An ISP staffed by a small group of qualified, experienced, professional, and dedicated individuals should be capable of scaling to serve a very large network capable of serving a significant customer base.
As a point of reference most large-scale telecom providers that support national networks with hundreds of thousands to millions of customers that are typically managed by teams of roughly a dozen (or sometimes fewer) actively working at any given time. So while across departments an telecom company a staff of hundreds of employees to cover 24/7 operations, there are typically only a comparatively few number of mid-to-senior level engineers and technicians working at any given time.
To operate with this level of efficiency it is extremely important your business have the proper systems and services in place that allow for the easy onboarding (and hopefully only occasional off-boarding) of employee’s, as well as all the tools (hardware and software) to make efficient use of their time to grow and improve the network (and business as a whole) while also addressing any customer impacting issues that arise without one taking too much time from the other.
For this reason we focus on a few select manufacturers and platforms that directly integrate well together so as to create as close to a “single-pane-of-glass” as possible.
In regards to our selection of the companies we choose to source for the hardware, software, and various other service we utilize to meet the needs of our organization and the organizations we work with to help build and/or improve their operation we use several qualifying factors in our decision making:
Choosing between closed source and open source software depends on specific requirements, security concerns, and available resources. Closed source software can provide intellectual property protection and professional support but may lack transparency and customization. Open source software offers transparency, customization, and community collaboration, but may require self-support and can present security challenges if not properly managed.
The landscape of open source vs closed source products has vastly changed over the years. Where things typically used to be purely one or the other, the line is now most often much more blurred, with company’s producing products that will be part open, part closed source. Furthermore there are some company’s that are more open source friendly than others, which will often times mean their product can be altered or customized beyond it’s default intended purpose, have a large community of 3rd party add-ons. On the other end of the spectrum there are companies that are strictly closed source and proprietary to the point where any alteration, reverse-engineering, or even the most minor change to it’s form or function will immediately void it’s warranty or prevent you from receiving any formal support if you run into an issue where it is critically needed.
While most of the things we use and company’s we purchase services from tend be more often on the open source (or at least open source friendly) end of things, it is important to know how to evaluate when, where, and why you would choose an open source product vs a closed source one.