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Hey! That's my setup as well! I have one DIA connection and a backup VPN over a shitty Comcast business connection that gets terminated in a nearby datacenter.

Getting an ISP to even _talk_ to me required quite a bit of sleuthing. And I was saying from the outset that I was ready to fully pay for the fiber run.

Apparently, ISPs in my locality actually divide the city into the service areas. How the heck this is legal, I don't understand.

Some tidbits from me: my ISP installed a big honking ADVA optical line terminal on my premises. Getting them to move it to their side and just provide me with an SFP connection is still my work-in-progress.

The support is also outsourced into India, and getting them to understand what you want over the phone is... painful. Fortunately, the web ticket system is good enough.

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Isn't it very typical for an ISP to run their line onto your premises and put the demarcation device on your premises with your power supply etc? Usually there isn't a "their side" where it still works. It's your premises, then up to kilometers of wiring, then the central exchange. Equipment required to terminate the wiring at your end obvious has to be at your end, not theirs.

It's possible that the termination equipment could be a bare SFP and not a big box, but the ISP wants to be able to monitor the status of your connection up to the termination equipment, because that is their responsibility to keep online, and they can't do that if it's just an off-the-shelf SFP. They probably wouldn't agree to do it and still have any SLA.

If there's a physical problem with the box (too big/loud) you can try negotiate for a different box but if you just want control over your network, sorry but that just isn't how it works. Your network starts at the demarcation, and you don't want to be responsible for speaking whatever protocols the ISP is using internally, either. Up to the demarcation, it's ISP internal network, and past that, it's your network, with a standard handover interface like Ethernet.

This depends on the technology. When I had a PON connection (FiOS), the ONT belonged to the ISP but was on my premises. However, with the cable Internet I have now (Xfinity aka Comcast), there is nothing between me and the street save a splitter and PoE filter, both of which are passive.

But you have a cable modem. You either have one provided directly by Comcast or you have one that adheres to their standards.

It used to be that you had to get a cable or DSL modem from your ISP. Now, cable and DSL networks are standardized enough that there's a good chance you can get a third-party one to work. It will be the same with PON in time.

I think it's fine to be required to use your ISP modem, since different ISPs have different physical layer networks. It starts to suck when they try to force you to use their router. I think in the EU it's actually a legal requirement that if they do, it has to support bridge mode (a.k.a. behave as only a modem).

> Now, cable and DSL networks are standardized enough that there's a good chance you can get a third-party one to work. It will be the same with PON in time.

It’s mostly the same with PON now. I’ve always had success with the FS.com PON SFPs, once I get the necessary information for the connection to program them with (the difficulty of which can vary from “ask the tech installing the connection nicely” to “take apart the ISP-provided CPE and solder wires to the debug console pads”).

Comcast has supported standard DOCSIS modems for a long time now. I have some old ones lying around, but they're too old for modern speeds.

> Isn't it very typical for an ISP to run their line onto your premises and put the demarcation device on your premises with your power supply etc? Usually there isn't a "their side" where it still works.

There is, in my case. Their point of presence is about 800 meters away, and they have a simple switch that aggregates connections. Their optical terminal on my terminal (a switch-sized 1-U rack-mounted box with ANNOYING fans) does all the traffic shaping, authentication, etc.

> It's possible that the termination equipment could be a bare SFP and not a big box, but the ISP wants to be able to monitor the status of your connection up to the termination equipment, because that is their responsibility to keep online, and they can't do that if it's just an off-the-shelf SFP. They probably wouldn't agree to do it and still have any SLA.

Sure, and having equipment on my premises makes it much easier to debug the issue. But they actually monitor the BGP session state, not the optical path.

Regarding the city divided into service areas, if you are in the US many cities provided franchise rights to cable providers that gave them exclusive monopoly rights to provide services in exchange for the cable provider spending all the money to install the lines and infrastructure. Most of those franchise deals were done in the 1970s or early 1980s, essentially mimicking the agreements that were in place for AT&T (or RBOCs).

Franchise agreements have been non-exclusive by US federal law since a long time.

Lack of competition is more about the cost to establish service in an area, and the ROI on service in an area with competition. It costs a lot to pull wires past a lot of potential customers and if many of them won't sign up because they already have a good enough option, it doesn't make much sense to do it.

Cable and Telco compete because when cable was built, it was a completely different service, but they've both evolved to fill the same role.

This is why mandatory line sharing is important for competition, and it's in the telecom act of 1996. But the FCC first said it only applied to telecoms, and then said it doesn't apply in remote terminals because of lack of space, and then courts said it doesn't apply at all because telecom and not cable isn't fair.

In my very limited experience, this is common even for real business customers. I think it's because going from commercial ISP service to BGP service is not really an upsell. It's a completely different product category (carrier interconnect) and usually results in less revenue for the ISP (greatly reduced bandwidth charges etc.). As a result, sales folks aren't trained on it, and it is difficult to get through regular channels.

If you get it, it can be great. Imagine your ISP calling you when you reboot your router.

I'm running BGP to the home, over wireguard, from a couple of VPSes. It wasn't worth it to upgrade to DIA for me. It's mostly for hobbyist purposes so reliability is not really a huge factor.

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