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A Wireless Network for a 4-Story Apt. Building?
zzzreyes asks: "I live in a 4 storey building, and pretty much everyone in this building is into gaming and computers. I have just received, through the death of a great aunt, about $7,000. I want to know how and what I should buy, to provide wireless access through out the whole building, so we can all share one connection. There are 6 double-room apartments on each side, and we only have four floors. I'll hopefully have access to the elevator shaft, in case I need it. Will $7,000 be enough?" How cheaply could you do something like this, assuming you had access to much of the building? What would be the best way to set up the access points to guarantee the best coverage for the whole building?
Shouldn't an 802.11g AP do the trick for around $100? I can't imagine spending much more than that for the sake of my neighbors... Maybe a repeater on every other floor would be the worst case scenario...
Capable of 5 modes of operation, work with external attenns. I would probably think 4 or 8 would cover most of the area.
You will need access hardware from/for your ISP (e.g. cable modem, DSL modem, etc. Usually Most likely you will need at least one wireless AP for each floor. Depending on the thickness of walls and size of the building, multiple APs might be necessary. Budget around $100 (rough number) per AP for consumer grade equipment, which is all you probably need. Don't forget to put each AP on a different wireless channel - and stagger the channels to minimize frequency overlap (e.g. Floor 1: Channel 1, Floor 2: Channel 9, Floor 3: Channel 4, Floor 4: Channel 11).
You probably need a NAT since you will have many people needing IP addresses, unless you want to get a subnet prefix from your ISP (at $7k that isn't likely). So at least one NAT box is needed.
If you are comfortable with Linux networking, take a look at a Linksys WR54G as described here - one of these on each floor would allow you to have a cheap AP + detailed control of banwidth (i.e. make sure that no one guy hogs all your Internet connection).
At the access point you will need to put that NAT mentioned above, plus a switch for between floors. The Linksys could act as both and is a cheap solution. If Linux isn't your bag, then a decent low end (SOHO router) such as a D-Link DFL-300 would be a good thing (with built-in firewall to boot, which would help).
In terms of wiring, get at least CAT 5 cable run ("CAT 6" is even better) to every floor. A separate wire to every floor, all culminating in the basement (or wherever your Internet access is) gives a measure of reliability in case of a wire fault or router fault on one floor. A patch panel at the termination point of all the wires is a good idea.
Expect to spend a large amount of the money on the labor for getting the wiring done. Professional cable pullers can charge high 2 digits to 3 digits/hour. If you hire a professional company to do the whole thing including picking equipment, setting it up, etc., then $7k isn't near enough.
Simple suggestions..
1 - take a laptop around and see how signal strength is..
2 - block all outside access via mac address restrictions and encryption.
3 - expect some boob to start dling kiddy porn and get you in trouble with your isp and have your connection cut off... ( remember most AUP's prohibit this with out a business account )
4 - good luck not getting sued.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I just checked out the product for a magazine review I'm writing (checked out means I talked to the marketing reps). They have a cool distributed solution where you deploy $300 thin access points that do 802.11b/g all over the place (like one in every apartment, and run normal Cat5 wire back to a central switch that automatically configures the APs for best channel coverage/etc. Single point of configuration, saturation coverage, and they said a small installation could be done for $5,000. You can even put in the building plans into their software and it tells you where to put the APs.
With WDS you could implement a wireless "backbone" with 4+ access points, one (or more) per floor. Then one access point would connect to a router box which would in turn be connected to your broadband link.
Yeah, we're on the same page, I was including the cost of a handful of access cards for the PCs being used in the price.
I'd run the cable to a central switch and have an access point on each floor. This setup will work well for lan games, but if you're all trying to do online gaming, you better have a decent connection.
I know this part doesn't answer your question, but I'd agree with others. Invest the money, buy a house, pay off debt or do something you wouldn't otherwise get a chance to do.
I have no
It shouldn't cost anyplace nearly that much money. For that much, you could probably get the whole place wired. Gaming isn't going to be a good thing for wireless, anyhow. But if you insist on doing something wireless, what I'd suggest would be to look for some powerful 802.11g gear (Just top-of-the-line consumer stuff, nothing pro level) and just put one unit on each floor in as central a location as you can manage. It'll be hard to work out the specifics, but I can't imagine it taking more than one unit per floor unless the rooms with computers are long distances from eachother.
