The CBC (Cambridge Bandwidth Consortium) is a 501(c)12 corporation, a "Nonprofit, rural telco". We were started by a group of networking experts in the Boston area with the goal of providing more flexible internet access to the clued. As a co-op, we are self supporting - we don't have a formal support organization.
Our main focus is on providing service via T1 circuits rather than cable or DSL technology. T1s are more reliable and are repaired faster than other, consumer-grade, lines.
For most lines, our prices are roughly equal to than the pricing you'll get for a 1.5Mbps SDSL line. What you get with a CBC T1 is the reliability of a T1 circuit, and the flexibility of having some amount of control over your ISP, the upstream router and connection to the internet. If your DSL line goes down, it can often take a week for the various entities to figure out who's problem it is. The T1 is a much cleaner circuit, with better defined responsibilities and timelines for repair. T1s are often repaired within hours of the problem being reported (even at 2 A.M.). Problems can still occur, but they're less likely.
Also, a T1 is a more stable circuit in terms of the engineering. If you're out of DSL range, you can often still get a T1. Even if you're in DSL range, you'll probably see more reliability from a T1.
As far as "commercial" use goes, we want to avoid competing with the organizations that have made the CBC possible. Our policy is if you want to sell some hosting, or do small scale cost-recovery stuff with your circuit, that's fine. If you use it to telecommute, that's no big deal. If you're getting this strictly for commercial gain, then that's not what we're here for.
More to the point, this is a community effort, and as such we don't offer anything by way of SLA's, or any specific support. People have been pretty good about donating their time to the cause and helping other people out, and there have been various "help the community" types of projects that have gone on. Someone losing money because a line is down won't be a motivating factor for other people to rush to help out. It's very much a volunteer effort, and has a (lack of) SLA that's appropriate for that.
As we grow, and have better resources we're constantly looking for ways to make our service more solid, flexible and reliable. We still don't want to do commercial lines. It's outside of our focus.
While we don't have a formal Terms of Service document, we'd expect you to follow common sense rules such as don't spam or allow your network to be a source of network abuse.
We have a mailing list and a private IRC channel that we use for discussing issues. You'll at least have read-only access to our core router, with the ability to call in a trouble ticket on your line without having to deal with middle-men.
Sure, no problem. Even better, we'll teach you how to get it up and running. Configure a person's router, and they'll route for a day. Teach them to "write mem" and they'll run forever. :)
Our default network allocation is a /28 (16 addresses) at the moment. As our available pool increases, we might be able to offer /27's (32 addresses).
We're happy to announce and route your portable/legacy/swamp netblock, should you be so fortunate as to have one. We do request that you make some portion of it available to the rest of the co-op, if that's possible.
You would be responsible for the cost of the Verizon loop from your location to our POP at the Bent Street Verizon central office in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Over and above the Verizon loop, your costs would be around $100/mo for cross-connect from Verizon to our location in Quincy, $25/mo 'dues' that goes to paying down CBC's debt and covering operating costs in the future. Your circuit includes a certain base amount of bandwidth. If you exceed that, we charge you for that usage at month's end. Those costs are around $200 per megabit (95th percentile, monthly). So if you're a heavy user you might end up paying another $10-20/mo or so for bandwidth.
As our membership increases, the $100/month cross-connect fee will gradually decrease. We're in the process of restructing our configuration at the Verizon Central office. Once that has settled out, we'll know in much more detail just how much the $100/month charge really is.
The CBC charges a one time $200 installation fee to recover our costs.
Verizon periodically runs sales that makes it quite reasonable. This section has details from a sale they had in 2003.
| miles | mo-to-mo | 3 year | 5 year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0-10 | $235 | $200 | $190 | 11-20 | $269 | $234 | $224 | 21-30 | $303 | $268 | $258 | 21-50 | $332 | $298 | $268 |
As a data point, Wakefield is 10 miles, and Beverly, MA is within 20 miles. If you'd like to check mileage to your location, you can use the calculator at http://www.telcoexchange.com/resources/carriers/distance.shtml and enter 617225 as "Location #1" and your area code and exchange as "Location #2".
The minimum service period for month-to-month service is three months. The minimum service period for the three-year commitment period is one year. The minimum service period for the five-year commitment period is three years. We think that the penalty for termination before the minimum service period is reached is 1/2 the remaining months in the minimum service period.
With luck, Verizon will send you a bill directly for the T1 circuit. The rest of the money you'll owe monthly to the CBC so we can pay for the infrastructure that makes your circuit actually useful. We may require that you pay for a few months in advance on some of these charges so that we have the ability to "just write a check." It'd be unfortunate for service to all of us to be cut off because we missed a payment while waiting for that last check to clear. Excess bandwidth charges are billed monthly, in arrears.
Though the CBC is incorporated as a non-profit, we are allowed to hold money towards incurred and to-be-incurred expenses. We are not out to run a profit, but we do aim to eventually have enough of a buffer to be able to pay things easily, as well as having enough "income" to be able to allow us to pay off our start-up debt, grow and add more services and bandwidth, upgrade core infrastructure, and keep the CBC hardware on maintenance contracts.
Similarly, since it's a volunteer effort, we encourage contributions. There are a lot of little tasks/things that need to be done here and there, and extra resources is a good thing. People have contributed time, equipment, netblocks, knowledge and money towards getting us off the ground. That's what got us going and keeps us rolling.
What would we like people to contribute? We could some coding to help us manage the business side of the Co-op. We can always use help getting new members up and running, and answering questions once they're installed. We might be able to use some help with accounting (handling A/P and A/R).
You'll need to buy a router and CSU/DSU for your T1. You'll have best luck getting support from the other co-op members if you buy a Cisco router, but there is at least one co-op member using a Netopia router.
For our T1's, a cisco 25xx with an external CSU/DSU, or even an old cisco 3000 router works fine. A more modern choice is a Cisco 2600 or 3600 with a WIC-1DSU-T1 card. Modern is often better, but you don't need to break the bank on a router. CBC members often have leads on used Cisco gear, so ask before you buy. A couple CBC members have spare equipment that has been offered up for testing or emergency use as well.
If you want to order a line, we'll need an address and a telephone number (at that address) for Verizon to be able to know where to put the line.
The CBC has some colocation space available. Income from that will go directly towards offsetting the groups collective costs. More information is available on the colo page.
As of early 2005 we have 13 lines hooked up. More is always better.
Getting better all the time. We now have dual upstream providers and better connectivity than we've ever had. We typically see low latency to many places, and we do what we can to keep it that way.