Ask Slashdot: Provisioning Internet For Condo Association? 257
An anonymous reader writes "I am on a committee to evaluate internet options for a medium sized condo association (80 units — 20 stories) in a major metropolitan area (Chicago). What options are out there? What questions should one ask of the various sales representatives? How should access be distributed within the building (wireless APs, ethernet cable). Does it make sense to provide any additional condo wide infrastructure (servers, services)? How much should it cost? How much dedicated bandwidth is required to support a community of this size?"
That's your job ... (Score:4, Interesting)
... asking those questions to both sides, and negotiating between them.
It would have been a good idea to agree a general frame of reference first - such as how much should it cost, and do people expect WiFi.
On the technical side, there are only a few interesting questions.
1) Do you need wired internet? (IPTV works much better, for example).
2) What kind of services can you reasonably provide locally?
And I think the answer is file hosting (mind the back-up) and IPTV. You could also interface with the building, for example doing CCTV recordings and controlling HVAC (maybe even remotely?), but that's a whole different can of worms.
But as I said, you have to ask these questions to the people who foot the bill, not to slashdot.
Wire for Twisted-pair Ethernet (Score:3, Interesting)
I was involved in my Condo community and they gave me permission to run Ethernet wires (CAT-5e) in the walls with some number of drops in each unit depending on the size, and you could add more via a cost per port.
We then had a single shared high-speed connection that the whole community shared via a small server in an equipment closet running Linux. This was some years ago (14 now?) that we started it, and I'm not living there anymore, but I occasionally hear from people still there who say it is still working well for them.
The cost, even with our overhead in, ended up being like 1/2 or less that of commercial connections for all the members.
We DID add wireless, but frankly, wireless for lots of users is overrated. I.e. it just doesn't get the level of service that you think it will. Just put in the ethernet cables.
Erich Boleyn
That is the best advice. (Score:4, Interesting)
Run a separate wire to each condo. If they want wireless, they can put
in their own wireless router and deal with their own problems.
The kind of "wire" depends on how the internet arrives at the condo.
A talk with your ISP or ISPs is in order.
It would be nice if the ISP was to feed each wire separately, and then ... 95% of the problems will
you are free of any headaches. Apportioning bandwidth among
tenants is a nightmare, you will get complaints, lawsuits, people
demanding their rent back, etc. And
come from only 5% of your tenants.
Several options to consider (Score:2, Interesting)
Options:
- One big switch in the basement vs one small switch on each floor.
One big switch is more expensive, but gives you line-rate between any two condo's.
This means that condo 1 (1e floor) and condo 41 (floor x) Can transfer files an Gbps without affecting anyone else.
Small switch on each floor, means the cables are shorter (you have a 100m max length to deal with)
But several high load transfers will affect others (what is the expected traffic matrix?)
- One device allowed vs multiple devices allowed.
If only 1 device is allowed each condo will probably end up installing a small router.
This can be done as part of the installation. One router (with integrated 4-8 port switch) per condo.
If multiple devices are allowed, make sure you have a redundant DHCP server with a big pool of addresses.
A condo may have multiple PC's and when you use wireless in you're condo the smartphones will also use ip-addresses.
- One IP-address for the building vs network range.
When you have only a single IP-address for the whole building (with a router in each condo?) you will have double-NAT going on.
Expect a lot of trouble with this setup if some-one uses more exotic protocols and/or legacy protocols (http will be fine)
Also check the local law. You may be required by law-enforcement to link traffic from 6 months ago to a certain condo.
With a range (/25 ==> 128 IP-addresses) You can assign a dedicated IP-address to each condo.
And still have some left for a shared wireless infrastructure.
- No redundancy vs redundancy.
If a cable between floor 5 & 6 breaks, do you want traffic to still be possible or not?
- Security
When you go with a shared DHCP server, the entire building will basically be a LAN.
Which means microsoft file-sharing protocols will work between condo's.
Do you want you're neighbors to see you're drives?
- Private server.
Do you want to be able to run a private web/mail/file server in you condo?
Questions to ask:
The above options to the members of the committee.
You must have a basic idea on what is wanted/needed before you start talking to salesman.
(It is easier for both parties + you tend to get a better deal)
Re:Don't be stupid. Hire someone. (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually installing the wiring and the equipment to run this operation really isn't that bad (as long as you get some professional advice). The trouble is managing the service and maintaining it. Have you tried reaching out to established ISPs to see if they will manage this for you and draw a fat pipe to your building in exchange for something (minimum user guarantee or the primary ISP for the tenants or a required connection as part of condo fees)? I have seen local ISPs draw a line to condo and office buildings and then sell portions of that line and manage the system. I have also seen condo buildings have a dedicated satellite connection (cable tv) and only offer that single satellite provider service to tenants.
From the point of view of the Network Engineer (Score:2, Interesting)
I work for an ISP that specializes in MDU offerings. I've seen a lot of successful deployments, and have torn out a lot of horrible deployments.
Don't do a wireless distribution. The majority of Tenants will have wireless routers and it will cause a lot of noise and issues. Optimal and scalable would be something like fiber between floors and Cat-5/6 to the units. However budget / infrastructure can be limiting. Cable and DSL are viable options, as long as the head-end is on location.
Ask the company how they intend prevent unit A from accessing the resources of unit B.