Now what I'd really suggest would be to have it wired. This may be something to discuss with the landlord and it wouldn't even be that tough to do, in some cases. You could possibly even run wired connections through the same lines the cable goes.
But if wireless is truly the only option you want, and you can get access to the elevator shaft my suggestion would be to run a 100Mbit line into the shaft to a switch, then drop a potent WAP at each floor level on seperate channels and names, that way you're not sharing all the bandwidth for all the floors. Linksys WAP11's would be good for this as you can hack them to get a little more power.
My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
get 2 Catalyst 2900 off ebay as you backbone (about 250$USD each)
then a WAP per 3 appartement (being generous here 2 per floor could be well enough depending on the materials used to make the walls) that can do repeating
so 16 D-Link waps at about 50$ each that's 800$USD
then get 3 box of 1000' cat5e cable , say 70$ each = 210$
then maybe 1 or 2 computers to provide some services like firewall/nat dhcp , maybe a mail and web server , and a squid transparent proxy (350$ each for something descent)
if you don't count your time that's just 2200$
and you've got way more than you'll really need
for 7 grand, i would look at just cabling it instead, personally. 1000' spool of cat5e should run you no more than 40 bucks, ends are usually about 30-40 bucks for a bag of 100. as far as the internet goes, unless you get something that has good upstream in addition to great downstream, the internet is going to seem like a dog. also if you have ppl who hog it with things like kazaa, then its going to feel slower than dialup for everyone else. you are definately going to want to look at some kind of traffic shaping/firewall/nat box.
> What kind of donut should I buy tomorrow?
I'd recommend a cruller.
There are 0x40000000 types of people: those who understand 32-bit IEEE 754 floating point, and those who don't.
Speakeasy.net
They let you share bandwidth. You sign yourself as accountable so you might want to create a legal entity to hide behind (corporation or nonprofit).
They'll even take care of the "billing" for you. You could charge everyone actual-cost, with a higher bill for the guy who consistently "forgets" to turn off P2P filesharing to/from the outside..
What you need to do is choose between 802.11B and 802.11G (I'd probably go B for what you have in mind). Purchase the following:
an access point (not a router, an access point)
a pcmcia or usb 802.11b adapter
an omni-directional, high gain antenna for the AP (7-9dbi, slotted waveguide, vertical colinear array, etc)
Install the USB/PCMCIA adapter in a notebook, and start experimenting with access point/antenna locations on each floor. The Access point does not need to be connected to an ethernet drop to test signal strength. Remember that the omni antenna have a horizontal donut shaped radiation pattern, so you need to mount it pretty close to vertical for your tests.
I suspect that you will need 2 AP's per floor, so your cost should look like this (assuming you do all the work):
Internet Connection: ??
8xAccess Points - Dlink DWL-900+: $512 (newegg)
2000' cat 5 pvc cable: $70 (computergate)
16 port switch - DLink DSS16+: $75 (newegg)
Surface mount cat 5 boxes, 3x4 port boxes at switch end, 20 patch cables: $200 (computergate)
Total should be less than $900
The biggest problem you are likely to face is getting power to the Access Points. Power Over Ethernet can be a little bit of a pain to set up if you are now electronically inclined, and building code can be your enemy in terms of running extension cords or additional outlet boxes.
Also remember that there are special code requirements for running any type of cables through a vertical shaft like the elevator shaft. If there is an existing conduit running vertically for phone cabling, that is your best bet.
Also/FYI: my experience is that cheap patch panel antennas are useless. The two I have purchased do not outperform a standard dipole.
Dean
I'd have to agree. If you lay good copper, you'll get better speeds anyhow, if you're using the 2.4GHz band, every time around dinner there'll magically be no speed in the network thanks to Mr Microwave. 7K would easily cover all your infrastructure, you could even slurge on a sweet intranet games/file server ;)
The backbone of a wireless network is wired. Let's get that point out first in the discussion.
We don't want the wireless access points speaking to each other by wireless... that's simply going to be too much use of the limited RF space, and we have to assume that people are going to want to use 2.4 GHz phones so we won't have all that RF to ourselves...
My best bet would be a wireless access point on each of the four floors as close to the center of the building as you can place it, and then have those four access points have a wire all leading to a central 100mps switch that's placed wherever you can put it.
The access points should be configured to not to speak directly to each other over RF, that's what the wires are for. Therefore, all the RF bandwidth is reserved for users, and hopefully they'll be running on the lowest power settings possible to speak to the AP on their floor and therefore with the lowest RF noise...
