After transit, start to look at facilities to host your equipment, 'cause you'll need to demarc somewhere and hand off to your transit as well.
Lots and lots of details to get right, but I personally think it's a lot of fun.
Would this be more expensive for a small ISP than paying for /26, or whatever pool size is practical?
I've mostly looked at wireless (we're in a valley) and fiber
IMO the Internet actually sucks ass
Why is there so much bureaucracy and cost involved for someone to own an IP address? I should be able to connect to the network and acquire an IP address as easily as I can buy a merckle-tree-backed pointer to an IPFS image, or vote in a US election. Why do I have to pay hundreds of dollars for Internet Numbers conjured from thin air by a US nonprofit to be resold by a RIR? How fucking moronic is it that IPV4 was created with substantially less capacity than there were humans on Earth, got adopted, wasn't immediately fixed or abandoned once it became obvious that the Internet would be used globally, was irresponsibly allocated, introduced various unofficial but consequential practices (eg NAT), ran out and got expensive, and STILL is widely used alongside ipv6.
What is the point of having a centralized system for governance centered around ICANN/IANA when they are so wildly inefficient and incapable of governing? Fuck 2000€ these are freaking made up numbers that I should be able to buy for pennies with an email address, government ID, and credit card.
This is a recent 2025 change; we (minimum size ISP) started around 1k, it went to 1.5k in 2023 and 1.8k in 2025.
> and includes trainings and tickets to meetings.
Only one or two (don't remember) tickets are included with the initial becoming a member, none thereafter.
> this seems easily doable.
It's not negligible but not a massive expense either. Even a minimum size ISP is quickly going to be ≥1k€/month on operational expenses. Uplink is the majority for us, location rental & electricity roughly equal at ca. a quarter to third of uplink cost each.
Everything is done to prop up the stature of "Lords" (the already big)
And sqeeze out or limit the ambition of serfs wanting to reach Lordly status.
Its a nice place if you are docile donkey that love's being taken care of by lords and have no personal agency whatsoever.
In the end, europe will be a historical museum with a tourist economy and nothing else. All industry will have moved to the US and asia.
It's sad, but, it is also a valuable lesson for other regions on how not to destryo themselves!
If you can't get into Nikhef, you can become a member of Coloclue. One of their data centers has Frys-IX indoors, and members can get an XC there.
Peering… really depends on where you are, it hasn't been a problem for us.
That said, Init7 is, for the time being, still a scaled-up mini ISP. They're slowly devolving into corporate-dom, but not there yet.
