Why are we paying for Internet?

What does an ISP actually do? And why don't we do it ouerselves?

An ISP isn’t just charging you for some magical internet button. They own the physical infrastructure fiber, cables, towers, peering agreements with other networks, IP ranges, etc. that actually connects you to the global backbone.
You can technically do it yourself community ISPs, mesh networks exist, but you’d need insane capital, licenses, and agreements with upstream providers. That’s why we pay them they maintain the pipes, we just use them.

May be for fiber and infructure cost. You cann't connet to the long distance with your own money.

ISPs provide the network infrastructure, assign IP addresses and connect you to the global Internet. Individuals do not do this because the costs, legalities and technicalities are too great.

if its giving us help in each and everything by deafult we can have access to it

Jokey_ said:

An ISP isn’t just charging you for some magical internet button. They own the physical infrastructure fiber, cables, towers, peering agreements with other networks, IP ranges, etc. that actually connects you to the global backbone.
You can technically do it yourself community ISPs, mesh networks exist, but you’d need insane capital, licenses, and agreements with upstream providers. That’s why we pay them they maintain the pipes, we just use them.

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TechnoTycoon said:

May be for fiber and infructure cost. You cann't connet to the long distance with your own money.

Click to expand...

Nova Agency said:

ISPs provide the network infrastructure, assign IP addresses and connect you to the global Internet. Individuals do not do this because the costs, legalities and technicalities are too great.

Click to expand...

Right, so to add to these already good points, the internet's complexity is absolutely mental when you actually think about it. When you click on a website, your request pinballs through maybe 20 different companies' kit, crossing oceans and continents in milliseconds. It's not just one network - it's thousands of independent networks all agreeing to play nicely together.

Your data starts at your device, gets chopped into packets, then begins a proper journey. First stop: your local ISP, who bundles your traffic with everyone else's and shoots it toward massive Internet Exchange Points - think of them as gigantic roundabouts where hundreds of networks meet up. From there, it might hop between several backbone providers (the motorways of the internet), potentially crossing undersea cables as light pulses, before reaching its destination.

The mad thing is, all this works despite using equipment from different decades, built by rivals, operating under different governments. Your brand new iPhone can chat with some ancient server running software from the '90s because of careful protocol design. This interoperability took decades of clever innovations: packet switching in the '60s (breaking data into chunks that find their own way), TCP/IP in the '70s (giving everything a common language), DNS in the '80s (so you don't need to memorise number strings), and the World Wide Web in the '90s (making it usable for regular people). What's brilliant is the "hourglass" design - IP protocol sits in the middle like a universal translator, letting you innovate at the edges without breaking everything. That's why TikTok runs on infrastructure originally designed for text emails.

Each hop involves split-second routing decisions by equipment worth millions. If something breaks, traffic automatically routes around it. There's no central authority running things - it's all cooperation between competitors. Border Gateway Protocol lets networks basically say "I can reach these addresses" and everyone just... trusts it works.

The fact that 5 billion people can simultaneously stream video, send messages, and browse the web on this hodgepodge of technologies spanning 50 years of innovation - without it constantly falling over - is properly mind-blowing. It's thousands of separate problems solved over decades, all stacked together into this invisible complexity that lets you tap a screen and instantly reach any computer on Earth. It's not magic, but it might as well be.

galearka said:

Right, so to add to these already good points, the internet's complexity is absolutely mental when you actually think about it. When you click on a website, your request pinballs through maybe 20 different companies' kit, crossing oceans and continents in milliseconds. It's not just one network - it's thousands of independent networks all agreeing to play nicely together.

Your data starts at your device, gets chopped into packets, then begins a proper journey. First stop: your local ISP, who bundles your traffic with everyone else's and shoots it toward massive Internet Exchange Points - think of them as gigantic roundabouts where hundreds of networks meet up. From there, it might hop between several backbone providers (the motorways of the internet), potentially crossing undersea cables as light pulses, before reaching its destination.

The mad thing is, all this works despite using equipment from different decades, built by rivals, operating under different governments. Your brand new iPhone can chat with some ancient server running software from the '90s because of careful protocol design. This interoperability took decades of clever innovations: packet switching in the '60s (breaking data into chunks that find their own way), TCP/IP in the '70s (giving everything a common language), DNS in the '80s (so you don't need to memorise number strings), and the World Wide Web in the '90s (making it usable for regular people). What's brilliant is the "hourglass" design - IP protocol sits in the middle like a universal translator, letting you innovate at the edges without breaking everything. That's why TikTok runs on infrastructure originally designed for text emails.

Each hop involves split-second routing decisions by equipment worth millions. If something breaks, traffic automatically routes around it. There's no central authority running things - it's all cooperation between competitors. Border Gateway Protocol lets networks basically say "I can reach these addresses" and everyone just... trusts it works.

