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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?
Seriously.
if everybody shares the same connection, online gaming will suck, unless you have an OC3
Buy stock in Ask Jeeves, man!
No.. seriously.. put it somewhere and save it. If you want, you could buy a Linksys WAP and a Linksys signal booster and a big antenna and that might work and might run you a couple hundred bucks.
With so few and so fixed appartments I recommend you set up ethernet connections to a common box. Less than 1K total cost. Then set that box to whatever external connectio you like (if you like to).
--
FreeNET user? Comfortable with the adverse selection?
I applaud your noble effort. However, I must warn you. Once you take responsibility for setting up this network, everytime something goes wrong, you will be the first person the tenants come to for help. Even though it sounds like your neighbours are computer oriented, I guarantee you will be swamped with more problems than you bargained for.
Good luck.
If you really can get to all the apartments, why not put an ethernet drop into each one? Let people install their own wifi points if they want them.
Why are you subsidising the whole cost of the installation?
If all the people in your building want to get wireless, they should chip in, shouldn't they?
On the techical part, I don't know, but I think $7000 should be MORE than enough to get the whole thing running in all the building.
Again, it's none of my business, but it is my personal suggestion not to be so eager in spending so much money like that. Unless you REALLy want to play with those guys. Who's going to pay for the fixed internet connection fees later?
Don't waste this gift on crap. Your great aunt left it to you, not your apartment building. Buy a car, pay off some debt, invest it in a managed fund - do something useful with it rather than waste it on people who won't even say thank you.
All in all I agree with the other posters. Save your $$ and let your neighbors buy their own access!
Ok, you say apartment so I'm assuming rental to begin with, don't bother! Take your $7,000 and use it for a downpayment for a house of your own, interest rates are low right now and you are much better off paying a mortgage of your own rather than someone elses for them.
Now, if it's a condo, check the D-Link DWL-900AP+ access points out, they will run in repeater mode so you could share probably get away with doing it with 2-4 units spread around the top floors.
The big question will be your gateway, with a dozen apartments you could all share a T1 line easy enough but there are monthly costs and likely be the same or more than cable/dsl alternatives and really that's only if all apartments sign up and keep paying.
If you are renting, let the landlord build this type of "service" rather than wasting your own money, put it to better use, just buy 1 AP and whomever can see it can link up.
Totally.
Go to a dumpster at some IT company, get a load of cable, buy some cheap router/hub boxes for $20 - put the cables under the carpets - bish bosh jobs a good'n , and you have $6900 odd left to invest in
something really positive.
I did what I describe above in my apartment block back in 98. It worked fine, we all had a great time gaming until everyone started fighting over who fragged who with what cheat.
I was pissed off that it cost me about fuck all for the routers and caused so much trouble, imagine how you will feel if you blow 7K.
I used to work as a property manager for a number of different properties spread out through the city, with a number of different owners.
From that point of view, DON'T DO IT!
Consider:
1) You have to get permission to do any wiring and you'll be running wires of some type (power or CAT5) through the building, which will require the owner's permission.
2) You can spend all that and have a great time, but the landlord can decide to sell the building at any time, and you may suddenly find out you have to leave either at the end of your lease term or with as little as 30 or 60 days notice.
3) How do you know, after doing all that work, that you'll get to take the equipment with you when you leave?
4) Why are you investing in a building you are only renting? (You have no way of knowing that, right or wrong, you'll be able to take the equipment with you when you leave!)
Basically, you don't know how much longer you'll be living there and a number of things could result in an early termination of the lease, or other problem. While the equipment is yours, there are a number of ways the owner can keep you from taking it. Hell, the owner could even sue you for putting it in.
As a property manager, my job was 1) Protect the property owner from any harm or damage (not just physical) (that includes the property itself), and AFTER THAT, 2) Protect the tenant from harm (also not only physical), but this comes under #1 because anything that hurts the tenant could result in a suit or other harm to the owner, including inappropriate or illegal actions of the owner that hurt the tenant.
In such a role, I can tell you that I, and almost every property owner I have either known through networking, or worked with, would not want a tenant, no matter what they know about computers, crawling through a building and installing equipment the OWNER doesn't fully understand. And if an owner allowed it, you have no way to be sure they'll let you keep it later, or even allow it to continue to operate.
The owner also has to consider what could happen if a building inspector came through and you had violated a law you weren't aware of.
