The WiSP business

After my bachelor graduation as an Electronic Systems Engineer, It became clear for me that I loved the Internet and that I was going to keep that career path.

I decided to shutdown the Shell hosting servers and move on to the Wireless ISP business in the city. At the being it was all great, but when I tried to expand the coverage to get more customers, It started to get really complicated.

To run a formal business over a free band it is insane, in a multipoint setup there is too much external interference that would require continue channel switching and eventually due saturation it wont work as expected.

At that time the hardware was very expensive and likely unreliable. Never the less, I used my creativity to work most of the issues out and provided the best customer service that kept the clients happy, even while the external interference was a constant issue in some sectors.

One of the things that I’m most proud of this business is a Bandwidth Shaper, based on the antennas MAC address, that I build using a Linux bridge box and Iptables. It allowed me to sell custom speed packages and avoid abusers.

I also inherited the recurring billing system that we used for the Shell Hosting business and added a few more modules. During this adventure I learned how to setup Cisco routers and every Wi-Fi system available on the market.

Within a few years, ADSL became popular and the monopoly teleco company Telmex expanded it’s coverage and customers were switching to that lower cost solution.

It’s been so many years behind this project but the lessons learned are still fresh on my memories. Today I still have a point to point link running steady for over 10+ years.

This story is to be continued…