investment and find out the effectively block your business model... Before I'd get too far along in planning, I'd get more info about the connection and it's structure, and see if you can secure some sort of agreement with the ISP surrounding your proposed useage so they can't block you down the road.
Click to expand...

That's a good point. In that case I'd probably stick to using it for personal use. A website, or other service, but something that's easy to move to colo if the need comes. It would act as a kick start to a business though.
 
honestly I doubt many people are thinking the same thing. people outside of this forum hardly use that much bandwidth. especially nowhere close to gigabit. I foresee everyone using the same % as they did before. the actual value of the % will just scale higher.
 
jadams you are absolutely correct. I work for a competing ISP in the area and when the initial launch was announced here a few years back my stomach sunk in fear of losing the majority of my marketplace to another provider. However now well over a year after the their footprint has been completed the lose has been much lower than projected and the amount of subscribers coming back to us is growing daily. Every time I ask a costumer why they are coming back they all have close to the same answer. "We switched for the Internet speed but never used it. Netflix, email, and facebook only load so fast so what's the point in the higher price for something we aren't using." Like you said above you would move here just for the Internet speed but then what would you do with it. I hear people say these type of comments daily but I just don't see the benefit unless it's creating a profit you know what I mean?
 
harrison0550 said:
jadams you are absolutely correct. I work for a competing ISP in the area and when the initial launch was announced here a few years back my stomach sunk in fear of losing the majority of my marketplace to another provider. However now well over a year after the their footprint has been completed the lose has been much lower than projected and the amount of subscribers coming back to us is growing daily. Every time I ask a costumer why they are coming back they all have close to the same answer. "We switched for the Internet speed but never used it. Netflix, email, and facebook only load so fast so what's the point in the higher price for something we aren't using." Like you said above you would move here just for the Internet speed but then what would you do with it. I hear people say these type of comments daily but I just don't see the benefit unless it's creating a profit you know what I mean?
Click to expand...

Theres a HUGE disconnect between people on this board and your average Joe. Alot of times people around here have to be reminded of that.

You'd have a problem if all of [H] was using your ISP. But they dont.
 
I want just reasonable upload speeds. seriously. Stop giving me 25/1 and 50/2 service, give me 50/30 or 25/15. I know WHY they do it, but I hate them, and I hope they all DIAF for it.

Its the same reason AT&T doesn't have Business class Uverse if you're trying to figure out the answer.
 
Red Squirrel said:
That would rock, assuming you're allowed to run servers off it. Save tons of cash in hosting, and have the biggest infrastructure you could dream of, without paying extra per month for it. Could do a colo/dedi/hosting service. Colo is probably the easiest, as the client is more or less responsible for everything. You'd basically just do the hands on stuff like replace a part that fails or w/e. No need to go super big, maybe like 30 servers. They get 33mbps minimum and up to 1gbps. Say you charge 80/mo for unlimited bandwidth (assuming the isp is not limiting you) then that's 2400/mo coming in. Remove 400 for the added electricity costs. You can't retire on that, but it's a decent chunk of change for hardly doing anything, oh, and you'll save on heating in winter. (well, technically you're still paying for it just in another form)
Click to expand...

he's got the best point here. youd have another flaw with it though. First if youd have to make a TOS that plainly states no illegal content and what nots, as if you lose your net, you lost all of your customers in one shot. some colo companies even go as far as to take ownership of the hardware if tos is violated (i recall one friend losing a cheap box because his server was hacked and used as a file server for a month until they got 3 c&d notices on him. they told him of the first 2, he paid the reactivation fees, cleaned the offending crap off, but they kept getting in and he never figured out how. on the third strike, they took his hardware down and claimed to own it after that. he did manage to get back the drives though).

second is being clear on what your offering. not a data center, nothing beyond a few UPS units to provide short term emergency power. you could go as far as recommending auto shut down solutions in case of a power outage (most good ups units offer a serial connection that notifies the system of low battery power and initiates a shutdown. then when power comes back up and batteries reach X%, they send the startup signal). you could even go as far as making up a small server tied to the UPS that emails you and them of a power outage, again in the case of power returning or impending shutdown.

undercut the costs of local colo though. 80/mth for guaranteed 33mbit and burst up to 1gbps for any size server is friggin gold. i know id probably ship out a quad core server with 16+gb ram and a couple SSDs in it for gaming servers for that cost. you could even offer discounts for "contract" terms. 1 month at $90/mth, $85/mth for 3 months. $80/mth for 6 and $70-75 for 12. make clear to them that they pay to ship the server in and out and how much "hands on" time you provide (as well as turn around since im assuming youll still have a job). turn around should be less then 2 hours from problem ticket until you place your hands on the server. but you can set any time, since your running it alone from your home. but if you have a job you can get out of for 2 hour lunch on an emergency, then it might work out fine... and tell them how much time you provide. First 2 hours free, $20/hr after?

and the final 2 issues that will come up. insurance... what happens if your house burns down or floods out and all the servers are trashed. your home owners plan wont cover that much usually (mine only covers $1500/ea up to $3000 max). if you have 20 or 30 $2000 systems running, thats a lot of money out of pocket to pay out. And you could bet your ass that some will sue for the cost. next is to check what they charge for business class and per ip on it. a good few people will want dedicated ips. so youd have to assume a premium of $100/mth at least for business class, then you can pass on the ip costs right off.