The fact that 5 billion people can simultaneously stream video, send messages, and browse the web on this hodgepodge of technologies spanning 50 years of innovation - without it constantly falling over - is properly mind-blowing. It's thousands of separate problems solved over decades, all stacked together into this invisible complexity that lets you tap a screen and instantly reach any computer on Earth. It's not magic, but it might as well be.

Click to expand...

That actually makes a lot of sense I didn’t realize how much infrastructure, agreements, and routing magic is happening behind the scenes just to get a simple web page to load.
Pretty wild to think billions of devices can talk to each other smoothly thanks to decades of protocol design and cooperation between networks. Definitely not something we could just DIY at home. Appreciate the breakdown!

Jokey_ said:

That actually makes a lot of sense I didn’t realize how much infrastructure, agreements, and routing magic is happening behind the scenes just to get a simple web page to load.
Pretty wild to think billions of devices can talk to each other smoothly thanks to decades of protocol design and cooperation between networks. Definitely not something we could just DIY at home. Appreciate the breakdown!

Click to expand...

I used to run an ISP, so when I saw this question, I got a bit excited. Make no mistake—while it may be a complex and costly network consisting of the aforementioned hodgepodge of things, it should not be as expensive as it is in most places, and quite frankly, it should be given to people by their governments for free. It is controversial, I know, but to guarantee at least 1mb to every person on the planet who so chooses to opt in for a local installations would be relatively cheap, and this is excluding satellite solutions. Prices in North America and Europe (this is a problem in many many cother ountries across the globe, mind you... not to suggest only these continents are to blame), internet access is unaffordable and should be socialised to an extent.

To address your initial statement, an ISP more or less does what @Joker_ highlighted, but their prices are usually not justified, or they are inflated to be as high as they believe people can tolerate. Like housing, it is a commodity that should not be marketised. You see lower prices in third world and developing countries across Africa, South America, and Asia because those ISPs cannot get away with charging anything more than what they need to operate and enrich but a few board members.

BlitzySpecial said:

What does an ISP actually do? And why don't we do it ouerselves?

Click to expand...

We pay 'cause we use and they need keep internet alive.

Why people pay taxes?

To keep the state running.

Example of state was bad but you understand.

Bitcoin boys runs nodes to keep bitcoin network alive.

The same with torrent.

And TOR network too.

Want something for free?

Communist.

Its like paying electricity

galearka said:

I used to run an ISP, so when I saw this question, I got a bit excited. Make no mistake—while it may be a complex and costly network consisting of the aforementioned hodgepodge of things, it should not be as expensive as it is in most places, and quite frankly, it should be given to people by their governments for free. It is controversial, I know, but to guarantee at least 1mb to every person on the planet who so chooses to opt in for a local installations would be relatively cheap, and this is excluding satellite solutions. Prices in North America and Europe (this is a problem in many many cother ountries across the globe, mind you... not to suggest only these continents are to blame), internet access is unaffordable and should be socialised to an extent.

To address your initial statement, an ISP more or less does what @Joker_ highlighted, but their prices are usually not justified, or they are inflated to be as high as they believe people can tolerate. Like housing, it is a commodity that should not be marketised. You see lower prices in third world and developing countries across Africa, South America, and Asia because those ISPs cannot get away with charging anything more than what they need to operate and enrich but a few board members.

Click to expand...

That’s a really interesting perspective, especially since you’ve actually run an ISP before. I agree, access to the internet feels more like a basic utility these days than a luxury, and the price disparity between regions is huge. Governments treating it as essential infrastructure rather than just a commodity definitely makes sense. Thanks for sharing your insight.

People want to stop paying their internet bill - recession indicator.

Jokey_ said:

That’s a really interesting perspective, especially since you’ve actually run an ISP before. I agree, access to the internet feels more like a basic utility these days than a luxury, and the price disparity between regions is huge. Governments treating it as essential infrastructure rather than just a commodity definitely makes sense. Thanks for sharing your insight.

Click to expand...

There used to be free mobile internet provider in Poland, it'd disconnect you automatically once in a while but was fine for the price (zero).

because I can't shit cables, my ass don't have a signal receptor and I can't create the whole structure behind internet by myself

RML said:

We pay 'cause we use and they need keep internet alive.

Why people pay taxes?

To keep the state running.

Example of state was bad but you understand.

Bitcoin boys runs nodes to keep bitcoin network alive.

The same with torrent.

And TOR network too.

Want something for free?

Communist.

Click to expand...

OP must be connected to free wifi to view here.Don't want to pay for anything

SilverClouds said:

People want to stop paying their internet bill - recession indicator.

There used to be free mobile internet provider in Poland, it'd disconnect you automatically once in a while but was fine for the price (zero).

Click to expand...

The internet is an important service for me to make money on internet,so I pay for it.$92.50 per month

cause it uses electricity and there is a maintainace fee

The answer is political and that is against our rules. As such, I'm not sure where else this thread can go so I'm locking it to save you from yourselves.