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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?
if you give me the $7000 I'll get you the equipment you need.
ahem
SURELY NOT!!!!!
if everybody shares the same connection, online gaming will suck, unless you have an OC3
There are 6 double-room apartments on each side, and we only have four floors. I'll hopefully have access to the elevator shaft
Do you, ummmm... or someone in the building, maybe, needs a roomie?
I dont' even need the elevator. I will take the staris. Promise.
Free XBox, PS2
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.
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...
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?
Maybe that's not enough. Wireless access point X 2, antenna X 2...
yeah, i do think it'll be enough. but do like the 1st popst says, lol. if you dont wanna pay off the house or anything thn i do think 7000 will be enough. i think you need wireless nic cards for each pc, a wireless router, and some repeaters. someone correct me if im wrong ;)
Capable of 5 modes of operation, work with external attenns. I would probably think 4 or 8 would cover most of the area.
use the interest/dividends to buy the stuff you need.
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.
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.
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.
You're gonna blow your $7K will on a network for your building? Invest it, man, then from your profits implement such a network. A big waste, IMHO.
A blog like any other.
Why be such an asshole?
Just there was a story on increasing options to the Linksys WRT54G wireless routers. Maybe you can try 4 of those (1 per floor) and settings (encryption is a must so people not allowed to, steal your bw) to help against abusers.
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.
yo.
heh. more like $200 or so. two linksys wap points could saturate over 10 miles with proper antennas easy, let alone a 4 storey bldg.
700 wil git you enough and them some. The elevator shaft might want to be avoided because of all the metal. perhaps 1 access point on each floor with a couple of higher gain omni directional anteannas will do it. although i hope you have a good 10mbit line or a T1 as this is gonna eat bandwidth. O and make sure you go 802.11g
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
posted why/how? How does this qualify as news/interesting story/informitive?
Are you "special"? Is this one of "those" types of buildings?
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?
...Ossifer Consulting will do it for you!
"I live in a 4 storey building, and pretty much everyone in this building is into gaming and computers.
Is there a vacancy? I want to live there!
Unless you own the apartment, put your money elsewhere!! Put together some specs if you like and then let the people involved pay for thier part of the infrastructure! Seriously man, that's good start on a downpayment for a condo or house. IMHO..
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
Now, in each room you could have the person buy a high gain antenna, or have them build their own cantenna and just shoot towards the AP along the ceiling to avoid pissing people off with radiation going through their minds.
In a small building like this...that situation should work very well.
Speaking at Defcon 12 - Credit Card Networks Revisted: Pen
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.
I'm sure many companies would wire the whole building for less than $7,000. Are you sure you want to get yourself involved with such a risky venture?
The elevator shaft will be useful as those wireless packets will need some way to get from one floor to another and packets are far too small to negotiate the 4" riser on a common apartment stair. They can easily shimmy up and down those cables, though.
grammar-lesson free since 1999. (rescinded - 2005)
It shouldn't cost anyplace nearly that much money. For that much, you could probably get the whole place wired. Gaming isn't going to be a good thing for wireless, anyhow. But if you insist on doing something wireless, what I'd suggest would be to look for some powerful 802.11g gear (Just top-of-the-line consumer stuff, nothing pro level) and just put one unit on each floor in as central a location as you can manage. It'll be hard to work out the specifics, but I can't imagine it taking more than one unit per floor unless the rooms with computers are long distances from eachother.
Now what I'd really suggest would be to have it wired. This may be something to discuss with the landlord and it wouldn't even be that tough to do, in some cases. You could possibly even run wired connections through the same lines the cable goes.
But if wireless is truly the only option you want, and you can get access to the elevator shaft my suggestion would be to run a 100Mbit line into the shaft to a switch, then drop a potent WAP at each floor level on seperate channels and names, that way you're not sharing all the bandwidth for all the floors. Linksys WAP11's would be good for this as you can hack them to get a little more power.
My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
get 2 Catalyst 2900 off ebay as you backbone (about 250$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.
For the record, the reason I thought the guy was stupid wasn't so much because he didn't know how to set up a wireless LAN, but because he thought all of the background information about his great aunt dying should be included in the question.
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.
"I live in a 4 storey building, and pretty much everyone in this building is into gaming and computers."
... college.
Ah yes,
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.)
agreed. this will benefit you far greater than a wireless connection.
Look. I'm sure this seems like a chance for you to be all munificent and a geek hero to your building-mates, but why spend Your money on this? If these guys are into gaming and computers hit them up for money, you are going to have to manage the project anyways, so collecting money isnt that much more work. Otherwise you're just blowing your cash. Or do you have a share in ownership of this building?
Oh for crying out loud - While you're hearts awfully generous, there are geeky accountants throughout the world shrieking at your decisions.
Analyzing how many apartments: 6 on each side (assume 2 sides?) x 4 floors - thats 48 apartments. 48 computers at least sucking in bandwith.
Hmm.. Now why the hell would you spend your money on providing Internet connection to all those computers? You've got more issues than just cabling/connectivity:
1. Bandwith - Into the building, enough for 48 computers (at least) - can you get that arranged as a central pipe?
2. Who's paying for the Internet bill? Why should 4.01 share the same internet connection with 3.05 - everyone knows 3.05 runs twice as many computers and lags us out.
Really, and this is important - how are you going to divy up the cost of your internet usage? On a user pays? Sure - I only have 1 computer connected to the internet (maybe it's only acting as a firewall/router) - i've just got 3 others connecting to it. If everyone in the building wants it - go through a Strata plan and do a bulk deal for the building - and then monitor d/l's - so only the people who go over d/l limits pay for the extra.
Look - it's a nightmare. Don't do it. Go on holidays instead - buy a nice digital camera and visit some lovely places. I'm sure your great aunt was always telling you to get out and get some air.
To start, I'd buy a single 802.11g WAP and a single wifi card (preferably for a notebook). Plant the WAP somewhere central and walk around with the notebook and see what kind of link quality you get.
/.
You might also want to try connecting a server to the WAP via one of the ethernet ports (assuming the WAP has some) and do some file transmission and pinging as you walk around, to make sure your connection is clean. Or maybe do some test gaming against a machine connected to the WAP.
If you can reach it from everywhere, good!
Otherwise try different locations and try to minimize the number of positions required to cover every location likely to have a PC. Then you just need to get an 802.11g card for every PC.
It must be a slow news day, when something like this gets posted to
And a slower work day when I respond.
Lots of people have given suggestions over the types of hardware to buy or other places to invest your $7000. Why not just reply to one of the many, many friendly people from Nigeria and use your $7000 as a transaction fee for a transfer of funds. You'll receive a good 30% of a $50 million transfer in funds, which is $15 million. It's a no-brainer!
"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.
It's spelled dumb. $7,000 is enough for a down payment on a modest house in most areas.
I suggest that you wait until you've lived in the world long enough to have an idea about e.g. buying houses before you tell people off regarding them.
I hate to be one (of the many) to belittle your dream, but I have a friend who received a similar amount of money and started a savings account for retirement. He's a smart guy, and I hate him for it. :P
Karma: Bad (mostly due to all those "In Soviet Russia" jokes)
Okay, so 12 apartments per floor, 4 floors. 48 apartments, and we'll assume they're using their own routers and cabling within the apartment if they have multiple machines.
First: What is the total number of wireless connections that a channel can handle? I'm going to say 8, just because it sounds like a nice number. Then you have I think 11 channels on 802.11b. That gives you, what, 88 possible addresses? Okay, that seems possible. But holy RF noise!
Next: What's the range on your 802.11b within the apartment? You guys are gamers, so lost packets are going to really mess up the whole point of this network. You'll need to make sure the access points are close enough to the apartments to not drop your packets.
Another point: Are you going entirely wireless? I.e., are you running a cable to the AP at the top of the building, or are you going to have it send all that information wirelessly to your central router?
I've raised more questions than I've answered (I've answered exactly zero), and I know I'm no guru when it comes to wireless. But maybe these are some points to discuss individually to get the ball rolling......
Darned tropical millipede! What's it doing in our apartment?
> 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.
Investing that sort of money into a house, or into something that will appreciate with time is a smart idea.. Especially when you have a nice chunk of change like that. The real estate market is looking really good right now. See if you rent all the time you are pumping money into something you will never own. If you buy, then you will own something, and be able to sell it after sometime. Basically renting makes someone money. The objective in the "financal game of life" is to have more money streams comming towards you rather than away from you.
There are lots of good books that talk about this concept.. and having $7k is a nice way to start sometihng like that.
You have to get permission to do any wiring and you'll be running wires of some type (power or CAT5)
He said he wanted wireless...aside from the wiring needed for the cable/dsl momdem which is normally already there anyway, he shouldn't have to run any extra cabling anywhere.
slashdot, news for crazed liberal socialist zealots
I really don't think this is offtopic at all. The poster wants to know if $7k is enough to do this project.
The reply here obviously is "yes, but don't waste your money." How is that offtopic...?
These people are not going to pay your bills for you. Don't offer to pay theirs. They want broadband, they need to shell out their cash.
Just because a great aunt was kind enough to bestow money on you doesn't mean that you are expected to share.
Life can be harsh, don't make it harder in the long run by giving away money now.
-- El Sacarino tiene gusto de la chocha
Agreed. It's also hard to imagine anyone's grandmother wanting to finance her grandson's friends' gaming habits. Although, maybe he wants to do this to learn a little about wireless networking and help his friends out in the process -- either way, I wish I lived in his building :)
meep
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!
Um, ok, this is peculiar.
1) Why would you spend that much money on setting up wireless in your appartment building for everyone? Unless you've already got a surplus of income, you own the appartment building, or you're into some sort of odd techno-charity urge addiction, I'd suggest you don't waste your money on something so frivilous: buy a house or pay off your debt, FFS! Hell, invest the money, if you don't have debt and don't want to buy a house.
2) If in fact you are crazy or do own the appartment building, by all means, set things up to share internet access - at a (minor) to your tenants (either enough to cover costs, or to make a profit, you decide how nice you want to be). Personally, if it were me, I'd wire the place for ethernet (myself), provided the building wasn't too old (1970's). If the building was old and crappy, I probably wouldn't bother, and try and sell it off - though it would certainly still be feasable.
You can choke wireless networks up pretty quickly, and they introduce needless security issues. For the cost of an 8-port (or 16, or whatever, depending on how many ports per appartment you put in) 100BT (or go GigE, the cost difference is negligible now) and a couple hundred hards of cat5, you can get hundreds the bandwidth/signal quality and many times the security of wifi. The cost would be similar, and could possibly be under $500, provided you didn't splurge and get a nice managed router to bridge stuff to the outside world.
To be honest, though: I don't see why you even bothered asking this question. Are you not a geek? For me, the most fun of any project is the planning and getting things set up. You've got the resources of hundreds of thousands of knowledgeable people, after all: the Internet via search engine (WTF are you doing with an "Ask Slashdot", anyway? DAMN). The payoff of your work (ie, the planning and research) is the implimentation - to see how well you planned your project. What's the payoff if you have someone else do the research/thinking for you?
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
can you buy a house for $7000??????
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
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.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
Speakeasy.net has a service http://www.speakeasy.net/netshare/learnmore/ go there...thats a good place to start.
Check out www.locustworld.com
Nice Accesspoints, or roll your own with their software. Cool Features:
Wireless BackHaul on a different network
Automatic Routing
Easy Setup
Access Control if you like through a captive proxy.
All you really need are some junky laptops.. one 802.11b (for the users to access) and one 802.11g for the high speed backhaul. Each node automatically integrates into the mesh.. very cool... can be done VERY cheap.
Faz.
-=-Ze End-=-
Everybody here who's recommending wireless access points are recommending one per floor. Why? Wireless access is measured by distance from the AP in three dimensions. I use my own AP on multiple floors where I live. Somebody directly below it could be closer than somebody on the same floor but in the corner.
All in all, I think it's a waste of money and this guy's feelings are going to get hurt later on. Unless they're family or very close life long friends, why go to this expense and effort for them?
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
You should buy $7000 worth of a stock index mutual fund and add $2000 every year. Assuming you are about 20 now, by the time you are 45 you will have over a million dollars.
An index fund invests in all or most of the stocks in the entire stock market, which has averaged a 17% annual gain since 1920.
