Does anyone know where I can find info on setting up an Linux only IPS (wireless if possible). In the county that I live in there is no broadband offer. I have been thinking about setting one up for quite a while now.
I searched google and here and did not find anything. What I want is info on what I need such as software/hardware. ALso what problems might be expected.
I bought a book off a guy that had the minimum of what is needed, but no detail. Any help is appericated.

You want to set up a Internet Service Provider ?
What services would you like to offer is the first thing you need to face against. After you know which services you would like to provide we can give you some recommendations on hardware.

The basic sevrices such as mail, dns, and hosting. Not to worried about hosting at the moment. I am really interested in the wireless aspect. I think that there is a real cost effective site to site linking here.

I work with an isp that does the wireless and the hardware we are using for it is alverion, There is a pretty steep setup price, (getting hardware on towers or setting up the towers yourself) but the wireless itsself is really stable, fast, and trouble free. Now do you want to set up fixed point wireless or like internet hotspots? Your setup will be a bit different depending on which you do. Or you could use both. The mail dns and hosting is pretty much standard linux stuff to set up. The big thing also is what software you are going to use for billing and such.

When you set everything up you should take a pretty sensitive care for security. You should take your time creating a base image for all the other hosts. This is the way I'm currently changing ALL servers at the ISP I work at from RedHat to a pretty nailed down Debian install with a lot of security features ...

Maybe you think I'm paranoid, but I just have a pretty sensitive care for security!

Maybe the Debian-ISP Mailinglist is of interest for you?

I have to agree with markus1982, if you are starting from scratch you have one really good chance at doing things right, take the time and do it, if you rush it you will make mistakes you will still be trying to fix 5 years from now. Alot of though on the frontside will save you alot till the end of time.

Kind of on the same note, you will probably want to start with several servers even though you don't need them yet, like 2 dns servers 1 to 2 mail servers at least one webserver. That way when a machine goes down it doesn't take you down.

cli_man, what type of terrain is you wireless operating in? My grandparents live in Kimberton, it's next to Valley Forge. Is your terrain anything like that (if you are familiar with it). I can't get a strait answer from any of the hardware suppliers on how the equipment will work in a town with trees. Also what frequency is your equipment operating on? Thanks

We are running different frequencies, On the backbones they are running at 5.8 ghz I believe. The backbones need line of sight. They are coming out with 900 mhz equipment that runs at a slower speed but will burn through a mile of trees. So you get a good fast backbone built with a fast backhaul, then pair that will the 900 mhz stuff to go to the clients.

Like I said above, the setup is not cheap, but if you do it right it is solid as a rock. Another thing it should be common knowledge but use backbone equipment for backbones and use the client equipment for the clients. I have seen providers that just set things up just so the work not really caring how and there service really stunk

Oh and we are dealing with a lot of trees and hills, a really big pain. What we do alot is find someone with a tall building and see if we can put a antenna up on there building if we give them free access, That is a lot cheaper than trying to put one on a cell tower or such.

Getting straight answers from hardware suppliers is not easy on wireless because it does really vary. I would go with alverion for the hardware though. And just make sure the backbones have line of sight, if you do have line of sight on them alot of them will go 25-40 miles but I don't know of a single place around here you can see that far. we are spanning about 1.5 miles per location. On backbones trees will kill you, but like I said the 900 mhz is good.