Keep in mind that if you set up this network, everyone and I mean everyone is going to be calling you whenever the internet connection is down or the network isnt working. Get ready for tech support apartment building.
Geez, I just hope we're not too late -- questions like this tend to get answered by shysters with "well, that's cutting it close, but I'll see what we can do."
I have an 802.11g (Apple Airport Extreme if anyone cares) access point in my basement, in an electrical closet. I'm up on the second floor, on the other side of the house, and get excellent signal strength.
Now, that's only three floors, and my house isn't huge. If your four-story building is large, you should still be fine dropping a single access point in the middle of the second or third floor, assuming you have a cable drop at that location.
Worst case, you need two access points, and with the Airport, they can daisy chain one to the other -- one access point can use another access point for...access. I don't know about other brands.
I think you should setup a big wireless network around the building. Encrypt it with modest protection (in case any of those tenants are 1337 h4x0rz) and charge for access.
Get a powerful Ethernet-based router that can filter traffic by MAC address. Register each tenant's card for billing purposes.
This way you can monitor traffic by MAC address, to see who is using the most bandwidth. Again, be prepared to spend a couple hundred dollars on a routerthat can handle this amount of traffic. Get a fat connection. I'd recommend (3 x T-1). If the bandwidth gets out of hand, get a packet shaper, or filter directly on the router.
Use the 802.11g, it is almost as fast as 100Mbps Ethernet and should be good for many years to come. Ethernet lasted 30 years and it's still a very viable solution for networking. 95% of the public won't need anything faster than 100mbps for a long long time. Many could still do just fine with 10Mbps.
In addition, it sounds like the questioner has permission of the building owner to use the elevator shaft. He probably doesn't have permission to drill holes in the walls/ceilings/floors and install conduit which he would need to do something like this. -Kevin
I really didnt want to talk abuout this since some cryingpants above made a big deal out of it. She was worth close to 35Million. I got that money because I attended the funeral, everyone that attended got at least 7g. She is the one that bought me my first computer and I know she would love it if spent it in technology and everyone can enjoy something that she has left behind as part of her legacy. Anyhow, I know that I dont have to use the whole 7G but if I can buy everything top of the line and make sure it is as zero fault tolerance as it can be, I will be happy. If this offends you, sure, cry, but dont post. I don't need to use to pay bills or buy a house, thanks for the idea, I want to build something in memory of her and more importantly in memory of what I will remember her for. She introduced me to technology!
I laughed out loud when this guy asked if $7000 was enough to network a three story building. I helped build a wired network in a similar building, and we didn't even spend $200 -- which included an expensive crimping tool that's nice to have anyway. Of course it would have added about $500 to do it wireless (assuming you need three WEPs) and maybe another $1,000 if we'd had to buy wireless NICs for everybody (all of the comptuers in the building, most of which were Macs, already had wired NICs) but that's still a long way from $7000.
But a system, any system, needs to be maintained! I got involved in this project because a non-techie friend asked me to help out. My first advice to him was not to try to sign up everybody in the building right off the bat. Instead, they should start with the two households minimum (my friend didn't live in the same apartment as the DSL connection) and then expand it slowly. In the event, I think he decided that it wasn't worth the hastle to have that many more people involved.
The world of wireless is moving away from the unmanagable Fat AP model purveyed by Best Buy networks and even Cisco. The new kids in town are pushing centralized wireless with built in RF Site Survey tools, authentication, firewalls, IDS's and hardware-based encryption. The APs are really just dumb radios that download their configs from the switch when it boots. If you want some big boy toys (that will fit into your budget) take a look at Aruba Networks. We have used them in many apartment buildings and couldn't be any happier.
Or you could get a dictionary.
A story is words in a book. A storey is a floor of a building.
Americans have been misspelling so many words for so long they think everyone else is wrong now, and it's time to tell the English how to speak english.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
At the Wireless ISP I work at, we use almost exclusively for client-side links, YDI Etherant IIs. They're great. The radio-card is integrated right into the antenna, which drastically increases Signal to Noise ratio. What most people forget is that the coaxial cable from their radiocard to their (c)antenna is a source of loss and interference. I highly recommend YDI because they take this into account.