Maybe your landlord allows this. That doesn't mean you'll stay there long enough to make it worth while, or that you can keep the equipment later. It's like digging for gold in someone else's mine when, at any minute, they can walk in and say, "I've changed my mind. You can't keep the gold. It's all mine." Would you do that? Most likely not. Doing this is the same thing.
Be wise. Invest in something you'll have for a long time or that is yours, like a car, or a house downpayment, or even a cruise to an exotic location.
Oh, and I live in the US, so I don't know laws in other countries, but you've still got to face the fact that what you do may benefit you for only a short term and could benefit the owner for years.
(Oh, your lease is solid, you say? Check. I saw buildings bought and sold all the time -- sometimes tenants had till the end of the lease to move out, sometimes only 60 days. There are too many variables to be sure you will stay for years in an apartment.)
"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 would suggest putting that $7k towards your retirement. Invest it in a solid fund or IRA. This would be much wiser than blowing it on a technology that will be outdated in a couple of years.
wire it. Wireless doesnt handle a pile of users very well, espcially bandwidth suckers like gamers and what not. 100 meg ethernet is cheap, extremely reliable, and has a lot more bandwidth to boot .
Keep in mind that wireless is x mbps SHARED, like the old ethernet hubs were, as compared to standard switched ethernet, which gives each port (and user) dedicated bandwidth.
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
I agree, let everyone pay for it, unless you want to be declared the first geek-saint. I lived in an appartment I I convinced the owner to put UTP in every room. I put a hub in the basement and provided internet access to my 7 neighbours for 5 Euros per month. Since my cable ISP had no download limit, only a 80kb/sec bandwith limitation (I prefer that over a 500kb/sec with 10GB dowload/month), I had no worries. Only a few people overloaded the network but I wrote a script called ditchthebitch.sh to take care of that.
Anyway, UTP is preferred over WiFi because of security reasons (tapping ito a cable is quite harder). Also, I have wireless and watching a movie over an NFS mount is impossible, with UTP at 10mbps it is no problem. So I guess for gaming wireless would be too laggy, too.
The only problem I had was nobody wanted to play against me. I played Quake against my neighbour once and I won with 30/-1. So I advice you to let the others win the first time..
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
be sure you understand your liability.
Like if a neighbor downloads too much,
or uploads to Kazaa, or hosts a game server,
does your service provider cut you off?
Good luck... sounds like a useful project!
Cheers, Joel
Speakeasy will allow you to share your bandwidth. However, you remain responsible for it.
Save your $$ and let your neighbors buy their own access!
Or you can become an administrator in Speakeasy's NetShare program. Everyone pays the price you specify to Speakeasy (minimum $20/month), Speakeasy provides email and newsgroup access, and credits half of their monthly fee to your account.
You can now get 3.0 Mbit downstream, 768 Kbit upstream with 4 static IPs from Speakeasy for $110/month. At $20/participant, it will only require 11-12 additional subscribers to reduce your net cost to zero (after taxes).
do you have any idea of how moderation works, read about it before you complain too much. and if you don't like how people moderate meta moderate.
I have moderated several times and concider myself proof that you don't need great carma to get to moderate. just keep it at neutral or higher, and actually read slashdot and you'll probbly get to moderate a few times a year.
just know that when you complain about "the moderators" that you are talking about nearley every slashdot reader.
as for the wireless project it should be easy to do for about 300-400$ if you need great coverage.
my wap saturates about half of my building witch is about twice the size of your's.
Just pick out points for your wap's then run wire there, hook em all together and plug them into your cable modem. 2 acess points should do it just fine, and a hundred feet or so of cat 5 and there you go. if your coverage isin't as good as you'd like just add another point.
I woulden't even screw around with high gain antennas, most that I've seen that work well are directional, and the omni's that I've seen are way to expensive for one's that work.
if you're really serious about wireless you should get your fcc technition class lisence, it allows you to run your way at up to 1500 watts, or something rediclus, way better than screwing around with fancy antennas for just a hundred miliwatts or so.
Well art is art isn't it, but then again water is water; and east is east; and west is west; and if you take cranberries
Given that you had to ask the question, I'd guess that you could probably use some help.
If you're not used to running and terminating CAT5 cable, then I suggest that you find someone to work with you who is.. as somebody else pointed out, the expensive part would be paying someone to do that part commercially. It's not really that hard, but having someone who knows what they're doing (and perhaps even has their own tester) would really help.
You should also take a look at what it'll take to secure the wires properly to the shaft wall. If they come loose, the elevator won't even notice as it's shredding your cat[56] to kingdom come.
