It’s been inspiring to see Community Broadband networks spring up across Scotland, and be part of the professionalisation of these small Internet Service Providers (ISP’s). Some of these regional providers are now growing to become serious competitors even in areas with decent fiber to the cabinet (FTTC) or even fiber to the premises (FTTP) connections. While the Openreach fiber network grows, many Community Broadband subscribers opt to stay with their friendly local ISP, who in many cases can now also offer FTTC/FTTP packages.

Hardware

Much of my time is spent configuring network devices, and most of the time these are Mikrotik routers and switches.

Mikrotik’s RouterOS has a vast range of applications and configuration options. My own experience so far has centered on:

• Level-2/3 hardware offloading.
• OSPF and BGP-OSPF interactions in networks with multiple gateway routers running BGP.
• VPLS tunnels using BGP-signalled VPLS.
• OpenVPN, IP-SEC and Wireguard VPN.
• RouterOS scripting

Other building blocks include Ubiquity devices, Siklu radios and Netonix switches.

I design, build and maintain resilient, low-maintainance, small-scale Internet Service Provider (ISP) networks. This involves;

• Building small telecom masts, sometimes on hill tops, sometimes off-grid.
• Establishing long-distance radio links.
• Designing resilient telecom networks and configuring equipment.
• Fiber installations and maintenance. This includes fiber to household premises, on estates and for business clients at a University (UHI) Campus.
• Building servers for network monitoring, remote access, data backup, (simple) subscriber administration and documentation.
• Subscriber installations and indoor Wifi.

Locations: I am based in South Skye. My work travel radius is about 2 hours at the moment. I would travel further for projects of limited duration, handing over on-site maintenance to people locally while offering ongoing remote support.