What you're looking for would be this it's the same thing, but would provide the access point. One could probably do it, but I'd put my money on two (seeing as how we don't know how thick and large the building is). If you put one at the top of the building in a corner facing diagnonally down, and another facing the opposite way tilted up, this will be MORE than enough coverage. From here, you would just have to plug the CAT-5 coming out the back into DSL routers which would then plug into your DSL/cable connection, and you're good to go.
-GrymOkay, I will assume you truely want a wireless network despite the good advice voiced by others.
Since you failed to include any information like apartment building footage, a map/blueprint with your location marked, etc., this will be a general approach that assumes you don't want to leave anything behind when you move out eventually.
1) Buy a WiFi card and an access point (AP) from your favorite company, but make sure it is at least 802.11g (D-Link comes to mind, since they claim near "wirespeed" encryption.
2) Setup your AP (with WEP, largest key available!) in your room (which hopefully is near the middle of the building), and then walk around and see what your signal looks like. Make a rough map of signal strength and note any shadows. While you are at it, you might see if anyone else has their own WiFi already. (You might be able to enlist them in your endeavor!)
3) Decide if you think you need to upgrade the AP's antenna to a larger "omnidirectional" antenna (6db or so. Anything larger than about 8db probably is a directional antenna) so you can reach the furthest recesses of the building.
4) Build a Linix box that firewalls your ISP line, any wire-based Lan you might have, and the wireless AP! You need to protect yourself, or one of you new "friends" will hack you.
4b) (optional) Setup an open source RADIUS server on the box and point the AP to it for authentication that is harder to break than MAC filtering + WEP.
5) Decide which services you will let go through the wireless. Traffic shape (QOS) anything that might get abused but you still want to let through anyway. Make sure to include any game ports you plan to use.
6) Decide how much of your ISP bandwith you want to let the wireless people have, and traffic-shape the interface card.
7) invite a select few of your neighbors to try out the system (give them the shared WEP key or a Radius login)
8) After you get their feedback and see how your network handles the load, decide if you still want to go through with telling everybody.
Costs:
~$300 AP + couple of nicks from D-Link
~$100 New antenna for AP to boost range
~$400 linux box + 3 NICs
$??? Your labor cost to set this all up
If you find that the above single AP setup is not sufficient, I respectfully suggest you give up as a more complex setup is beyond a simple slashdot post. Hire a professional.
- D
Check out the building's construction before you spend money on wireless. If it uses metal studs it could be that each appartment is a Faraday cage. If you need a cabled backbone and lots of repeaters to get around that, it's going to push the cost way up.
Also borrow some equipment and test for dead zones and interference problems before you get too involved. A careful survey beforehand can avoid getting into a moneypit situation.
If you buy used or refurbished equipment, chances are that you'll be able to resell it with very little loss when that time comes around.
The expensive part is going to be getting the building on the internet. You're going to need something like a 1.5Mbit business SDSL or T-1 with 64 or so IPs and a SLA. This is probably going to wind up being around $600-$800/mo depending on your provider.
If you really want to honor her memory, why not donate the money to a school (college or private HS). Then you can have a nice plaque with her name on it put up in the computer lab. That's a lot better way to honor someone's memory than throwing a year-long LAN party for your neighbors. Networking your building, while a fun geek project, probably isn't the best way to honor her memory. If you want to do that, get your neighbors to pitch in (labor, $, or equipment) and make it a community project.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Is your building mostly drywall? or concrete? Wireless does NOT like to penetrate concrete. 2 walls tops. A good 6DBI+ antenna will go through about 5-6 drywall for about 200 feet with a signal strength you can call "OK". If you mostly have open spaces, with insulated walls, one big antenna can reach about 400+feet with good WiFi cards.
A site survey needs to take place in your building. Otherwise you will probably purchase an antenna that you will not use. There are many flavors of antennas. 2.4Ghz - 5Ghz Wall mount, Ceiling mount. Directional & omnidirectional with different strengths. Most places will choose a directional 6-12DBI antenna on the far wall/corner to cover a floor. Depending on distance you may need a repeater or two.
I would recomend the Cisco Aironet AP with an antenna that would best fit your need. 4 Floors = 4 AP's w/Antennas which would probably be about $4,000. That does not count good client WNIC's for about $100-140/piece.
If you want security you are going to need to setup a server, and maintain it. Then if you want to use Cisco LEAP, you will have to setup a RADIUS server that supports LEAP. I recomend FreeRadius. Downside is that all client NICS must be Cisco for this to work. If this is not what you had in mind, and want cross-vendor support without PKI infrastucture which is a pain in the ass to maintain without smartcards, then install an EAP-TTLS server for PEAP authentication. All of this will require somebody with training to setup, as you will run into a lot of snags.