To find out if you can get away with one AP per one or 2 floors, set up an access point near the elevator, and then beg access to some corner suites on that floor and the floors above and below. Even if you can (theoretically) get away with it, I wouldn't suggest less than 1 AP per 2 floors.... otherwise you'll run into bandwidth saturation problems (presuming you're not trying to service the entire building with a 1 Mbit DSL connection).
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Look the guy asked a simple question. He didn't post "hey guys give a philosphical debate over whether I'm wrong for wasting my money when there's starving kids in Africa." He asked "I have 7G's. Can I make a kickass LAN?" He didn't need to mention it was an inheritance, cause you guys would have answered his question. Instead he gives a little TMI and you guys feel the need to grind his morality into the ground. Like he needs that at a time in his life like this. Look I'll try to answer his question for you guys:
I'm not sure. I try to use actual cable for security purposes (still paranoid of the wardrivers) BUT in your case wireless is the perfect way to go. Not like you can go drilling holes and laying cable. From observations I've had, One wireless router (get the switched type so you can WIRE your cables in at the router and put yourself in a different domain to protect your computers), and probably 2 AP's at most. If some need arises, you can put some into different IP blocks and filter only thier content. Setups like that are nearly endless. You're on the right track. Just look up the prices for some common affordable routers like the Linksys models. I've had one of thier non-wireless routers for years and it works great. They now have a 802.11G version of the same router available today. Choose AP's in a similar fashion. If you'd like to test the waters, I'd suggest getting something off ebay at a low cost to get any bugs out and THEN drop the phat cash on some topshelf equipment when you know you won't be dissappointed. Worst thing to do is to drop a load of cash on some equip and then find out it sucks & or doesn't work like you'd planned. Good execution here is key. You wouldn't want to make a memorial that was broken.
A nat device, all he needs is a Netgear/Linksys router and a 4 or 5 repeaters. The main problem will be getting enough Bandwidth from his ISP for all the users, since a DSL or Cable connection won't be enough speed for all those users.
You know what, when somebody has money, has a project in mind, and wants advice on a project... comments like this are really a pain. Do you really think that most people wouldn't consider alternate uses for the money? Do people always have to have a personal gain in mind raither than a personal "project."
There's nothing wrong with setting up a WAPnet for the neighbours (so long as it doesn't interfere with other people's WAP's etc). There's nothing wrong with doing with one's one money what one sees fit.
You know, if I came across and extra $7000 and wanted to spend it buying a few computers for a school etc, I would much rather have advice on that topic for slashdot than a bunch of "WTF - giving money away - invest it!" BS comments. In this case, the guy is donating to his apartment community instead of a school etc, but it's the same concept.
Oh, and p.s., $7000 is tons for WAP. Why not come down and check out my apartment building when you're done yours </joking>
comes in and sues him for downloading songs off of whatever P2P network is there, the FBI knocks on his door about certain threats that originated at his IP, Comcast cancells him for selling internet 'service' without a buisness contract, and finally the IRS audits his complete accounts for 'income recieved' without the appropriate W2's.
Now, yes, WAP for 7K is easy. Buy a bunch of US Robotics, 1 for every 2 floors, and a bunch of wireless cards. Run Cat5 up and down the inside of the fireescape (drill) and stuff the holes with firebreak.
It's not terribly difficult, but you MUST CHECK OUT CODES before doing any sort of permanent installation- why waste bandwidth by using wireless to move 'up' the building.
You may want to seed the first couple of month's worth of usage just to get your neighbours 'hooked' on the idea, but sooner or later you'll need to have them pitching in on the ongoing charges.
For anybody doing any amount of gaming, $10/month to get a 10meg line into the building, with all of the capital costs covered would be one hot steal. If you're really lucky one of them may even offer to hand engrave a plaque thanking your aunt for her bequest.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
A few people have replied saying invest your money, which is a much wiser investment (rather than buying a wireless network).
Invest in a Roth IRA. Investing $7,000 for 45 years at 10% interest (the average return rate, it takes ~7.2 for your money to double). Investing so, and not adding a single penny more, will accumulate to $510,233, a pretty hefty sum.
Don't believe me? Go to this Roth IRA calculator, enter in 7,000 for the current IRA balance, 10% for the interest rate, and years until retirement as 45 years. Don't worry about the tax bracket as that doesn't involve Roth IRA's.
Let your money work for you, not the other way around.
-Vic
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!