WHY NETWORKS THAT WORK AT 100 CUSTOMERS FAIL AT 750
The first 100 customers rarely break a network. It is the next 500 that expose every weak design choice that was made at the beginning. Growth does not just increase traffic. It increases change volume, support load, routing complexity, and the number of places where small problems can turn into large outages.
Many new ISPs build a network that works well at low scale. A single upstream, simple routing policies, manual configuration, and limited monitoring feel manageable. As the customer base grows, these same choices become hidden traps. A routing change affects more paths. A device failure impacts more services. A manual process becomes a bottleneck. The network starts to feel fragile instead of flexible.
Scaling safely requires intentional design from the start. Redundant upstreams reduce dependency on a single provider. Structured BGP policies help keep traffic predictable as peerings increase. Standard templates and automation reduce configuration drift across devices. Clear monitoring and correlation make it easier to see which customers and services are actually impacted during an incident.
At ITcare, we help growing ISPs design for the next phase, not just the current one. We focus on architectures that can move from 100 to 750 customers without a full rebuild. That means planning capacity, routing, and operations as a single system instead of separate tasks. When growth is supported by structure, it becomes a controlled process instead of a constant emergency.
If you are planning rapid expansion, now is the right time to test whether your network design will scale with your business, or slow it down.
