- register a legal entity (coop, non-proft, corp, whatever)
- register with IANA to get an ipv4 and ipv6 block
- find an ISP who can do the BGP announcements for you (DSL resellers usually support it, even if for a residential connection)
- use something like Quagga for routing, no need for big expensive routers
- connect with whatever premises you want your DYI-ISP to cover: ex: specific building, such as a student dorm, specific residential district with a mesh wifi, cat5 flying all over the place, install your own fiber (it's not that complicated!), etc.
Browsing the FFDN database, a lot of their members are small orgs with 50-100 users. With time, if you encourage a community legal model (coop or non-profit), people will develop more expertise and step up to manage and expand your network.
PS: I'm part of a Montreal mesh community called "Réseau libre" (http://www.reseaulibre.ca). We don't provide Internet, but we build the underlying infrastructure. It's a lot of fun and a great way to learn crazy networking stuff on a shoe-string budget.
Actually one has to register as a Local Internet Registry with the local monopoly RIR, such as ARIN or RIPE. Only they can request blocks from IANA, which they then allocate to LIRs in exchange for non-trivial membership fees.
Fees in the order of 3,000EUR to join and not much less on a recurring annual basis:
http://www.ripe.net/lir-services/member-support/become-a-mem...
Unfortunately since the ITU proposal for a non-geographic RIR faded some years ago there is no competition in this space, as the existing RIRs refuse to service cross-geography requests.
This might be a list worth compiling: ISP's that will announce IPv4 address blocks for residential customers.
While it's interesting as a concept, I don't really get the feeling there is much to see here. It's also not clear to me how these very few access providers would actually federate without real backbone connectivity.
You are right to point out that there is still a lot of work to be done, but this is a step in the right direction imho.
The idea behind this federation at this point is more to advertise the status of the various projects, and connect people together to share expertise (legal and hands-on).
It absolutely is, yes. What you're doing is admirable.
> The idea behind this federation at this point is more to advertise the status of the various projects
Ah, alright then. My first association was there'd by an effort to extricate yourself from the all-pervading surveillance, censoring, and traffic-shaping planned or already taking place. Of course, setting up an organization for knowledge sharing is also a worthy cause.
They're pretty awesome.
Julien
If you just want to set up a DSL reseller account, knock yourself out.
Anyway, seems like a neat idea.
Members of the FDN Federation are Non-Profit Internet Service Providers sharing common values: volunteer-based, solidarity-driven, democratic and non-profit working; defense and promotion of Net neutrality.
It really depends on the country where you want to do that, but, generally, it's hard and expensive to setup a traditional (think *DSL, FTTH) ISP.