Instead of playing philanthropist to your gaming buddies, take care of yourself. Most of them are going to forget you exist in a few years. I'm going to turn 50 this summer, and if somebody had given me this advice when I was in college I'd be home in my backyard right now, instead of sitting at this desk looking over my shoulder to be sure my boss doesn't catch me posting on Slashdot.
Fscking a, man. You stole my reply. Home Grown +1 Funny from me.
Often, fixtures become the landlord's property by law and lease once installed, rather than the tenant having the option to remove them.
It's certainly the case in much of Canada, and could well be in most of the states.
Larsal
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...
A new wireless company has guaranteed (or your money back) reception if you use their wireless card and access point. One AP should cover the whole building if you put it in the middle somehwhere. Total cost is about $90/user plus $200 for the AP. http://www.direct2data.com/
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.
->Insert mod down here-
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.
Use that $7k towards a HOUSE down payment, and get the hell out of your apartment. The satisfaction and quality of investment you get from owning a house will be a lot better than the grief you get from trying to be a nice guy.
Lots of people have trouble with the signal between a linksys wifi nic and a linksys AP going through more than just a couple walls. Depending on the design and materials used in the building, you could end up needing as many as two APs per floor.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Life can be harsh, don't make it harder in the long run by giving away money now.
Let him live with that realization a few years down the road. Smacking yourself in the head will be worth more then anyway than it would to invest it smartly now.
As for the original question, of course that's enough. I'm actually kind of worried for this guy. I just picture him walking around town with $7k in his hand asking "Will this be enough?!?!" and just handing it to the first guy who buys a few APs off of Ebay and some nics. *shrug*, to each his own.
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.
Okay George, /. membership is hereby revoked!
Your
Keep the money. Put it in long-term bonds.
Forget about it.
Some day you will be glad you had it.
Ok ok, so its been a long day.. everyone knows i meant most AUP's prohibit the wholesale sharing of bandwidth among other users... ( not all, but most )
Time for bed i think....
---- Booth was a patriot ----
mod 5 browsing all says "don't do it"...for various reasons from getting sued to getting arrested for kiddie porn downloads. I have another don't for you...when you come up with a really cool, altruistic and geeky idea, don't post it to slashdot, it will get slammed.
/.ers were so negative
I had no idea
LOL..
"Ain't I a stinka..." - Bugs
Nobody would blow $7 on wiring the building for his neighbors... My guess is that either he was hired to do it and doesn't know the first thing about it, so he's turning to slashdot, or that he's doing it with the expectation of charging his neighbors for internet access and making money off of them.
This deserves a post on /dot?
Dude it's noble of you to provide bandwidth access for your building but you should put that money in a bank account.
Screw em let them get thier own internet access.
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.
"These people are not going to pay your bills for you. Don't offer to pay theirs. They want broadband, they need to shell out their cash."
I don't believe it was stated in the question that he was making this up-to-$7K investment out of pure kindness and that he was asking for nothing in return. Somebody, please correct me if I'm wrong.
By my math, there are up to 48 tenants in the apartment building. If he charges each $20 a month for access to his wireless network, that's $11.5K, or a return of about 150%, in the first year alone.
Unless he's lucky, buying property is unlikely to have that rate of return.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
but this is really ridiculous unless you own the building and are planning to lease network access to recover the costs.
Why not put the 7k into a low risk investment and sit on it a while?
--
|-_-| . o O ( bEef!)
it allows you to run your way at up to 1500 watts
Good God.. warn me so I can get to the Minimum Safe Distance before you turn that thing on...
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
a fool and his money are soon parted.
fucking incredible how lucky some assholes get. Set aside, say, $2000 to spend on some nice things for yourself, and SAVE the rest of the money in your bank account. You'll thank me later.
Or you could spend the whole $7000 on a pre-owned souped-up Chevy Tahoe from eBay motors. You probably drive a shitty car now so why not upgrade? The ladies love the SUVs. Whatever you do, don't waste it on your fellow tenants/the landlord.
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!
WiFi is so over-hyped. Yeah, spend alot of money for SHARED bandwidth. Assuming each unit is wired for phone, HPNA will do everything you want for very little cost and labor (since you don't have to run new cable to the units or to the distributed WAPS). If you can get to the phone demark, put in a HPNA switch, your incoming bandwidth router, and you're done. If the apartment dwellers won't cough up the $40-60 for a HPNA adapter or HPNAEthernet adapter then they don't want bandwidth bad enough. Easy to manage via secure web interface. This is the solutions most small hotels/motels are going to. Unless you have a hugh incoming pipe, more then enough bandwidth via HPNA to service 12 units.
Can it be? More than 60 seconds have passed without someone wailing on Cliff for letting "4 Storey" get posted? You live in a "4-story" building, zzzreyes.
Pay off debt or buy a house? With that kind of money, don't ask me to come take the wheels off of it ;)
--fatboy
7K can pay off almost a whole year of my morgage for my parent's house
-Kids in the back seat causes accidents.- -Accidents in the back seat causes kids.-
No serious gamer should even be considering a wireless option for gaming, when you're gaming you want the fastest and most reliable connection possible. Sorry but you do not get this with a wireless LAN, it will always be slower and less reliable than good solid cable/fibre.
I say cable it... drill through walls... floors hang it out windows... whatever.
I haven't read all the responses (looks as if folks have VERY strong opinions about how you should use your money!) but here'ssome experience:
You can do it with one router and lots of cable. Probably $150-$200 plus plenty of time to crawl around ceilings and utility closets.
You probably can't use the elevator shaft (usually illegal due to safety and fire issues) but there are sure to be holes cut between floors for utility services (phone lines, for instance).
I couldn't figure out how many users you might have, but you probably ought to consider a T1 service so you don't max out the bandwidth.
You might factor in the cost of getting an attorney (or local legal services co-op or storefront) to help you make a contract that everyone could sign to share the ongoing costs (T1 or DSL service plus some maintenance). You'll also likely need to be willing to do troubleshooting for the neighbors.
There are contractors and ISPs out there that will do it all for you. While it would cost everyone a few bucks more per month, you would be free ofthe hassle of managing the network, billing folks, chasing down network outages, maintaining the router, etc.
It's nice to hear about someone who likes the sort of community that a project like this could create. In fact, folks could do this without a generous great aunt if they are willing to get to know the neighbors and do a smidgen of community organizing. Good luck!
Contrary to all the "invest in a mortgage" replies, assuming you're quite young, you may be doing the better thing. Get clever enough at setting up this stuff and the difference in your future income can be far better return than the increase in the value of a specific property. Housing in most places is in a bubble right now - not everywhere, but in most US cities it's as bad an investment as dot.com's in '99 (unless you can turn it fast enough at a profit). But the world will be increasingly networked, the networking will be in large part wireless, and the engineering of specific installations will not be outsourced offshore. So go for it.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
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.
What the hell? Since when did this become "news for middleaged businessmen that remind everyone of their fathers?"
This guy is embracing the spirit of nerdom by doing something that non-nerds would consider a waste of time and money.
Today his apartment complex, tommorrow his city!
A lot of great people in the tech world get their education and ideas from what may have started as seemingly wasteful iconoclastic exploits.
ôó
A few times a year?
In the past six months, I've gotten over 60 mod points. (I say over 60 b/c I lost count.) Since Jan 1, I've got ten.
A word of warning. The default law in the United States and most other common law countries (UK, Canada, Australia, etc.) is that any improvements belong to the landlord. Anything permanently attached to the wall is no longer yours. Technically, if you attach it and then take it down a week later, you're stealing from the landlord. Of course, your jurisdiction may vary.
... there are a lot more suggestions which disuade the poor guy from doing what he wants to do. His question was more on how to do it cheaply and not whether or not to do it. IMHO you can get all this set up for under $1K and if you can scout Ebay then you might come in a few hundred $$s cheaper. My 2c.. which will be moded -1 u'll c...
So you have a wad of cash you don't know what to do with? Want to spend it on something cool but don't have any good ideas? Not a problem. We see this kind of a problem every day, and we have a great solution. If you are looking to install a wireless internet setup, why not invest an additional $2000 and go gigabit wireless? But hey, since you sound like a nice guy, I'll give you a discount, and set it up for only $8000. That's a savings of over 10%! But you have to act quick. I can't offer these kind of rates for ever--we'll go out of business! So here is what you should do now. Put the money in a padded envelope, and mail it to:
Tony's Construction
123 Fake Street.
Spring Field, MA, 18332
And we'll come out and install it for you. Don't forget to tell us where you live!
In Soviet Russia, articles before post read *you*!
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.
actually that's not the difference. i said that the 174,000 in INTEREST of the house was roughly equal to the 180,000 you paid TOTAL for the apartment.
so, if you add in the $150,000 that you had to pay to the principal, then you would have paid a total of 174K + 150K for the house.
I answered this in a post above. I think my great aunt would be proud! and if she was around, she would probably come to the ignaguration ceremony!
6 aparments per 2 sides per 4 floors = 48 apartmens. So a minimum of 48 people. You said the were double rooms. Do you 2 bedroom apartments? Oh, so that brings the total people to 96. How are you going to have enough bandwith to the internet to share with everything?? Plus, you said these were gamers!
Tony Soprano quoting Will Rogers:
"Buy real estate, God ain't making any more of it."
I agree with everyone else here: you're an idiot. Don't blow $7k on a soon to be obsolete technology for the benefit of your neighbors whom you'll soon move away from and never see again, meanwhile subjecting yourself to a whole bunch of work and trouble, and the possible wrath of your landlord.
That being said, here's how I'd do it: Get a laptop with an 802.11 card and an external directional antenna hooked up to it, and get a friend with another laptop with an 802.11 base station hooked up to it via a long ethernet cord. Get on the phone with each other, and walk around various apartments, him moving the base station and telling you where it is, and you walking around with the laptop, pointing the antenna as close as you can to the base station, and checking reception. Do this basic thing in several different apartments, and draw a little "reception map."
Depending on what your floors and walls are made of, you may find you can do this whole thing without too many base stations, so that means not having to run too many wires. Puzzle out the minimum number of base stations required.
Then run cat-5 from wherever your high-speed wire enters the building into a fast ethernet hub, and then to wherever you calculated the base stations should go. Tell all your rich game-playing friends to go buy themselves 802.11 G cards (no "B" cards to slow you all down, as long as you're going to all this trouble) and, as necessary, to buy themselves directional antennas. Then tell them to split the bill on your dedicated T5, or whatever you're getting.
Alternatly, depending on where your apartment is and how you tenants and your landlords feel about it, save yourself a lot of time & money and go the dorm cable route- run cat5 in & out of your windows from apartment to apartment. -Phat Tony
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
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.
Honestly, that's a really strange thing to suggest. Pay off debt or take out a HUGE loan. Buying real estate is not automatically a good investment. Paying off debt is nearly always a good investment. Pay off credit cards, student loans, car loans and after all that drop it in a savings account.
I've seen way too many people investing while having huge debt. Not many investments can compete with the return you get from being debt free.
If you are debt free, or within a month of it and have enough savings that you won't have to get into debt if your car breaks down or something, then talk with a financial planner. They will be able to tell you if buying a house makes sense for you and how much you can pay for it and have it still make sense. Then talk to a real estate agent and tell them what you learned from the financial planner and they can help you find a place that will be worth it.
A house is a huge liability and can easily push you to bankruptcy if you take it on without being ready for it.
You would only need to spend in a price range of $400 to $2000 dollars fo an entire building with good wifi connectivity.
Firstly, what is this building made of? If it mainly shows signs of wood construction, that's good. Steel and Concrete tend to either soak up or reflect signals and prevent them from covering areas. Also, do you have Drywall or Plaster to cover the walls? Plaster will just like concrete and steel, soak up and reflect signals. (Plaster chips away like rock and you can put dents in drywall like you can in thick cardbord.) Depending on the materials in your building, you may need more or less access points to cover it all. If it looks like your going to need one access point for every one or two rooms, then stick with a copper wire solution as you will get most speed and bang for your $buck$.
Now select between 802.11b, 802.11a, or 802.11g. For gaming I would suggest 802.11g even though it is expensive in comparison to 802.11b. It is able to send data at speeds of up to 54 Mbps (or 108 Mbps if you go into proprietary standards), and is also backward compatible with 802.11b.