Make sure that they do bandwidth shaping on location, and that it is done per unit.
It doesn't make sense to add other services.
Dedicated bandwidth really depends on what the HOA members want. A good oversubscription is 10:1 so if 80 units want 10mpbs, 80mbps dedicated should be sufficient. Have the companies provide some sort of SLA on the bandwidth of the main feed and individual units. It's hard to predict how many tenants watch Netflix back-to-back, until the network is in place.
I may be biased, but I would stear clear of the major players (Time Warner, Comcast, CenturyLink, etc), and go with a local company. You'll get better service, and your solution will be customized to your complex. I would imagine you have a property management company, ask them for reccomendations.
Re:No offense, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
On the other hand, a pooling of resources and building-wide network makes sense for many reasons...
Having lots of different individual wireless networks in a small space causes congestion, a single centrally controlled one is far more efficient, and if there are any public areas in the development this could cover those too.
Depending how small the units are, having a central area where users can install noisy devices like a NAS (and not have to listen to it while you sleep) could be useful.
A building wide network has other uses, for instance door access systems, CCTV, access to shared resources such as a satellite dish etc.
There's no reason to have only a single internet connection, several could be used and load balanced while also providing some redundancy - depending on whats available in the area.
Re:Don't be stupid. Hire someone. (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem with cisco certified people and partners, is that they will push cisco products regardless of wether they are best value for the job... Same for any other vendor cert, all designed to sell products rather than provide a quality service.
For example, I built several networks recently using hp switches because they came in considerably cheaper than cisco, while still providing the required functionality.
I would much rather use a vendor-neutral organisation.
Re:No offense, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't have anything against asking specific, directed questions about a well-documented issue. But the article submitter wants ALL the answers on a cloudy issue that hasn't been detailed.
Analogy: "I have to buy a car for my wife, here's several questions about how the car should be: Headlights? Tires? Engine? Consumption? Color?"
The questions and details are crap, so the answers would be crap too.
Re:I disagree (Score:4, Interesting)
So you're saying that a decent capacity ethernet connected to the internet via redundant pairs of multimode fiber, which is what's installed in all the apartment houses in the area, is as slow as the loop that many cable ISP's use? Wrong...
Let's just put this out there: I opted for the 100Mb/s up and down service(and am currently trying to see if I can justify the cost of the gigabit service). In an area with a bit over 600 apartments, my ISP has 495 customers. Even during prime time, I can use my connection to its fullest, downloading ISO's, updating games, reaching 11.5MB/s practical speed. I can also upload at that speed.
The difference is, here in Sweden, ISP's don't oversubscribe like they do in the US. You could have that in the US too, if more people started working together and negotiating as a group, to counter the abuse from the big ISP's/telcos.
As the owner of an apartment building... (Score:2, Interesting)
I own an apartment building with 31 units. When I bought the place, it was a disaster. Coax cables nailed to the walls of the hallways and apartments, dish network units on the side of the building, etc. Was horrible. I just finished a rehab of it, and here is what I did:
Basement tech cage. In the basement we have a 10x10 tech room. FIOS, RCN and ComCast all run in to the system (Dish will be installing a building-wide system to feed into this as well, but thats been a cluster f**k), each having their own apartment building box in the cage. From that, we have a building distribution system. From the basement tech cage, we have 6 eathernet, 4 coax and 2 fibers going up to each units utility closet.
The blue eathernet is for telephone service. Pair 1 is for the building-wide pbx system (911, front door, etc). Pairs 2-4 are for resident phone services from any of the authorized providers.
The red internet is the buildings network, and that supports the heating system controls, hallway cameras, fire alarm, etc.
The Yellow cable is for the VLAN return (see building wide wifi)
The green, orange and pink cables are for resident services, again from any of our providers.
The two fiber cables are currently unused, but were not that much to put in, and does a bit to future proof us.
The Blue Coax is the residents cable TV service.
The Red Coax is the buildings CCTV system as well as broadcast HDTV (we get sucky local reception, so we improved it by pulling the channels centrally and distributing them on our own CATV system).
Green and yellow coax are spares/future use.
All of that runs to a utility closet in each unit. That closet has the units water shut-offs, HVAC control box, electrical panel, and is where we home-run all of the units coax and eathernet. We provide each unit with a 16 port switch, a dumb phone wiring unit (looks like a switch, supports 4 lines and 8 extensions as dumb phones), and a coax distribution box - all mounted on a small rack, with space and plugs to put NAS drives, Ooma boxes and the like.
We do offer residents email addresses on our domain, and we do provide free internet to the 2 low-income units.
As for Wifi, what we did was install a building-wide wifi network, and set it up so that residents had to register the MAC address of their equipment on a website. We use VLANS to isolate the users and send them back to their apartment networks. Unregistered equipment is on our open wifi network, which is port and url limited (no youtube/hulu/etc, and only port 80)
Once a year, we collect rate information from the 3 providers and send it out to all residents. We have room in our cage for 1-2 additional providers if need be.
Works really well for us, keeps most of the equipment out of the residences, the locked cage, along with the room setup and CLEAR labeling of what is owned by the building (not to mention a contract with each cable co about having to pay for damage to our system) keeps the cable people from hacking at things, and everything operates well (at least, no problems in the last 4 months since the new system went on-line)
Hope this is helpful.