🧠 Weekly Update: BGP Is My Love Language

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Network Ops: The Backbone’s Growing a Spine

We’ve lit the port at LONAP. It’s live. It’s breathing. And it’s hungry.

We’re now boasting 235 direct peers and counting. Check the carnage yourself:
https://bgp.tools/as/212683

Next up? LINX. Because why peer like a mortal when you can peer like a machine possessed. Our goal is simple:

Become the most heavily peered ISP in the UK.

Because “best effort” is for cowards.

Also: BYOIP and BGP sessions are no longer a dream. They’re becoming reality. Tell your home lab. Tell your router. Tell your BIRD config.

Labs & Systems: PPPoE Can Get in the Bin

Customer testing begins Monday. This includes the long-awaited DHCP authentication flow (Yes, we said DHCP. No, we don’t do PPPoE. Yes, we’re still smug about it.)

Meanwhile, development on OliloOS is temporarily paused. Why? Because we’re waiting on more API access from our partners. No API, no progress. So we’ll be lovingly harassing them until that access lands in our lap.

While that’s on hold, other systems are very much not on pause:

eNOC (Emergency Network Operations Centre) is in build. When all hell breaks loose, eNOC will coordinate alerts, comms, and engineer mobilisation like a war room with caffeine dependency.
Flow monitoring is being implemented to understand traffic patterns, improve peering targets, and optimise latency.
Backend automation tools are also being spun up. We’re talking process automation, system triggers, maybe even the odd button that just works (we hope).

Customer Ops: Not Quite There, But Nearly

Olilo's broadband platform is on the edge of labs launch readiness. The team’s been grinding hard behind the scenes getting everything functional, fast, and scalable.

No contracts...ish. No crap. Just unfiltered, transparent, community powered connectivity. Almost ready to uncage.

Community Chaos: The Routing Table Roars

Discord has been... vocal. As always. We love you.
Peering suggestions have been flying in. We see them, we love them, we’re adding them to the war board.
Internal debates on IPv6 allocation sizes may have gotten slightly too passionate. It’s fine... We're doing a /48 obviously.

Warnings & Errors (Gloriously Ongoing)

OliloOS: Stalled. Waiting on APIs.
PPPoE: Dead to us.
Community Suggestion: “Let users control their BGP sessions via a web UI.”
→ Response: (working on it)

Next Week’s Mission Objectives

Launch DHCP testing with real customers
Continue DPI implementation across the core
Shout at partners for API access with increasing volume
More backend tool automation
Prep for soft launch
Try not to burn out

Real Talk: Why This Is Going To Take Time

We’re building Olilo to change the industry from the inside out, and we’re not going to pretend that’s easy.

This is a sector stuck in its ways. There are entrenched behaviours, old habits, and more red tape than a Victorian post office. It's going to take time to get real change in motion. So here’s a completely honest update about one of our biggest challenges right now: contracts.

We want to get rid of them. For everyone. Forever. But...

Right now, we can only offer no contract broadband on CityFibre connections — huge respect to them for being the only provider allowing this from day one.

But with Openreach, we’re tied into 12 month terms ourselves. We could take the hit and offer monthly rolling to customers anyway, but if someone cancels, we’re left footing a £300+ bill per line. Multiply that by a few dozen, and as a startup, that’s a fast way to die.

And while we’re confident people will love Olilo and stick around, we know that life happens. People move. Things change. And we need to build this business sustainably if we want to stick around long enough to actually fix the industry.

We’re seeing the same issue across most altnets too. Until we’ve got hard data showing customers do stay without being locked in, most suppliers are understandably hesitant. We’re working on it. We’re fighting for it. We’ll keep updating you.

But for now - we’re being real. It sucks. We hate it too. But if we want to make the system better, we’ve got to survive it first.

That said, we are actively exploring workarounds. Our goal is to find solutions that work both for you as a customer and for us as a business, in the event that you ever do need to leave early. Nothing is off the table. We’re having the conversations, crunching the numbers, and testing out ideas behind the scenes.

This mission is far from over.

Massive thanks to the Olilo team who’ve been in the trenches building this beast.
It’s been intense.
It’s been sleepless.
It’s been beautiful.

And now… we’re nearly there.

Public launch is one step closer. Get ready.

— Liam
Chief Trouble Starter, Olilo

Last edited: Aug 10, 2025

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🧠 Weekly Update: BGP Is My Love Language

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