Next, come up with a plan on how you intend to distribute data between the access points. This could either be copper cabling that would need to be routed through the building, or you could set some access points as repeaters.
Lastly, realize that you are going wireless, everyone who has a computer is going to need a wireless NIC. (remember, 802.11b is compatible with 802.11g, just slower).
If all else fails, hire a geek!
You are confusing me with someone who cares.
i agree with the general tone of don't spend your money on this. if you can talk to everybody and get everybody to chip in equally that would be a much better situation for YOU. on the whole of the matter i would generally advise paying/getting somebody who knows what the hell they are doing, if you try to do it yourself and it fucks up, you're screwed. plus if ideally you are able to split this atleast 6-10 ways the additional cost of hiring somebody is split as well. just the 2 cents of someone who knows little.
And the stock market was looking really good around 1999.
A lot of people talk about rent as if it is "wasted money." That's not at all true, most of the time. Buying a house is an investment, and investments are inherently risky.
If you have $10,000 to make a downpayment on a house (assuming you live in Gary, Indiana or something), then you have the choice whether to invest that $10,000 in a house or in some other investment. Choosing to continue to pay rent allows you to invest it somewhere else if you feel the return will be greater or the risk is reduced. Much of the time, your rent will be cheaper than what you pay on a mortgage, and most of that mortgage payment is going towards interest at first. Calculate the "expected return" on each investment (including the tax implications)and you can figure out whether buying a home is a good (financial) use of your available capital.
How can you tell whether home prices are likely to keep rising? One way is to look at the ratio of home prices to rents. Over time, rents and home prices should keep roughly the same ratio. One reason that ratio can get out of whack is when people are buying a home not because of its value compared to rent, but because they expect to sell it for more later. When home prices rise without a proportional rise in rents, that can be indicative of a bubble. And that ratio is at historic highs right now in the U.S.A.
Of course, low interest rates can also push home prices higher, but it's not nearly as simple as people usually make it out to be. A home will become part of your investment portfolio, and your entire investment portfolio should be considered carefully.
Now watch me hit this drive.
Get yourself the fastest connection you can afford... (if everyone will be paying 20 or 30 bucks a month that's a decent connection).
Set up an 802.11b router with WDS. Apple's airport base stations have WDS and are super easy to set up.
Set up other routers as WDS repeaters around the building as needed... You probably would only need 3 or 4 depending on the size & construction of the building.
You're done... and you still have most of your cash for better things....like a G5.
$249. Base station w/ external antenna
$099. Antenna
$249. Base station w/ external antenna
$099. Antenna
$249. Base station w/ external antenna
$099. Antenna
$249. Base station w/ external antenna
$099. Antenna
this is a bad idea on so many levels, let me just name a few:
;)
1. 4 stories of people sharing a single net connection doesn't sound like broadband to me, unless it's a fibre line which is probably so expensive that you may as well just get individual cable/dsl services.
2. do you really trust your other users to "be good" ?? what if they're packet kiddies or making unauthorized logins to hosts or running child porn servers -- your isp could cancel service to the whole building just because one guy f*cked up.
3. it's been said before, but $7k is a nice chunk of change, don't waste it on people who wont give you anything in return.
there's more, i know... but come on, i'd rather read some articles about how cool linux is or how much SCO sucks.
Maybe you could, maybe you couldn't. There are a lot of variables you don't go into, mostly topology.
0 03 /
In the last apartment I lived in, if you went into the main hallway of the building, you couldn't pick up any sort of signal from the AP on the other side of the wall. Probably due to the wire mesh in the stucco. In the 2 story building I'm in now, you can clearly pick up a strong signal on either floor, anywhere in the building. Much different construction.
Here's some pictures of my current wireless setup. 802.11b with high gain antennas going from my house to office, 1/2 mile away. Then just a generic AP inside the house servicing computers in virtually every room of the house. My laptop works everywhere in the house, so the cheap NetGear AP handles it.
http://diary.illusions.gen.fl.us/Wireless.Dec-2
You may be able to do it with a basic AP and no special antennas on the floor in the middle of the 3rd floor. Maybe not. You may need one AP per floor with high gain antennas plus copper wiring between them. You may have to put multiple AP's per floor, depending on how much the signal is blocked by walls. If your AP is at one end of the building, and there are 3 2 room apartments in line, you'd have an awful lot of walls between the AP and the last user.
We did copper wiring for a law office once that was a 3 story building. They went nuts with the construction of the building. Floors were 3 feet of cement. Cell phones didn't work anywhere but by the windows in an area with great cell service. It was not a good candidate for wireless service.
Maybe you can find someone locally who's played with this a bit more, so they can look at it, and give you an educated opinion. No one here can give you the right answer, including me.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
You mean having to fix the house, and mow the lawn, and live in the boondocks, and all those joys?
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
Yes, perhaps its misleading of me to not emphasize that. Housing can also be "overvalued."
And even though it can appreciate in value and make you money by way of capital gains after a sale, its also the thing you use for shelter. Treat it as such. If it happens to make money, fine.
But it will be cheaper than renting. Also, the money you spend on the interest portion of your mortgage is tax-deductable. Something to consider for those who are highly compensated or just looking for a tax break.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
... nice people like that lived in the house next to mine. (sadly, they dont)
actually, in the area I bought my townhouse in, the prices were stagnant for 9 years. Then they shot up when I bought, and 3 years later, they haven't stopped.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Actually in most urban areas I think renting an appartment is generally cheaper that buying a house. That is somewhat due to the fact that you usually have less space and less land in an appartment. You share everything and use space a lot more effeciently. Buying a house should be done because you want the advantages of a house, not because you want to save money. House payments are greater than appartment payments. Investing the difference you save by living in an appartment would in the long run give you as much or even more than the selling price of a house. You have to consider the fact that you will have to pay for maintnance on the house. Of course you can do some by yourself but that is considered another cost. A house can be cheaper in some circumstances, there are a lot af variables that affect the prices of houses and appartments. I don't have a reference but that info I just gave you is based on something I read not too long ago.
However, I do agree that spending on hardware technology is just about the worst thing you can do with your money. Technology changes so fast that it will all be worth nothing in two years.
You sure about that?
Tech licence lets you mess around in wireless net band?
1500 watts?
Does that really work? I know it would work outside
but in the worst case scenario (concrete bldg with
steel armature and generally lots of metal in the
walls) it probably won't. If your house is built
like a bunker wireless might be tough, even to a
point of needing a wap per room.
So, get a wap, make or buy decent antennas, check
signal strength, figure out how many you'd need,
then you'd know the cost. Also, especially if you
are willing to do work yourself, cabling the house
might be cheapest. Wireless is not a universal
access solution.
... you can convince the landlord to install wired ethernet which would actually make your games worthwhile (i.e. much less latency). Not to mention the per-machine cost is lower. This is actually an attractive idea as a landlord could technically (though not necessarily legally/without pissing off the ISP) provide an internet connection as part of the included utilities, for a small (say $10) bump in the rent. Just a thought. I have, on the other hand, seen wireless networks work great in 2 and 3 unit buildings, as long as the access point is in the middle floor and latency is not a huge concern (i.e. casual, non-gaming users).
I am feeling fat and sassy
Yes, a house is a good investment. So, this guy could be a winner at the Game of Life. But then, he has no LAN and no neighbours to play games with. Only a yard to mow, some ledgers to balance, and a grave to dig. Money isn't everything. Seriously.
----
Not to be confused with Col.
Though I must include the disclaimer: I am not an attornoy nor an accountant.
A witty saying proves you are wittier than the next guy.
This is off topic, but more insightful than most of the comments here. Mortgage is a good idea only when your rent is really high, or more specifically, if your rent is more than The interest payment portion of your mortgage. For Example: You mortgage a $200,000 house for 25 years, assuming about 5% interest, your payments for the first five years are $1185 a month. In the first five years you've paid 60*1185 = $71,145, but oh so sad for you, $54,343 of that was in interest. Now then, say your rent is $500 a month (say you live with a room mate) and (this is the key) you put away the difference that you'd pay for the monthly mortgage, ($1185 - 500 = $685). Now do that for five years while renting, and you've saved $41,100 towards your house. So mortgage is NOT always the best way to go.
-I DDoSed your mom.
I would suggest saving the money. Invest it and start saving as much as you can. Then BUY the apartment complex, install wireless internet access (like a T1) and up everyone's rent because they now have free internet.
Then throttle everyone else's bandwidth to 128k or 56k and now you have people paying you for their apartment and paying for your T1.
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>
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.
-Grym+4 Informative? That's it? Compared to this Ask Slashdot question, this donut thread is +5 Insightful.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
You guys are not paying attention. He did not ask you how to spend the money. That has already been decided. What he wants is help on how to effectively do the job he wants to do.
I would say that you have not provided enough information. We need square footage of each apartment and the layout of the apartments. What you have to pay attention to is the INDOOR range of your wireless access points. In this situation, I would say you don't need to heavily overlap the access points' signals for redundancy sake since this isn't what I would consider mission-critical. Normal access points can cross over more than one floor. For instance, my roommate has a D-Link cable router on the first floor of our house and we get signal in the basement and on the second floor just fine. So, you could probably put an access point on the second and fourth floors and be good to go. If you find you need two access points per floor to cover the square footage effectively, I would put the second and fourth floor access points on one side of the building and put the other two access points on the other side of the building on the first and third floors.
You will need two to four access points (maybe more depending on square footage) and you will need to measure the footage of ethernet cable you will need. I would buy a 1000ft spool of cat5e. You can usually get that for around $40 or so. Of course, you will have to buy RJ45 ends. Make sure they're rated for cat5e. They should only run you about $0.40 - 0.60 each and you'll probably have to buy them in a small bulk amount like 25 or 50, maybe 100. You will probably need some sort of fastener that that will hold the cable in place once it is run. I can't remember what they're called but you can get little plastic u shaped clips that nail into the wall. That will work for you. You will want to check with your state laws. Some states or counties or cities may have regulations about running all cables through conduit. Make sure you look into that.
You will also need some sort of NAT machine. Wether this is a linux PC or a little black box cable router is up to you. In the end, I don't think you'll spend more than a few hundred dollars. Of course, this is assuming that you have permission to do this. It may be possible to make wireless access points talk to each other via a wireless connection, but I haven't tried that. If you can make it work, it will help you avoid the hassle of wiring. It wont be high performance, but it will be more than enough for gaming.
Good luck!
Okay, 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
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=95563&threshol d=0&commentsort=0&tid=137&tid=193&mode=thread&pid= 8185466#8185743
For those of you that are still asking why!
I have always read really smart replies on most of the interesting stuff; I guess today I am stuck with a bunch of monkeys and a few great people. Anyhow, 7G maximum budget, I know I can do it for like 500, but that is not the point, if I said I have 7G I was thinking someone here would say, you should get this:
Cn300r colubris access point
or
Enterasys RoamAbout AP3000 which supports multiple radio cards.
I was trying to get some high end solutions, of course anyone can go to their local electronic shop and get over the counter crap!
I have looked at potentially getting something like this to test around:
H300-2000 Hawking Technology - WU250 - 11Mbps 802.11b USB Adapter
T156-1072 TRENDnet - 11/22Mbps Wireless Broadband Router
T156-1018 TRENDnet 6 DBI Wireless Directional Indoor Antenna
Also, I am thinking of supplying everyone with cards! Yes, for free, but they remain in the building. Legalities, I have thought of it, my brother who is a lawyer has drafted an agreement between me and the user. Might save me, might not.
It is odd, how a nice gesture now days can get flame beyond recognition just because everyone is so used to being selfish!
I have recieved some nice posts, thanks. greatly appreciated.
By the way... I am not broke, so really, 7G is not a whole lot of money. The people in the building also are prety well off, we are like a community, I guess... The landlord is a really hot chick too, maybe I can get her to help me install my access points!
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.
And they're going to subscribe for what, exactly? Internet access?
Most ISP AUPs don't allow you to resell internet access -- you can share it for free (most of the time), but when you start reselling their services, they'll want a cut, and if you don't give it to them, they'll have quite a nicely sized legal lever to pry it out of you.
Add to that the fact that 48 tenants times twenty dollars per month per tenant equals about the cost of a T1, and you're not looking at much of a profit. One to three hundred dollars a month, at most, giving him a three year time to realize his original investment.