Now take into account what youll need to do this. a few good UPS units, preferably datacenter rack mount style. about $100-500/ea depending on what your get, used of course. next is the router/switch youll be using. you need something good enough to offer gbit ports and the ability to assign ips to individual ports or youll have to manually assign ips on the systems. its 5a and i havent slept, so im not thinking straight though im sure another member can go more into that part for you. consider though, offering 100mbit burst is usually sufficient, so you might be able to get your hands on some used equip for a damn good price if you go 100mbit only. the benefit to this is theyll be more prone to actually getting good bursts. 30 servers at 33mbit/ea... most wont use it to capacity really. gbit line in to the switch, the switch will share it out pretty reasonably. youll have those 2 servers that run 100mbit all the time, the other 28 will still have 800mit available to them. this will also help keep everything in check as if you had 3 servers pushing 300mbit/ea, the other 27 servers would be pretty well limited to the last 100mbit. most switches can handle basic balancing though, but itd still suck to have a connection go from 100mbit coming to me, then suddenly im running 10mbit.

id say pickup a decent gbit switch that lets you set limits to each port, set them all to 100mbit, then offer an extra 100mbit burstable at $30/mth or some such. you could increase that port only and be good with it.

im done, goin to bed
 
stiltner said:
I want just reasonable upload speeds. seriously. Stop giving me 25/1 and 50/2 service, give me 50/30 or 25/15. I know WHY they do it, but I hate them, and I hope they all DIAF for it.

Its the same reason AT&T doesn't have Business class Uverse if you're trying to figure out the answer.
Click to expand...

Yeah I get 5mb/512k and the upload sucks. I have to be selective with my offsite backups because it takes like 2 days to upload 1GB which kills my internet.
 
I get about 13 / 1 with my connection. trying to upload photos makes me cry and thats a pretty decent upload in the UK. ADSL you can get upto 2.5Mbps upload. Although there is a good resaon for this, ADSL home connections where never made for high speed upload and so cross talk in the cabinet from high frequency uploads can cause all sorts of problems.
 
cant believe nobody asked for speedtest.net banner image.

Now I'm asking for one ;)
 
jadams said:
cant believe nobody asked for speedtest.net banner image.

Now I'm asking for one ;)
Click to expand...

Don't ask for that. It'll just make you angry. Its like asking for pics in Genmay and getting Azureth's girl hotlinked for you. You know its coming, you know its big, and its just gonna ruin your day to see it
 
Whats that cost you a month?

I too think colo is your best bet. As stated above if you outline your operation you wont have folks expecting something you cannot provide. You're going to need a couple monster UPS's to get started. I've got about 4000w sitting at my office needing new batteries. I'll check on an old customer of mine, they had a 6k unit. When the batteries went down they said the hell with it. I think they just want it gone. Located in JoCoMo

I pay $35mo for 1a 1u at Colopronto. If you can provide a service at a reasonable price, and guys know what they're getting. You will fill up your racks with servers guys like me understand they're paying for colo without a awesome redundancy system.

P.S. So jealous of you guys!
 
Big D. said:
A year old, but yes, it's very fast, how did it turn out?

Wouldn't this be faster than most hard drives can save at? I think it would just be limited to 40-80 MBps or whatever your drive can do anyway
Click to expand...

Gigabit should only be about 80-100 megabytes per second in real usage.
 
We have $199/month 110 meg here from Crapcast..... 50 meg is half that cost, and a "better bang for your buck" but I do not know anyone using either yet.

As others said, what is the point? Especially since most major ISPs in my area have "data caps" now of 150-250GB, so downloading at these higher speeds only promotes more costs to yourself even quicker than before! I especially hate the mobile data caps.... internet needs to be re-regulated with these shitty caps, honestly... something is going to hit the fan soon on this crap, its just not fair for consumers.......

not to mention the ISP monopolies.... I live in a major city and literally all I can get is crapcast or some slow wireless broadband which costs way too much.
 
For cheap prices, I'd consider getting a server or two from you to host gaming servers on. Granted, they would have to be cheap since I wont be getting any benefits from a professional data center like I do now.

Multiple static IPs are a must.
 
Dylan80 said:
We have $199/month 110 meg here from Crapcast..... 50 meg is half that cost, and a "better bang for your buck" but I do not know anyone using either yet.

As others said, what is the point? Especially since most major ISPs in my area have "data caps" now of 150-250GB, so downloading at these higher speeds only promotes more costs to yourself even quicker than before! I especially hate the mobile data caps.... internet needs to be re-regulated with these shitty caps, honestly... something is going to hit the fan soon on this crap, its just not fair for consumers.......

not to mention the ISP monopolies.... I live in a major city and literally all I can get is crapcast or some slow wireless broadband which costs way too much.
Click to expand...

comcast has no compete clauses with most regions/cities(they aren't the only ones either, most isp's have them).. completely illegal but everyone turns a blind eye to it.. the only chance of things changing is if googles serious about their plans with running fiber.. there is also another company here in the northwest that is a non profit government funded company that provides internet over fiber optics to rural area's and people that can't afford internet and then sell higher speeds to those that can to cover the costs. but they just got a huge grant from the feds so their coming into Spokane. can't wait because it will piss comcast off so much and they can't do a damn thing about it. :D only two providers in this area is comcast and qwest dsl(century link).
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top