In any event, you have to support user / password requests from your tenants and any potential problems.
I notice everyone else can only tell you what else to do - so as a REAL geek, here's some answers:
a freenet.org/content/hillshub.htmlx .net/~mike/projects/waveguide/
:-)
1. Do it all with wireless - if the only wires involved are the plug pack to the nearest power point, it is no different to the clock-radio or television when it comes to taking it with you when you leave.
2. Use access points that take PCMCIA cards to do the actual wireless stuff. You can then take out the card that comes with it and install a long range card, like one of the 200mw Senao cards. Apart from the higher output, they are also more sensitive on the receive side.
3. If you are the handyman type, you can build an antenna from scratch (the slotted waveguide I am thinking of can also be bought pre-built). In western Australia we have a wireless group that has gotten 30km (about 19miles) line-of-sight between two of these - and they are NOT directional. You may be able to use just one access point with this and the standard antennas on the clients.
4. Prefer client cards that take an external whip, rather than relying on the internal antennas that are built into most pcmcia cards. This may not be necessary in all cases, but use them where it is convenient.
Some places to start looking:
http://www.wafreenet.org/
http://www.w
http://www.nar
The slotted waveguide in the second link is a 180 degree version - but you can get (or make) a 360 degree version.
Retail on these is about $600 australian.
If you are lucky, one of these on the edge of the 2nd or 3rd floor might cover the building - but probably better to have one at each side of the building, or maybe a 360degree installed in the middle - you'll have to experiment. (you might need one for each floor, or one in each corridor or something). The right gear WILL punch through walls, but not that well (I have a high powered card with small home made whip antenna reaching through two layers of thick earth wall and a brick wall to a normal 30mw access point with its standard 6" whip. the signal is poor, but it's there. My brother-in-law's 30mw card can get through one brick and one earth wall to the access point)
Also make sure your access points can operate as a wireless backbone (if you need more than one). If you can avoid cables through the building you don't need permission, and they can't stop you taking the gear when you leave.
Once you have it up and running, odds are you will be able to re-coup some of the expense from the users if you want (I know how hard it is to get people to invest in something that might work, as opposed to something that is working). That would mean you'll have to leave it there when you leave, but you will also have most of your money back, and can go spend it on networking your next residence
As for all the people that blasted him for wasting money on a rented property - did anyone stop to think he might be a student, or not want to be stuck with a fixed asset for some other reason? Perhaps he is employed in that city for a couple of years, and it's pointless buying a house when he knows he will have to sell it before the value goes up enough to cover the associated fees.
Much of the time, your rent will be cheaper than what you pay on a mortgage . . .
That's not exactly true. A mortgage just covers the cost of the property. You rent a property that someone else owns outright (not likely if it's an apartment), or they are paying a mortgage. So your rent is covering their mortgage + building insurance (and flood insurance near the coast) + property taxes + landscaping (frequently).
So for a given piece of property, it's a pretty safe assumption that strictly speaking, the mortgage would cost less. But then you've got multiple other bills on top of the mortgage to foot now.
A lot of people talk about rent as if it is "wasted money." That's not at all true, most of the time.
I would agree with your statement if the "most of the time" were changed to every now and then, or "rarely"
I bought a condo a couple years ago. with a 15 year mortgage, and throwing some extra principle in the payment, I'm starting off with a 50/50 split between interest and principle. So i've socked away a little cash in equity. Now during this same period of time, the appraised value of my condo has come close to doubling, which blew my mind when I found that out. I've "made" a lot more money through appreciation than I have actually paying down my loan.
Now doubling in price in just a couple years (almost 3) is pretty incredible, and has a lot to do with the fact that interest rates are so low. So when things finally settle down, and the fed finally starts fearing inflation... interest rates will climb back up, savings accounts will have meaning again, and the value of my condo will probably drop in appraised value, but even if things got really bad, and it dropped all the way back down to the price I bought it for, I still have the principle that I've paid off.
Buying a house is not a guaranteed win... if somebody were to buy my condo at it's current value, and the fed raised interest rates the week after, they'd probably be stuck with the place for a few years.
But it's pretty easy to get recent sales information for properties in a given neighborhood. And it's not too difficult to look at a neighborhood and imagine whether or not it could turn into a crack warehouse in a few years.