--
I Hit the Karma Cap, and All I Got Was This Lousy
This is an easy setup that will break NONE of your lease articles and to point out he said WIRELESS. Buy a wireless router (linksys or such) a couple wireless switches, a wireless NIC card for every tennant (or have them buy a wireless switch for themselves if they need multiple RJ45's) and follow this plan: Since you're supplying the whole building net service then there stands a good chance you know at least ONE person in each area that requires an AP. Tell them "hey Bob, to get your wireless to work I need you to plug this box (the AP) into your wall and never touch it unless all the lights go out." This can be prone to idiot mistakes and net downtime BUT you have 1)no wires, 2)no "fixtures" than can be claimed by the landlord, and 3)you haven't broken any fire codes, etc. The worst thing you might be breaking is the EULA for your ISP. Just make sure to not be making a profit (selling services). Call it a donation. I have a wired network and I've had 5 computers hooked to it all maxing out the bandwidth the best they could and have had no problems. As business account would be the way around this and would(should) be legal. A meritous virtue to have in a memorial.
Two things that do impact the math are taxes and the appreciation.
Tax savings are usually over-stated by the "throwing money away" people but are significant. It's worth going through the exercise with real numbers when evaluating rent vs. buy.
Appreciation in an area like SoCal outstrips just about anything else you can do with the money without significantly more risk.
Hold on there cowboys. Lots of people are saying "use your $7000 as a down payment on a house!" Like they are some sort of financial expert that knows that a home purchase is better investment than a rental for you!
Before you commit $50000 to $500000 for a small house (depending on where you live!), you should figure out if home ownership is financially sound for you.
Of course, every real estate guy will show you in black and white that home ownership is always smarter than rental. After all, you're investing in something, not pissing it away every month, right?
Well, no, that is not always true! It depends on the housing market, interest rates, tax rates, maintenence costs, rental rates, and a bunch of other variables.
I for one rent. I rent because it is cheaper for me, it works with my lifestyle, and the fact that I can invest my money in other places that give me a much greater return (with only a little more risk). Do NOT jump to a conclusion just because everyone and your father says it's better. My father said that 93 octane gasoline is "better", but I know that's bullshit too.
Back on topic: Do the wireless thing. Do it for $500, and do as little wiring as possible. It'll be fun. In the worst case, if it doesn't work out, scrap the project and sell the left over equipment on eBay.
No no no my friend. She already has the access points.
Playing with a wireless network could be fun. If you get practice working with this, you could work for a company seting up and surveying professional installs in airports and hotels.
Use Ad-hoc wireless Backbone between Regions of the building. Choose a "secure" protocol for the Backbone. (Backbone could be an AP on each floor in close porximity)
Then for each region (or floor) have a second ad-hoc network with one AP plugged into the Backbone by cable.
Space AP's of secondary adhoc networks within strong signal range of each other to reliably cover region (or floor).
If he's going to be giving these people internet access, he's going to need to buy a pretty fast internet connection---I'd say "Business" DSL at least. Don't forget overhead. It might come out to quite a bit less than $11.5k.
You mention that post-war walls are constructed of plasterboard or Sheetrock but failed to mention how pre-war walls were constructed.
Before World War II walls were generally plastered. The plaster was placed on top of wood lath. Lath is thin wood slats that are nailed horizontally across the studs that made up the walls. These slats are placed with less than a 1/4 inch of space between them.
A thick layer of plaster is applied to the lath. The plaster usually has some sort of binder mixed with it such as horse hair or asbestos. The application of plaster was generally thicker than today's Sheetrock. I've torn out old walls where the plaster is an inch thick. It's even thicker in areas where the plaster presses through the lath and hardens.
With a thick ayer of horse hair plaster and sound absorbing wood lath you had a pretty nice sound barrier. It also does a nice job of degrading radio signals.
In older construction you also get a lot of stone and brick walls. Not to mention the solid wood floors an ceilings.
Remember... ZG9uJ3QgZm9yZ2V0IHRvIGRyaW5rIHlvdXIgb3ZhbHRpbmU=
Pay off student loans? A car? Put it in an IRA? Just because it is easy come, doesn't mean it should be easy go.
DEAR SIR/MADAM,
I AM MR. LEON BANNAU, THE ACCOUNTANT GENERAL OF NED BANK OF SOUTH AFRICA. I REQUEST YOUR CO-OPERATION IN THE TRANSFER OF MONEY AMOUNTING TO U.S.D. 7000.
ON SEPTEMBER 1999, AN AMERICAN PILOT, MR. ROY KENOB, AN AMERICAN NATIONAL MADE A FIXED DEPOSIT OF U.S D 7000 IN NED BANK OF SOUTH AFRICA. ON MATURITY I SENT A ROUTINE NOTIFICATION TO HIS FORWARDING ADDRESS BUT GOT NO REPLY. AFTER A MONTH, I SENT A REMINDER AND FINALLY HIS EMPLOYERS WROTE TO INFORM US THAT MR.KENOB DIED IN A PLANE CRASH, THAT HE DIED WITHOUT MAKING A WILL WHILE OUR ATTEMPT TO TRACE HIS NEXT OF KIN THROUGH AMERICAN EMBASSY PROVED FRUITLESS.
WHEN HE WAS MAKING DEPOSITION IN MY BANK, HE DID NOT DECLARE HIS NEXT OF KIN IN HIS DEPOSIT APPLICATION FORM, WHEN I REMINDED HIM HE SAID HE WISHED IT SO, IN THE CONSERVATIVE MANNER OF OUR BANK, I DID NOT TURN DOWN HIS REQUEST RATHER HONOR IT CONSIDERING HIS HIGH NET WORTH. THE POINT IS THAT HIS EMPLOYER ARE NOT AWARE OF HIS DEPOSIT WITH US, THEREFORE I AM THE ONLY PERSON WHO KNOW ABOUT MR.ROY'S DEPOSIT OF U.S.D 7000 WHICH IS NOW LYING IN DORMANT ACCOUNT PORTFOLIO, THE WHOLE ACCOUNT RELATING TO MR.KENOB'S DEPOSIT IS ALSO WITH ME.
I AM LOOKING FORWARD FOR A FOREIGNER WHO WILL STAND IN AS THE NEXT OF KIN TO MR. ROY. I HAVE WORKED OUT MODALITIES OF ACHIEVING MY AIM BY APPOINTING YOU AS THE NEXT OF KIN TO MR.ROY AS WELL AS TRANSFER THE U.S.D 7000 ABROAD FOR US TO SHARE A WIRELESS INTERNET CONNECTION IN A FOUR STORY APARTMENT BUILDING. I WILL USE AN ATTORNEY WHO WILL REPRESENT YOU AS THE BENEFICIARY TO EXECUTE SERIES A WRITTEN WILL AND ATTESTAMENT OF LATE MR. ROY KENOB, IN SUPPORT OF YOUR CLAIM INCLUDING CERTIFICATE OF ORIGIN OF THE MONEY, LETTER OF PROBATE WHICH EMPOWERS YOU AS THE SOLE TRUSTEE/EXECUTOR TO THE ESTATE OF MR. ROY KENOB. PLEASE NOTE THAT YOU WILL NOT BE REQUIRED TO SIGN ANY TRANSFER DOCUMENT, AS THE APPOINTED ATTORNEY WILL DO ALL THAT.
IF YOU AGREE TO ACT AS THE NEXT OF KIN/BENEFICIARY TO ENABLE ME TRANSFER/CONVERT THE MONEY TO OUR OWN BENEFIT/USE. I WILL GIVE YOU 30% OF USD 7000, 60% WILL BE FOR ME WHILE 10% WILL BE TO TAKE CARE OF ALL UNFORESEEN EXPENSES AS WE MAY INCURE IN THE COURSE OF CONCLUDING THIS TRANSACTION. I AM URGENTLY WAITING FOR YOUR POSITIVE REPLY.
REGARDS,
MR. LEON BANNAU
This IS a serious post.
You just got $7000, and you want to spend it on networking shite? My advice is DON'T BOTHER!!!!!!!
Consider that $7000 spent now is $700 worth of junk next year. You could buy a nice new computer, maybe some other toys, and give $5000 to the bums in the street; and in a year, you'd be no further ahead or behind than if you spent it all.
If you don't want to toss it into the gutter, you could buy yourself some mutual funds for retirement planning, put it towards a down-payment on a house, buy some power tools, or....christ--ANYTHING except flushing it down the technology drain.
Step awawy from the computer. Go outside. Breathe.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
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.
he asked your advice on how best to implement this. who fucking cares about how he got the money or why hes doing. either, help out or quit being dicks.
I just had to respond to say, amen brother. People have such a hard time understanding that paying mortgage interest, taxes, maintenance, and so on is also "throwing your money away". That's not to say that owning your own home isn't rewarding and can't be a good investment, because for most people it is both. But live in an apartment, take the money you pay less each month and invest it in the stock market or other higher yielding investments and my guess is that in the long run you might just come out ahead. My guess is that you wouldn't because of taxes, but you'd probably come close.
People also don't understand that renting is definitely a better deal if you're only going to be living in the same place for a couple of years. Unless you're in a real estate market that moves up big, it usually takes 4-6 years before you hit the breakeven point.
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.
With a little time and effort almost any American can get an amateur radio technician class license from the FCC. It does not allow you to transmit 1500 watts at 2.4Ghz! The 2.4Ghz band is unlicensed and the max transmittion power is 100 milliwatts. The closest microwave frequencies are 902-928 MHz and 1.24-1.3Ghz. You should note that there is only 26 kHz and 60 MHz of bandwidth available respectively. Thus the 23cm (1.24-1.3Ghz) band is the only choice for applications similiar to WiFi. 802.11b eats up 22 MHz of bandwidth.
Digital Spread Spectrum is still in its infancies in the amateur radio community. However, progress is being made.
With what little knowledge that I have concerning radio theory, it should be possible to modify an access point or WiFi card and get it on the 23cm band. It might even be easier considering that 1.24 Ghz is almost a harmonic (half) of 2.4Ghz.
If you do manage to do such a thing, there would be a few requirements concerning identification. The access point would need to broadcast your callsign; this might be fullfilled with your callsign as the SID. The data traffic could not be encrypted, the data could not be offensive, and you must have control over the equipment.
I had that exact same task when I lived in a brownstone in Brooklyn. I put a Dlink wireless hub on the roof and it served the top two floors and I could get the signal weakly even on the bottom floor. Another wireless hub on that floor provided coverage all the way to the basement right through old masonry walls. Total cost (including wire): $300. Throw a celebratory dance party with the remaining $6700 and you can probably provide ecstasy for free!
The flag just makes more sense than the constitution. - Judas Gutenberg
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"?
I made a mistake in units. The 33cm (902-928Mhz) band has 26 MHz and not 26 kHz of bandwidth. It would be capable of supporting a WiFi like digital spread spectrum channel needing 22 MHz of bandwidth. Sorry for any confusion.
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.
Taken from Apple's Airport Extreme info page:
I vaguely remember that the Airport Base stations are 802.11b/g and that when you use the wireless bridging, it uses the 802.11g "line" for bridging leaving you with 802.11b for your AP to PC/Mac connection. The AirPort Extreme Base Stations run about $200 each and they also have a RJ-45 to connect a "wired" computer in addition to the WAN port for your boradband. I'm sure that using this you could spend $800 and put one on each floor or $1200 and put one in each apartment and each person could connect their PC as well and you wouldn't have to buy an internal/external wireless card for the PCs since most have a built-in Ethernet port.
For the sake of argument, lets assume that this guy wants to become a mini ISP for his building in order to generate some extra income. He wants to offer both wired broadband internet via eathernet, and building wide WIFI to his offering. Lets assume (again for the sake of argument) that he will get a buisness grade internet connection for this project.
He has 48 apartments (6 apartments on each side, 2 sides, and four floors). He has $7k to spend.
What does he need to do in order to make this work?
Assuming he gets 24 people to sign up, what do you see as the ongoing costs?
Ethernet over power bridges from Netgear are something like $90/ea - that is $2,400 to do the whole thing and no exposure from wireless snoopers.
The model I have is XE102 and they seem to work just fine
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo
thats story not storey right?
I wonder how well it scales. The big problem is that if you have all of the transmitters on the same channel then you run into serious contention problems, and ad-hoc routing is actually quite difficult to do for wireless networks.
There are 10 kinds of people: ones who understand ternary, ones who don't, and ones who think this joke is about binary
Your math is a little skewed but you get the idea. Remember that money today isn't worth the same thing as money tommorow. If you compute for the money you will have in 30 years using your numbers:
for a house:
take that 6% 30 years loan for a house that is worth 150000 today. Your monthly payments will be 899.33$
you will have payed in total:
899.33*12*30=323758$
lets say the house gains value at a 2% annual rate. in 30 years it will be worth 271704%.
So that is the value you will end up with.
Now take that same 899.33. Live in a 500$ a month (6000$ year) appartment and invest the rest at the end of each year. 399.33$ X 12 = 4791.96$. your investment assuming a secure 4% annual rate will be worth 268756$
which is just about the same you are left with would you have gone with the house.
Of course the interest rates play a big role here. If your house gains value at a rate of 3% instead of 2% it will be worth 364089$ in 30 years so you will have made almost 100000$
Also if you can make investments that perform better than 4% living in an appartment would be highly profitable.
Wouldn't a 1500W microwave at 2.4GHz start to cook you? I mean, what is the resonant frequency of water? I thought it was about 2.4GHz.
Slashdot is proof that Sturgeon's Law applies to mankind.
Wouldn't this be a great application of Mesh networking? I see a lot of posts about grounding issues, and other complexities of wiring a 4 story building. I thought the whole point of mesh is to get around this, and is a great way to provide internet access in hard to reach areas or areas that are impracticle to wire. In fact the Linksys WRT54g with the Sveasoft firmware can connect to up to 3 other routers. With the right equipment, you can throw a half dozen or so routers around the complex and you're all set. You only need ethernet going into one router from the ISP, everything else is wireless. (Security/encryption though might be a headache.)
(For those of you you have no clue what mesh networking is (like me) it basically allows you to broadcast internet access over a wide area with 802.11 via several wireless routers that kind of act as repeaters and share internet access among each other)
Oh my god. Where are the social engineers on this one? Think about it. Dead aunt... tee hee.... exactly $7000 dollars. Sounds to me like someone wants to get a 36 office building done for $7000 or less and they are fishing for clues. Nobody in their right mind would donate that amount of money to their apartment building. What is more plausible is that someone got a $7000 bid to do their office building and they want to see what its really worth to get it done or at least have some negotiating advantage. IMHO its worth paying the 7Gs if you want it done correctly. You can get it done pretty cheap if you are willing to make compromises, but 18 (assume 50% usage) people sharing one or even two DSL lines for games kinda blows. Those types of compromises domt create the type of network you might want to depend on for a business however. Spend the $7Gs if this is for biz.
Even if you buy a house for $XK and resell it for $XK (*just* making your money back), you've still lived rent free for those years. Compare even a significant loss against the cost of rent and you're better off buying.
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
In that perspective, then i think what you want to do makes sense If you can do it without costing yourself any $$$, i think that its a fairly noble project.
once you go slack, you never go back
A follow-up by zzzreyes here. He doesn't need the investment advice and it's beside the point. I guess mentioning the source of the money was a small mistake on his part, but that's no excuse for the endless off-topic posts.
There is one key differance however, the size of your living quarters. I live in an apartment where rent is $700 a month, and it is tiny ~700 square feet. A $100,000 house in Lafayette IN is on the order of 1200-1500 square feet, By your mortgage rates, my monthly payment for a house twice as large as my apartment would be $592.50. So my house would be twice as large as my apartment, and that $100 less I paid per month would offset the differance in property taxes. Now, when it comes time for me to leave Lafayette IN, I have something to show for my money, as opposed to rent which is thrown away. The key here is to compare similar living spaces, of course a large house is more expensive than a small apartment. You may ask, why am I renting? If I was going to be here more than 4 years, I wouldn't. When I moved here I was 18 and did not have the credit to purchase a home. There are also real estate fees for buying and selling.
-- the computer doesn't want any beer, no matter how much you think it does. NEVER, EVER feed your computer beer.
Today is not a good day.. I accidently hit enter on the last comment. :(
Generally the higher the frequencies the more dangerous RF exposure is to human flesh. Microwave frequencies are a lot more dangerous than HF (link helpful in finding more information reguarding this issue.
They'll enjoy it, but won't appreciate it. Keep most of the winfall - make the others pitch in.
Dickhead, what if she wasn't that great of an Aunt?
Hell awaits me, just feeding the troll.
Running cabling not directly associated with the operations of the elevator is not only dangerous, but is also against national electric code hence illegal in the united states. That said, you might want to try one access point and several repeaters.
The real problem is that sending watts doesn't do you any good unless the other guy can send watts back or you've got a gigantic antenna.
With great power comes great fan noise.
...and you don't want to spend it on yourself, why not pick a local charity, such as The Salvation Army or a community center, and offer to wire together a low buck computer lab for them, so that disadvantaged people can learn a new skill (anything from language to bookkeeping)? It would be technology related, which seems to be your desire, and the charity probably has most of the computers lying around (maybe old pentiums, but they're good enough for training). You can spend most of the 7K for a server(?) connected to a projection system.
Anyway, it's just a thought...
The house you could rent for $500 a month and the house you can buy for $200,000 are two very, very different houses. In fact, one of them is a small, one-bedroom apartment, if not a studio, and the other is about 2500 square feet with new appliances and a quarter-acre of land in the same market.
Here's how it really works:
You can rent a small apartment for $500/mo and lose it all to the landlord; or, you can buy a house with a $1000/mo payment of which 150 is principal (and growing each month) and 700 is interest and the other 250 is tax and insurance. You can deduct the tax and the interest, getting back about $300 on your income taxes. The result is you pay $550 net per month for a house that's 2-3 times the size of your apartment. You're earning $150+ per month in principal equity. Now count the capital appreciation which is probably on the order of $100/month, and your overall cashflow is now $450 negative instead of the $500 you were paying when you rented.
You're up $50/month and you live in a much nicer place that you'll end up owning free and clear if you just keep up the payments.
None of this applies in California where people are made stupid by fear of having to move to a place where people aren't made stupid by fear.
"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."
If I remember correctly, even a novice class amatuer radio license will allow access to allocted spectrum above 50mhz. Note the allocated spectrum. I'm fairly sure one cant use the spectrum allocated to wifi with more then the legal amount of power. Also, when one runs and unattened station, only licensed amatuers can legaly use it (without a control operator).
So an amatuer radio license here won't help.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Also agreed. My grandfather passed away a few years ago and left me with ... I'll just say it was enough to buy my house out right. (i.e. no mortgage) And I was only 22 years old at the time. Seriously there is not a single day that goes by that I am not thankful for my grandfather's generosity ... and my mother's wisdom in convincing me to use the money to buy a house instead of "wasting" it on other material items that would be short lived. (Think about it from this side of the time line. What good would a bunch of Play Station 1's and Pentium 233MHz computers do me now?)
Spending $7k on a wireless network may sound like fun and a cool idea right now, but in 18 months time all of that equipment will be nearing obsolescence and worth 1/10th what you paid for it. And a few months after that you won't even be able to give it away.
Put the money into a savings account for now and use it towards paying off your house. Once you own your home out right, you will always feel like you can afford things like wireless routers, LCD screens, new game consoles, and so on.
Trust me on this one.
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.
Hey, I never said his idea was smart.
In fact iI agree with you, from what we know, in his position that's certainly not the way i'd spend my own 7000$.
What I was saying is that he's made up him mind and asked a technical question. Answering it with what I understood as being "you're dumb, use the money the way I think it's smart" was over the line IMO.
My problem with the original post wasn't that it was trying to caution the guy in to spending the money more wiselly, but that it was arrogantly *telling* him how to spend his money.
I agree with paying off dept. If you have any, get rid of it as best you can. Then don't take on any more.
However buying a house may or may not be a good idea. Studies have shown that you end off about the same if you buy a house, or invest your money. Sure rent always goes up, but you have home repairs otherwise. In fact, I can't rent an apartment as big as my tiny house, and one that I could rent for the same money would be just a 1 bedroom. However dont' forget to account for the other bills. I currently have to pay to pump my septic tank. I have to pay the plumber when a pipe bursts. If the furnance breaks I have to pay someone to fix it. Now some of those tasks I can do myself, but I still have to buy parts, plus account for my time in labor.
Its been said that you need to live in a house for 7 years to make it worth it. If you don't plan on living in one area for that long, renting is best.
There are plenty of other good investments. Talk to a good stock broker for instance (beware, there are many bad ones out there), and you can get on some good ideas. A house may go up in value, but you can sell stock pretty much any day, and any quantity. There is no way to sell a tenth of your house if you want that much money for something. Even if you decide to sell your house it often takes 3 months to sell and a couple more months to close. I know of some houses that took over a year to sell. Wtih stock you can get your money now, and you don't have to sell the whole thing.
Stocks are not the only investment. Bonds have a bad name currently, but they are not nessicarly bad if you understand them.
This wireless plan may or may not be a good idea. If you are planning on starting a buisness (ie there is no DSL/cable, so you will buy a T1 and split the cost plus some profit) this might be a good seed money to get started. Run the numbers though and make sure you are charging enough to pay for the line plus equipment that might break, plus support for the other users. Basicly do a full buisness plan and get someone who knows them to review it. If your bank wouldn't give you a loan to start this buisness why would you spend your own money to start it?
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
Here's how you do it cheap. First, buy a ticket to Cancun Mexico. I can pick you up at the airport, and we'll mosey on down to Playa del Carmen. We'll get you a house near mine and you can set up a wireless router with your 2MB/512KB DSL account and I'll be happy to share your bandwidth. $7000 should be plenty.
That was an ass stupid argument. First off, who says you can't rent out a room in a house to someone (also known as....a room mate! whoa!)? It's not uncommon among freshouts. So the room mate idea is out as far as being an advantage of an apartment.
But the worst part of your argument (the part you seem to think is insightful) is that you compare a house $200,000 house to a $500 a month apartment? Or say a $1000 a month apartment with a room mate.
And the part of the argument you entirely missed, is that at the end of that 5 years, the house isn't worth $200,000. It's worth $250,000. So even if all you did was pay interest, and no principle, you still win.
Like I said, I am no expert but I would think two access points (at the 1/4 & 3/4 mark) on each floor using 802.11G WAPs (that will do 802.11b as well) wired into a decent router would give pretty decent and even coverage across the building.
I think you could do it for a lot less than 7G too!
Just send the check to me, and I will take care of getting that wireless thing up and working:
Shane Lenagh
9835 Evans St.
Omaha, NE 68134
With only $7G it will be tight, but I think we can make it work. Please make the check out in my name. Thanks.
Actually i think he should put up the money for the equipment then charge for the usage of it. That's called business
Never mind the legality of reselling the internet connectivity. He'd have to get a "real" connection if he wanted to start a business in the complex.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read 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.
In other words, make sure you have all the legal questions handled. Who owns the equipment, what happens in all the worst cases. All those other details your lawyer will make sure you know if you consult him first. Pay for that advice and heed it. Keep his number, odds are you will need it. If he talks you out of this, it is still $200 well spent.
I'll bet your lawyer will make you hire all the wiring. Between floors I'd do it anyway, there are too many legal headaches. (like can you even use the elevator shaft, and if so what wires are required. In the US you cannot, only elevator wires are allowed in the elevator shaft for fire reasons) And remember what the one poster said about using fiber, good idea.
Do a real buisness plan. Run it by a real invester and see if he would be willing to invest money. A real invester/banker will know how to spot details you are handwaving over, things that will come back to haunt you. Baiscly you want to force yourself to answer the hard questions before you commit serious money. If this turns out to be a good idea, great, but if not, you want to know before you end up in court for doing something illegal. (and the landlord testifying that he never gave you permission to use the elevator shaft!)
I saw your post and was a little surprised because of the similarity of your setup to mine. I live in a 5-floor building, you see, and we kind of have a little "community" here ourselves.
There are six rental units in the building and three of us share an Internet connection. (We also have an antenna hanging out the window so that we have wireless at the cafe down the block.)
Now, I understand that you said that you have access to place equipment in various places. My personal preference is against wireless. You get interference and/or flaky connections at points and personally I would (again, if you do have access) lay in physical cable (cat-5). If the various individual apartments want to put in their own local wireless, that's cool. But when you begin to worry about walls and other impediments, I think you're better off linking the various apartments onto a physical cable backbone and then letting the wireless points be stationed in each apartment.
My next-door neighbor has the actual physical connection to the outside world, for example. I get reception that is often good (but often not) in the front room of my aparment, which is near the base station. In my back room, I get CRAPPY reception from his base station, but I can see my downstairs neighbors base station. Two points here - firstly, he has his own base station because down one floor and over one apartment his reception was bad, so he decided to get his own base station hanging off the cable that he already had in his apartment. Secondly, I can see his base station in my back room but haven't given him my MAC yet (which is my bad)- he's doing MAC filtering - and so I don't have access to his net yet. The point is, that I think it would be easier for everyone to have their own local base station inside each apartment - they can place it where its best for each of them individually.
I know I haven't really been talking about budget issues in the above - mostly about architecure. However, if you put a router in each apartment, and a base station, and some category 5 cable, then you'll have a good network and I don't see it costing anywhere near 7K. Both base stations and routers have become cheap (especially routers) and so I think you could definitely keep the cost under $200/apartment.
well, those are my thoughts. have fun - sounds like a cool project!
Sigh. My id isn't prime. 2 2 2 2 2 3 5 313
Maybe more of you should try to answer his question instead of simply repeating the 'don't waste your money' message. He doesn't need to hear the same advice a hundred times. That being said i echo the ideas about only about 1 per floor being necessary. Living in college i have experiences this a little and it seems that the signal can go well through a few rooms (that counts up and down as well though). depending on the building running cable shouldnt even be that bad either. I suggest you get a little help from these people money wise, at least for the bandwidth such a project will require
Actually, most of the 802.11b spectrum is in the 2.4GHz amateur band.
The are a couple of problems with doing this as a ham radio project though.
1) Everybody would have to have an amateur license.
2) You would have to play by the FCC rules for the amateur service.
I'm sure there are others, but those are the first ones that come to mind.
The parent said pay off bills or invest. There are some things are intrinsically true, and that my friend is always good advice. Take it as a fact, take it as being condescending, but if you are looking to use your money wisely you won't find many situations when you will regret having less debt.
I dont know why a slashdot user asks such a question, if you read slashdot, normally you would be versed in such a decision. But since you are asking, best you can do with that money is invest into something other than something that will be outdated in a few years.
Wireless isnt the best for gaming, so go the wired route if youre really serious about something like this. Also, consider the fact that if youre going to connect it to the outside world, make sure you have enough bandwith and be able to cover costs.
Seven floors probably means that quite a few people live there, and expect your bandwith to be more than your average dsl/cable connection.
As far as cost, if you want to do go through it, $1000 should be plenty really (wireless), a little less for wired.
That is all.
Dear slashdot,
Recently, due to a family death, I have come into posession of a large sum of money. For reasons that I can not explain I am unable to hold onto this money and that is where I need your assistance. My plan is to purchase wireless network equipment which I will use to improve the quality of life for my people (the other tenants in my building). Upon advisement from you, I will transfer the money to a computer supplier of your choice in return for the goods we decide on. You will receive nothing from this as it is not several million dollars and I am not an African Prince.
Thank you
If he charges 20 dollars a month he will most likely be breaking his TOS (unless he gets a business broadband account). in fact, even if he doesnt charge he will probably be breaking his tos.
Red Hat is for people who hate Windows, FreeBSD is for people who love Unix.
www.putertech.net
What I really want is pr0n^h^h^h^H a pony.
Or atl east just run wired net. $50 for 1000ft. You can invest $200, and draw in the lines (where the phones come in the apts) and get a 24 port hub for ~$150. That is it. Spend the rest on yourself (ie. lots of vodka)
Code poet, espresso fiend, starter upper.
He has some hot neighbours who he subtly gave webcams to at Christmas and he wants to be in control of their web connections. Simple as that.
I have just moved into my house a couple of months ago. Though it's supposed to be a 3-storey house, there are "technically" 4 levels in the house as each bedroom has its own landing area. So I am speaking with some experiences here.
Prior to the renovation works, I have designed a network infrastructure where my study/guest room has been designated the "server room". During my home renovation, I've requested my electrician, in addition to his other tasks, to lay Cat5e cabling from the guest room to each bedroom.
My advice is, get an experienced electrician to lay the ethernet cables and install the wall mounted patch panels for you. It'll be cheaper (as well as more secure and reliable) in the long run. The solution is neater, and isolating network problems is much easier. The total solution, which comprises of the structured cabling and an all-in-one switch/router/firewall should not exceed your budget of $7000.
Investing your money in wireless equipments at this point does not make economical sense to me as the technology gets old pretty fast. Your users would soon be demanding faster connections once your equipments becomes obsolete.
I have not regretted making this decision ever since, especially during moments when I am doing some critical tasks which require 100% uninterrupted LAN access.
BTW, I am not American. I am a Singaporean.
There are psychological aspects to consider as well. As one person told me, "You don't own your house until you've finished paying off the mortgage". As another former homeowner said, "It wasn't me owning a house. It was more like a house owning me." When you own property, you also have to consider added costs like homeowner's insurance. You also become your own super, which means you have to shell out money (and as important, TIME) for home repairs. Do you really want to spend your leisure time doing yard work? (No? More money to shell out to contractors.)
And face it, if economic times get tough, it doesn't mean you can just dump the house and preserve your accumulated equity. Don't get me wrong; you can TRY, you just may not be successful in that goal.
From a financial point of view, property owning is usually a winner. (I don't believe in factoring in presumed future accumulated value without considering the potential downsides as well.) You obviously get away with taxes. When you rent, you're paying taxes on the rental. Its just unlisted price adjustment in your landlord's rent calculations. When you own, you get money back that would be going to George W Bush.
For me, its the psychological aspect that gets me. I "can't" just pick up and go. I "can't" tell the boss where he can stick this job. I have to spend time doing drudgework, rather than on my computer. Yeah, when I have a long-term gig, I'm going condo, but that is yet another ball of wax.
Funny, my first thought was exactly the parent reactions to the story. I'm a tad pleased it was the first thought of a lot of people.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
What you all failed to consider is the geek dimension .
You're better off installing wires, you have better bandwith and much more importantly, it's much more geeky. Face it, while wireless is considered modern and cool and there are some fairly interest aspects regarding singal attentuation and the like, wireless is basically an easy to install technology. Wires require a messy and geeky installation, and that's what we want, right?
With wireless:
- You buy a bunch of little cards and everybody connects
them to their PC. Reboot and run the stupid wizard thingie
and you're done. Boring, boring, boring.
With wires:P.S. This should all be pretty cheap and you should have tons of left over money at the end (expecially if you ask the landlord to help pay for the wires, since all the tenents can use them for their ISDN telephones :). What to do the cash? Duh.. buy
more hardware for that Beawolf cluster, dude!
---- It won't be as bad as you fear or as good as you hope, but it will take twice as long as you plan.
I'm afraid your argument is fundamentally flawed. The problem being that it is not normally cheaper to rent a place than buy a place (at least where I live).
At the moment if I rented out my property it would just about cover the mortgage. Ten years down the line? Well I expect the rent will more than cover the mortgage and give me a lot extra to save. Rent changes - if you have a fixed rate mortgage as I have this doesn't change.
How much do you think the $500 property in your example will be renting for in 5 or 10 years?
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.
Unless you're in a real estate market that moves up big, it usually takes 4-6 years before you hit the breakeven point.
That's just nuts, dedicating income to property ownership as a 4-6 year investment. Property ownership is about LONG-TERM investment. The shortest mortgages I've heard of is like 10 years. SURE, you can arrange to sell the property before completing the mortgage. But its not a liquid transaction like stocks.
The idea of property ownership is accumulating equity by taking the money you're giving to a landlord "back to yourself". It obviously doesn't pay off when you're expending much more money on property than you would by renting. Property owndership is a 10-25 year commitment. 4-6 years is for people who make their living "moving" property. And that's way too sophisticated a racket for myself to want to venture into.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
He didn't ask what you thought he should do with the money, he asked how to build a large wireless network.
Still, he didn't ask what you thought he should do with the money, he asked how to build a large wireless network.
Compare even a significant loss against the cost of rent and you're better off buying.
Minus fees, maintenance costs, property taxes, and taxes accrued from the property transfer, not necessarily. WHEN its an overpriced market for property ownership, you will sink more money into the property than when you rent. (A landlord is still compelled to make rent competitive with the local market. Sometimes in an overvalued housing market, it means he can't factor in all ownership expenses.) The money not spent in home ownership can be put into stock indexes, and even with taxes, you will still make a profit. If you sell property at the same price you bought it, the money you spent on rent HAS to outperform the market in that timeperiod.
I know too many people who bought property, lost their jobs, and couldn't hold on to the property. All their financial sweat equity went to the bank. I'm not saying you will not be financially ahead by owning property; I'm saying its an investment with its risks, not a sure thing.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
Well, I also didn't see a whole lot of useful comments in response to your question, but you may also want to consider security. I see you're thinking about putting some 802.11b stuff there (probably without support for WPA, but I've seen some with WPA implementations - strange...) which isn't the best way to go for a secure network (unless of course you want to make everybody use VPN).
With that amount of cash to spend you may consider 802.11g (which may improver performance too) and setting up a radius server. That shouldn't raise the costs too much...
Also... Is there really a need for high end solutions? the over the counter crap as you call it could very well be sufficient for your needs (e.g. DLink DI624 router/wireless AP which supports WPA with a raduis server, or WPA-PSK).
You could consider an mobile ad-hoc (MANET) solution such as OLSR og AODV.
check out www.olsr.org and www.aodv.org
I've rented for a number of years, and I now own. My mortgage payment on my 4-bedroom (150 year old, stone built house with 2.5 foot thick walls, so it's solid) house in an expensive area (Isle of Man) is approximately US$200-250 higher than the rent was on my *single* bedroom apartment in Texas (a cheap property area). My rent in TX went up every year. Of course interest rates will affect my mortgage rate, but generally over the long term it will not go up every year - essentially the mortgage will get cheaper in real terms as time passes. I also have enough space to rent a room out to someone and lower my costs further.
The other thing home ownership gives you is a bit of freedom. I have my house wired exactly how I wanted, so I don't even need to worry about wireless (which doesn't tend to go through the 2.5 foot thick stone walls particularly well in any case). I now have enough room for a dedicated computer room and other fun things.
Home ownership is a long term commitment. That's why I never bought a house in Texas (I didn't expect to be there more than a couple of years, I ended up there for 6).
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
I'm not gonna pretend to be an expert on 802.11 hardware, but I would recommend going with g instead of b. If you want to hold lan parties over this thing, you'll want the extra throughput.
If after setting this up, you want to provide high-speed internet service to the whole appartment as well, you might want to check out Netshare by Speakeasy, which was posted on slashdot a while ago. It should let you recoup some of the cost to spend on more hardware or do something with, or you might be able to use it to convince the landlord to foot some of the bill or something. Good luck!
You can mod your friends, you can mod your nose, but you can't mod your friend's nose.
I am still young -- but I'm not the 14 year-old that joined /. that would have done this.
.02 on the "you sound like a father" argument. Then again, I think I've broken the record for number of times a nineteen year-old has been told he sounds like someones father.
This guy has to have some serious dough in the bank if he's willing to spend money like this. If he does, good for him. If I had 7k, however, I'd be putting it into a good stable mutual fund.
I won't do the math right now, as it is 0530 and I am not awake willingly, but if you put 7k into some good investment at a young age -- and I'm guessing this guy is still pretty young -- and continue to feed it over the years you can have a good chunk of money (with modest additions, somewhere in the 100s of thousands) when you retire (assuming 65, though retirement might be later when he's 65.)
If you start early it is actually pretty easy to life comfortably. I, personally, have greater ambitions than simply living comfortably -- I am still young enough to feel I have a world to change -- but I am hoping to have a decent standard of living while doing it. At least a decent standard of living for my family as I go out and do my 'stuff.'
Just my
What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
No... 2 WAP's per floor and be sure to pipe all WAP's through a nocatauth proxy to gain access outside.
that way the entire building can be a open workgroup, but net access can be limited to the chosen few that you have given the key's to.
I.E. so mister spammer doesn't find your hotspot and sit in the hallway sending gobs of email.
I run a small community wifi network. we have 10 hotspots now spread out over most of the city... nocatauth is your friend.. we set it to give 56K modem speeds and ONLY port 80 access to those who havent told us who they are and requested a login, or refuse to tell us. (when you first connect and try to suef anywhere, you are redirected to the login/info page.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Actually on aproject this size a desktop PC running a server OS would be much more than adequate. For gods sake don't buy a $100,000 dollar sun when a 1500 dollar linux PC will do the job. And who are you to tell him what the best way to spend his money is....a plaque on a wall. WTF good is that? At least this way he gets a really good learning experience out of it. Has some fun.
I say go for it if you want. who knows this may grow into a cool business idea...or it may not.
what?
Finally a parent post that makes sence. Go for it kid...er man ...er woman. what ever follow your dreams. If this turns out good you can always use the information you gained to start another business. everything you do in life can't revolove around making a profit. That day is coming soon enough.
Have fun with it and learn
what?
If $7000 is your big chance to buy real estate, you can't afford to be a homeowner. Stop watching all those informercials, or at least stop believing them. What you hoard for yourself only shrinks, but what you share comes back to you threefold. This is especially true for windfalls. I can't believe all these /.ers are ragging a guy for wanting to help his neighbors get good access. How microsoft of you.
mekkalekkahi-mekkahineyho
>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.
Jesus H. Christ. That amount of power in the WiFi band would fry deep-frosted chicken (and living human flesh) very nicely. Try reading about satellite ground stations that use gigahertz frequencies and you'll find that even they use just a couple of watts transmitting power.
The secret to a successful
Do what makes you happy! I hope you get advice for achieving your goal, not advice on what else to do with the $.
I'm able to receive four neighbors' home wireless networks from my condo. Woudn't it be cool if we could combine into a single network with 4x the speed? Even two would be worthwhile, especially if they were different providers.
"All that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke
sucks. Tons of lag. I suggest good ol' CAT 5. Cheap. Get lot's of help from those who you're helping. Maybe a couple wireless AP's but make sure they're secure. IF you have access to the elevator shaft that is a good place to run the cable, usually a conduit for it as a matter of fact. Don't let the nay sayers bring you down, but consider good 'ol cable. It's a little harder to run but is a better deal in the longrun. Especially when gaming.
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
Nice try. If you were living with a roommate in the house, just like you stated with the apartment, your payment would be $600. That's only $100 more than the apartment, you'd have a -lot- more space, you'd build equity, and all that interest comes right off your taxable income.
The truth is, for about the same price, you get bigger and better when you buy. The downside is the long-term commitment.
mmmmmm. but that's just me.
I want to set up a free wireless network in my neighbourhood. I'm glad others are taking the same initiative. To save money, you may want to run a devilinux router to web cache with squid, and prevent users from doing illegal stuff.
___Abuse of power comes as no surprise___
That's married loser to you, punk. As I said, we're not all in junior high. Heck, some of those who are in junior high manage to produce fairly adult posts. You should see if you can learn from 'em.
Minnesota's property values are kind of crazy. We bought our house 4 years ago for about 125k. It's now worth more that twice that.
-
"Vengeance is fine," sayeth the Lord.
I can't tell you exactly what you need, but I know some guys who can. http://www.shmoo.com/members.html E-mail Bruce Potter or Beetle at the Shmoo group. I met these two at a wireless course recently. They are definitely experts in this field. Beetle runs a wireless ISP for his whole neighborhood, similar to what you're planning to do. As for implementation or money: If you're just talking a wireless LAN so everyone can join games and share things with each other, by all means, that can and should be free to the tenants. If you're talking sharing an internet connection amongst the tenants, then I'd suggest charging a minimal amount to everyone who uses it. The more people use it, the less expensive it is. Business DSL should run about $250 a month, depending upon your service provider. If 25 people use it, just charge $10 each so you can break even, not profit off your neighbors nor keep spending money out of your pocket. If you're talking ISP, that's where Beetle can help you the most. The $7k will get you up and running, but again you need to charge for people to use your internet connection and to provide maintenance for your servers. Personally, the 2nd option is your best bet. Good luck, enjoy your inheritance, and regardless of what anyone else says, it's yours to do with as you wish.
Umm, hence 'most areas'. I think it's silly to live somewhere where prices are so insane, unless you have a $300k+/yr job there that you can't get elsewhere.
Hey, I doubt that this will even make it into the moderated post list (I joined the thread too late - so sad!), but I'll add it anyway.
I have a wireless LAN in my apt (just for myself) and I live on the top floor of a 3-floor apt. building. I have a *single* Linksys 802.11b Router/AP, and I get a full strength (100%/11Mb) signal down in the basement (it's nice being able to do work and/or game online wirelessly from the basement *heh*).
That being said, your ability to do this will depend highly on the structural materials of your building, as well as partially on the dimensions (for instance - 4 stories you've said - but how many apts per floor?). Some buildings used a wire mesh to do drywall around which is death to wireless.
Cheerios!
Worrying works!! 99% of all the stuff I worry about never happens
Have you spoken to the building's owners? They may not care for your improvements.
Another point - should you move, do you intend to take the system with you? If you're OK with leaving it behind, again, you need to speak with the buildings owners to see if they want it.
Chip H.
There are really great deals on recertified used equipment out there, and you can get gear that was top-of-the-line 3 years ago for pennies on the dollar. That $100,000 Sun server someone bought 3 years ago can now be found for $2500 (including a warranty) if you know where to look.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
A lot of people talk about rent as if it is "wasted money." That's not at all true, most of the time. Buying a house is an investment, and investments are inherently risky.
This is horrible advise. Owning a home is always a better investment than renting - renting you are GUARANTEED to lose 100% of your 'investment'. Owning a home you could, but it is very likely that you will see a nice appreciation on your home. Also, the gov't (in the US) will pay you back a third of your interest paid on your mortgage (see: tax deductable), and with interest rates what they are right now it is the best investment you can make. Rent is only a 'better' option if you are looking to live somewhere short term, or if there is a serious differential between the monthly expenses (which there isn't with today's interest rates and such).
You are leaving a few factors out, here. First of all, that $54k in interest is tax deductable. So, take 18k of that back and put it in your back pocket. Second of all, you're not taking into account appreciation. Realtors generally say that you can count on 8% annual appreciation. On a 200,000 house, after 5 years, you will have made almost 100k in appreciation! Now, 100k, plus 18k, plus 20k (what you paid in principle) is a lot more than your meager 41k that you managed to save by renting.
You have 7,000 put it to good use as a down payment on a house. That was the best use of 5K I ever spent.
Here's the part of the original post where the request for information comes in:
"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?"
In no part of this does he ask for financial advice. You can take from this that he has $7000 of cash to spend on the personal project of his choice. HIS CHOICE. Not saying I agree with it. Just that I don't have the right to diss it.
Oh, and before I get onto the rest of the rant, I'd be thinking a bunch of wireless cards and one (or maybe two access points/repeaters) per floor for reasonable coverage.
"Um. Seems pretty clear: we know he lives in an apartment, and thinks $7000 is a lot of money."
Not sure what you're trying to say here. That apartment living is for the poor? It all depends on where the flat is and whether he owns it or rents it and what the communal tenancy agreement/factoring arrangements are and many other factors too. All we know is that he got left $7000 and has decided to up his hardware levels.
"Want to play the game some more? He is probably young, else he would not have mentioned the great aunt's death as a novelty. He seems to be unable to scope and budget a wireless network despite being "into computers." He probably has no savings, none, because otherwise he'd have considered this project earlier."
The first part I might be inclined to agree with. On the other hand, I would consider a great aunt's death a novelty since I don't have many of them and they're unlikely to leave me money. Scope and budgeting for a wireless network? Fair enough, but give him some credit - he's asking for advice on it. And it's possible he's finally got to the stage of being comfortable where he is - maybe he's bought his apartment, just been promoted within the company, slowly working his way up the corporate ladder and just got himself a little dog named snuffles - we just don't know. Maybe up until now he's been spending his extra cash looking after his great aunt in her twilight years. He might just want a new project.
Now, I've had my rant. I have to say, you have my every sympathy for having difficult relatives. Not everyone is like them though. Give the guy a chance, y'know?
If you can't think of something nice to say then don't say anything at all. No, REALLY.
. In the first five years you've paid 60*1185 = $71,145, but oh so sad for you, $54,343 of that was in interest.
You're neglecting the $13,585.75 you get from uncle sam for deducting that interest, bringing the net interest paid to $40,757.25. Now consider that your house appreciated by 30% over 5 years - that's $60,000 - so you've got about $90k in your house. Pretty nice, huh?
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
After reading through the many replies I have formulated one of my own, and it's not something that hasn't been said by many, many people over the years:
"A fool and his money are soon parted..."
Only because when you spend your money on stupid shit us 'right wingers' with 'jobs' have to 'support' your dumb asses through 'taxes' and 'social programs'.
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
What building do you live in, so I can avoid it next time I'm looking for a new apartment? Jesus. Fucking gamers up until dawn playing Half Life and what not, then going off to school and coming home to puke in the halls. Joy, joy, my ideal living space.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Totally agree with this one.
I've been to Saskatchewan. And I was truly apalled at how cheap property was. Coming from the SF bay area, it was a real eye-opener to see how far my monthly rent would have gone there.
I briefly flirted w/ the idea of buying the province w/ some of the money in my 401(k)
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
But that works both ways. If inflation reached very high levels - for example 10% (which could happen with all the jobs moving to china and india and noone in the US and europe to buy them because people don have jobs), and you were on a fixed rate mortgage, you'd find that your morgage would be paid off very easily indeed, whereas with an apartment the landlord would just put up the rent...
IntechHosting - Free domain, 2GB, PHP, £4.95/$8.95
I build a WISP for $3500 that covers 8sq miles. Each relay was $1000 and I have 3 of them. I'm sure you don't need as much for a single apartment building. I even have a 50 foot tower in that cost. I pay about $700 a month for a Frame Relay (T1 is $1300). I have 43 customers so far and plenty of bandwidth for Playstations and PC games.
Have fun.
The above is not worth reading.
contrary to somewhat-popular belief, a house that you live in, especially when it is mortgaged, is a liability, not an asset.
furthermore, if he's going to be putting down something in the realm of $10k on a house, he's going to have a huge mortgage. the monthly payments (depending upon where he lives) will likely exceed his current monthly rent, and a large portion of those mortgage payments are going to be on interest (more money wasted).
if he's into real estate, i'd suggest putting that money into real estate that's rented out itself. nice bit of supplemental income if you do it right and are willing to accept the risk and take the time and research to do it properly.
however, this guy didn't ask _what_ to do with his money. he already has a plan. everything need not be about saving and planning. sometimes people just want to buy stuff, and there's nothing wrong with that. besides, i'd bet he can get them a respectable setup for under a grand, and that's $6k he can invest or put away or whatever.
as for the actual question of network setup, that unfortunately depends quite a bit on the house itself. if the walls/ceilings/floors aren't too thick, you might get away with two access points and a little bit of wiring to connect the APs to the wired network. worst case, you put two APs on each floor, one on either side. depending on what standard you go with (802.11{a,b,g}), that will run you anywhere between $1000 and $1500. if you luck out and the two-AP approach works (or even a one-per-floor approach), you'll finish with a lot of money to spare.
i can't really recommend what brands are the best, because my experience is limited. but i'd suggest that after you pick an AP model, get two of them, and see what kind of coverage you can get. every building is different, and experimentation is the only way you'll learn what your particular building needs. if you need more APs, go out and buy them, but after experimenting you should have a pretty fair idea of how many you'll need in total. for a 4-story house i'd say two is the bare minimum if you're lucky, but you may want more because the quality of the connection at the fringes of range may not be acceptable to you.
Xfce: Lighter than some, heavier than others. Just right.
You conveniently ignore the fact that mortgage interest is tax-deductible. This is a huge and often overlooked factor. Rent is only deductible on local taxes and generally has a pitifully low cap.
Interesting Last tim I checked I was running our entire department on a single P4 linux Box. The only thing your old sun box has is a 64 bit bus...but running at 1/8 the speed who cares. I recommend my friend that you go grow a clue...try miracle grow. I hear it works well.
Oh and which will last longer? I say the pentium machine as all the parts are easily replaceable. Now go along and find a replacement motherboard for your sun. or video card, or ethernet card, or you get the point.
what?
More than the number of rooms in the building, you should ask how many people you're gonna have to serve and what your ultimate connection is to the Internet. THAT is going to determine what sort of router/hub arrangement you'll need.
Also is this a wood-frame building or steel and concrete? You may find it cheaper and more reliable to run Cat 5 to each apartment given the signal attenuation problems you might have with wireless.
If you're determined to do wireless, you might want to check into many of the do-it-yourself community WAP antenna configurations.
Somebody recently wrote an article that basically stated the cost of billing for wireless service basically outweighs the amount of money people are willing to pay for the service. He was predicting the death of T-Mobile and Wayport-type hotspots, but it's kind of true when you come down to it. Especially since accepting money for service implicitly implies providing the support required to use it.
There are plenty of WISP forums with lots of good documentation that will help you out. Wiring up and down levels is pretty difficult. A low gain omnidirectional antenna is still not quite a sphere in terms of coverage. The higher gain you go, the more the coverage area starts to look like a squished donut. That necessitates an AP on each floor, which introduces the problem of backbone wiring to link them all together. You then run into roaming and interference issues. All items that can technically be solved, but at significantly more cost and aggravation that a single AP hotspot.
Best of luck... please let us know if you proceed!
--D
I have been hearing about mesh neworks lately used to get entire hotels online in very little time and with few access points. So I would think that this is just a smaller scale version of that. There are a few mesh networking products out there and may be a good solution to your problem.
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http://locustworld.com/modules.php?op=modload&n
I used to worry about this also. But what finally made me decide to buy a house (now on my second, having made a tidy profit on the first in just 5 years) was:
1) I own a nice subwoofer. Subwoofers are not apartment friendly
2) I like growing vegetables and happily dig up large amounts of lawn to turn into garden space.
3) I can mod it however the hell I like (well within reason, but you get the idea). If I decide to run Cat6 to each room and put a WAP in a tree in the backyard, I don't have to clear it with anyone.
For me, the advantages far outweighed the disadvantages. Obviously YMMV.
kinda OT, but I'm bored today
If you can gain access to the elevator shaft I'd see about running conduit (to cut out electrical noise from the motors) between each of the floors and whichever floor where the broadband connection is going to be setup on. Run CAT5 thru the conduits so you can wire up an access point on each floor. Have all the cables terminate at a Router (I've had good experiences with Linksys). Turn off SSID Broadcast and enable WEP. You should also consider getting the MAC's of everyone in your building and adding those to the list of clients that can get an address (Linksys has this feature iirc) so you can cut down on wardriving.
Hope this helps!
Interesting, my local ISP (whom I used to work for) has been running on Pentium class PC's since he opened ... in 1996! He still uses the same cases too, just keeps upgrading the mobo, etc.
Last year I went and replaced a small town cableco's server network, removing their old Pentium1 boxes and replacing with Pentium3 boxes, they run everything, email, dns and a squid proxy system at 2 of their headends.
It works, it works well, of course don't run everything off one box but I can certainly say that you do not need to go get overhyped Sun hardware when standard PC hardware will work just fine.
One last thing, you do this using quality hardware, it won't work quite so well if you are very cheap and buy bottom end junk. Helps if you know how to build a system that doesn't crash much.
Going multi-floor brings up legal issues.
One biggie is regarding the elevator shaft. Nothing is permited in an elevator shaft that is not directly related to the operation of the elevator.
There are some cable tray limits on the use of class 2 wireing in conduit and cable trays in an elevator access shaft which can be used for networking. Check the National Electrical Code and any local ordnances that may apply. The easiest way to check this is hire an electrician as a consultant that does class 2 electrical work if you plan on pulling the wire yourself.
The truth shall set you free!
Check out how we constructed a 100 Mbps fiber optic network to 60+ bungalows!
http://www.bjornerback.com/tomas/mattgrand
I have 1 Gbps Internet access@home
You can only have a set rate for 5 years maximum. That's what refinancing is all about. And with landlords, they can only increase your payments by a certain small percentage per year, which depends on the state/country you live in, and being Canadian, it is a very low percentage
-I DDoSed your mom.
I didn't realize that you could write interest payments on your mortgage off your taxes. I live in Canada, and I'm pretty sure that's not allowed here, (although i'm definitely going to check now). But damn maybe I'll just buy a house in the States then. I only live 2 hours from the nearest border. :)
-I DDoSed your mom.
We considered doing something similar in a block of units around here. One of our clients builds radio towers for a living - he suggested that the best way to get coverage and not have it stray out of bounds was to install a leaky coax feed all down the elevator shaft. That way the signal can be picked up from the inside sections of any unit and not outside the walls. Not sure how you make a leaky coax cable, but I am sure google could help you out.
The thing to keep in mind is to not go overboard on your loan. First, find out what your maximum loan can be (go to a trusted mortgage agent), then lop $50,000 off the top, and get a loan for that amount. Most of the time, they will want to mortgage your ass into the ground, and make you live month-to-month - you don't want to do that.
Take the $7000, put it into a money-market account, let it sit for a few months (while you look for a house), then use $5000 or so for down payment, closing costs, etc to move into your home. Leave the other $2000 in the account (its a SAVINGS account - start now, start early!). Any extra money? Drop it into the account.
I definitely *would not* spend the money on a wireless access system - unless I owned the property myself. Leasing/renting is *slavery*, IMNSHO - you *are* flushing money down the toilet. It would be better to buy a home or some other property than leasing. Right now is the time to do it, before interest rates pop back up to 10-15 percent - you will be kicking yourself that you didn't take advantage of the situation, it will likely be many long years before you see this situation again (if ever?). Meanwhile, others will be smug in their knowledge that they got their home loans at 5-7 percent FIXED (don't do that variable crap).
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
You make a good point... which is basically that:
Buying a house does not necissarily make sense if you're buying it with very little (least $50k for a downpayment (which means like $80k total when you figure on work you need to do right away, moving, closing costs, emergency money, etc) is nuts...
If Jesus Christ were born in our time, you'd all be calling him a fucking idiot.
Jesus did things without caring if he would be appreciated for them. We view this behavior as God-like in that context. But in today's world, a person trying to do the same is treated like an imbecile, or accused of being naive. "A fool and his money..." Maybe the fool understands something about money that you don't. Maybe you're the fool.
Our individualism in this country is a strength, but simultaneously it makes us all assholes.
How about you all shut up? He's a far better man than any of you will ever be. That is, if he's serious.
I say this and I'm not even Christian.
Oh, and don't try to deflect my point by saying he's investing in technology that will soon be obsolete. You'd be railing on him equally hard if he'd simply decided to divvy up the $7k amongst his neighbors.
There was a story a few months back (can't find it, though, too many other stories on wi-fi) where a guy covered an entire apartment block with two access points - one on each side of the building. Since Wi-fi works line-of-sight, if the tenants could see the access point from their windows, they can use it. I don't know what's across the street from your place, but you could mount it in a tree, power it from a street lamp or from an adjacent building, and use it as a repeater for one or more trunks you have set up to your internet connection inside.
Of course, this will just give people access... not necessarily good bandwidth since everyone has to share. But I imagine your internet connection is a smaller link than the Wi-fi anyway. This would be a good, cheap start... you wouldn't have to spend much wiring up the building (I don't really see you getting much further with only $7k). You can always spend the rest of the money on upgrades later.
The aggravation that goes with wireless is unparallel, save yourself a stroke and lots of money by buying a few spools of CAT wire and a HUB/Router in one, a crimping tool, and some connectors and have at it. Run the wires and you will thank me in the end cause there is nothing like a good wire compared to having bad signal strength (which is unavoidable in your situation believe me)
Trix are for kids!
Good God.. warn me so I can get to the Minimum Safe Distance before you turn that thing on...
Yeah, um, let's see. 2.4Ghz, 1500 watts. That's not a WAP. That's a microwave oven.
And it's not good for drying out Fluffy! (fizzzzzz, pop!)
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
Comparing a real server to a desktop PC is like comparing a truck to a sports car: they both may both have the similar gross statistics (EG same engine displacement and horsepower, have 4 wheels, same cost, etc), but they're built to do very different jobs. Just because a Corvette has more horsepower than a Suburban, that doesn't make it a better choice for towing than a Suburban. Sure, you can get away with using a Vette to tow a trailer, but the Suburban will do that job better in the long run.
To generalize, desktop hardware is optimized for a small number of CPU-bound tasks, while server hardware is optimized for large numbers of predominantly IO-bound tasks. Just because you *can* run Email, DNS, and Squid on a desktop grade box, doesn't mean that it's *better* than a machine that's been specifically engineered to excel at that kind of task. Likewise, while you could use a datacenter server to play Quake, it's not going to do it as well as a desktop box would. Understand what the hardware is designed to do, and use it appropriately.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
I setup a wireless network on a 6 story building that had reinforced-concrete walls and 8 apartments on each floor. I used 6 WAPs and 1 home router/ip-sharing/NAT device. It worked...but not very well(because of the router).
The elevator shaft is a big no-no for WAPs, because you'll get no signal. You'll probably have to put one WAP on each side of the floor (assuming your elevator is in the middle). To hook them together, I put a switch on the 3rd floor and ran 3 cables up and 3 down.
Didn't really have any problems because no one was a heavy downloader. However, the POS router that I got needed to be reset every week. Also, the coverage was spotty at the ends of the floors.
You are COMPLETELY offbase because you fail to account for property value. right now the (U.S.) national average property value is increasing at 6.8% per annum.
SO, using that average, and your above example, you will pay the $150,000 principal plus $174,000 interest for a total of $324,000. If your house appreciates at the national average, at the end of 30 years, you will have a $1.07 Million dollar property, completely paid for!
So you can rent for the next 30 years, I'll buy. Actually, now that I think about it, after 5 years, I think I'll use the equity in my house to buy your apartment building. You can just make your checks out to me. Yeeahh, and if you have a moment, I'm gonna need you to go ahead and calculate how much your building will be worth to me in 30 years. Thaaaanks.
i'm so sick of people saying that people who rent are STUPID because they're throwing their money away.
It takes all types to make the world go around. And types like me LOVE types like you.
-whoa, I'm jones'ing for a sig right about now...
She was your aunt, and its your money, but if I wanted to honor somone for introducing me to technology, I don't think I'd put the money into hooking up a bunch of guys who already have ready access to tech (gamers).
I'd probably play "stone soup" with it and use it to attract other funds and direct them to a more community minded project that might actually introduce people to technology.
Did anyone else think of debian when they saw the word apt in the story title? :)
My Gawd WTF...
You moderators are fucking gay as hell. This is a fucking troll. The above post wasn't a fucking troll. Why don't you stop jerking off, get your head out of your ass, and read the posts before you mod them as trolls.
In my area, it's cheaper to pay on a 1 bedroom condo (with 0 down) than to rent a 1 bedroom apartment.
People also don't understand that renting is definitely a better deal if you're only going to be living in the same place for a couple of years.
Yeah, there's too much up-front costs. Also, the first half of a loan repayment is mostly interest anyway, so you're still paying someone else rather than putting equity in your investment.
No, he'll charge for access to his wireless network. It just happens to have internet access.
Let's see that one stand up in court.
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I Hit the Karma Cap, and All I Got Was This Lousy
Hi my spelling is bad.
r et ingFccRegulations?action=highlight&value=fcc+
r te d
my info on the wireless regulations is a little old, but ya you can operate at 2.4ghz with the right lisence.
The Seattle Wireless project has a good page with information about wireless power, it seems that the regulations have been changed, to prevent flooding of the 2.4ghz band.
http://www.seattlewireless.net/index.cgi/Interp
is the page.
http://www.seattlewireless.net/index.cgi/GetSta
has some good info about getting involved in the seattle wireless project but also has some good general information about setting up wireless base stations and using high gain antennas.
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
yes 1500 watts would cook you quite niceley, but I absolutley do not recomend it, 5-10 watts is plenty for nearley any kind of long range wireless project.
Also I suggested getting the lisence beceause studying for it opens up the door to understanding how radio works, also it's a great way to get to know your local ham comunity, and it allows you to operate at higher power, wich is really just a fringe benifit.
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