And house values make a whole lot more sense in terms of rationality than the stock market does. Right now I think my condo is over valued, but definitely worth more now than when I bought it.
One word. Equity.
a mortgage builds equity, renting is throwing your money away. Buy less house than you can afford. Get a 30-year mortgage and pay it off in 10-15 years. You'll save alot of that money, and not have thrown it away in interest or rent.
I don't know what the hell everyone's problem is... I guess they expect everyone to be as selfish as they are.
Anyway... for 7K I'd bet you could have this done professionally but if I were going to try it myself, I'd get two or 3 access points (bridges), install them on one floor and arrange them so I get the best coverage. Then I'd duplicate that arrangement on every floor. Assuming I'm going to maintain the wired internet connection, I'd place the WLAN behind a NAT router running DHCP. I'd put my own network behind another router/firewall, adjacent to the WLAN. I'd keep the WLAN open and tell everyone they are on their own as far as security goes and I would provide no support other than keeping the internet connection up and keeping the APs functional. It should be pretty much maintenance free once it's running.
The hardest and possibly most expensive part will be running cables to all the access points. Depending on how your building is constructed you may need more access points.
Good luck.
We have an 8 or 9 story condo complex we do this in. On the roof, we have two radios - one to bring the connection in from our wireless WAN, and one going into a roof-mounted antenna. That antenna is specifically designed for this type of application. It's a cross polarized 180 degree panel antenna. We have a 250mw amplifier sitting between that and a Cisco 340 series AP. About 1/2 way down in one of the customers condos we have a repeater to help the guys in the lower apartments. It works very well. For your application, if you use a low power amplifer (higher power ones may be illegal based on the FCC's ISM-band regulation) and the right antenna, you can probably do this for under $1,000.
If it is easy to run cable between floors and you don't mind some significant labor, a cheap AP on each floor with a good antenna will do very well too. Make sure to pay close attention to your channel plan when installing multiple AP's. Also, never use the built in omni antennas. You can get 6dbi - 8dbi patch antennas for very cheap. Only get enough spread (120-180 degrees I imagine) to cover the area you need to. With 4 floors, I don't see you needing more than one or two access points. A lot of this depends on the building itself. If its a newer building, with the materials used, signal is likely to travel farther.
www.hyperlinktech.com has a very good selection of antennas. We get a number of the ones we use from here. Their tech staff can probably help you with layout and design as well. I don't work for them, I've just had good experience in the past with them.
Another thing to consider is the client cards. Most off the shelf cards have cheap internal antennas and are low power. The Cisco cards we use are 100mw cards.
Having a powerful card for the clients will help quite a bit too. The Cisco 350 series cards are 100mw cards, which is double or more most cheap off-the-shelf cards. You will pay a premium, but you'll have a lot less phone calls from your users about signal dropping out.
Another solution we haven't tried is to actually locate the access point and antenna outside the building, like where the dumpsters are, and focus the signal in from the side through the windows. A WISP friend of ours has done this in a few areas, and has had very good luck covering buildings much larger than yours with just two AP's and sector antennas.
Some people have suggested going with the "G" standard. Considering you are not doing anything that has super high bandwidth use, I would recommend against it. The lower the bandwidth, the better the range. Most all of the access points in our wireless system (well over 50) are running at 5.5mb, or even 2mb. You will have to test and see what works best in your system.
And finally, as many have also said, are you sure you want to do this? Three years ago, my father and I started a wireless ISP as a hobby. We never anticipated getting as big as we have. Trust me when I say it will end up being less of a hobby and more of a job. Even a small network like that will take maintenance, and you will end up doing tech support for the users in the building. If you do move forward, don't spend all of that money. Have the other users and perhaps even the landlord subsidize some of it. You are providing a marketable service that would make your building stand out over others. Don't give that additional marketing power to the landlord for free! Have EVERYTHING down on paper before starting the install. If the equipment is mounted on the landlord's building, there's no other way to prove that it is yours.
Matt
for 48 apartments? multiple t'1 could easily handle the load, or assuming several of them run file servers, a single t3 could still easily do it - an oc3 would be overkill and a huge waste of money
Per building codes, NOTHING is allowed in the elevator shafts or machine rooms except items that directly service the elevator.
Even if the landlord "allows" you to run wire up the elevator shaft, if an elevator inspector finds it, it will surely be YOUR wallet the fine money comes from - there goes that $7k.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson