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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
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?
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.
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.
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?
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
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
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.
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 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.
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.
> 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.
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
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 $900
The biggest problem you are likely to face is getting power to the Access Points. Power Over Ethernet can be a little bit of a pain to set up if you are now electronically inclined, and building code can be your enemy in terms of running extension cords or additional outlet boxes.
Also remember that there are special code requirements for running any type of cables through a vertical shaft like the elevator shaft. If there is an existing conduit running vertically for phone cabling, that is your best bet.
Also/FYI: my experience is that cheap patch panel antennas are useless. The two I have purchased do not outperform a standard dipole.
Dean
do you have any idea of how moderation works, read about it before you complain too much. and if you don't like how people moderate meta moderate.
I have moderated several times and concider myself proof that you don't need great carma to get to moderate. just keep it at neutral or higher, and actually read slashdot and you'll probbly get to moderate a few times a year.
just know that when you complain about "the moderators" that you are talking about nearley every slashdot reader.
as for the wireless project it should be easy to do for about 300-400$ 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
The backbone of a wireless network is wired. Let's get that point out first in the discussion.
We don't want the wireless access points speaking to each other by wireless... that's simply going to be too much use of the limited RF space, and we have to assume that people are going to want to use 2.4 GHz phones so we won't have all that RF to ourselves...
My best bet would be a wireless access point on each of the four floors as close to the center of the building as you can place it, and then have those four access points have a wire all leading to a central 100mps switch that's placed wherever you can put it.
The access points should be configured to not to speak directly to each other over RF, that's what the wires are for. Therefore, all the RF bandwidth is reserved for users, and hopefully they'll be running on the lowest power settings possible to speak to the AP on their floor and therefore with the lowest RF noise...
Keep in mind that if you set up this network, everyone and I mean everyone is going to be calling you whenever the internet connection is down or the network isnt working. Get ready for tech support apartment building.
Geez, I just hope we're not too late -- questions like this tend to get answered by shysters with "well, that's cutting it close, but I'll see what we can do."
I have an 802.11g (Apple Airport Extreme if anyone cares) access point in my basement, in an electrical closet. I'm up on the second floor, on the other side of the house, and get excellent signal strength.
Now, that's only three floors, and my house isn't huge. If your four-story building is large, you should still be fine dropping a single access point in the middle of the second or third floor, assuming you have a cable drop at that location.
Worst case, you need two access points, and with the Airport, they can daisy chain one to the other -- one access point can use another access point for...access. I don't know about other brands.
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.
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...
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!
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
-GrymOkay, I will assume you truely want a wireless network despite the good advice voiced by others.
Since you failed to include any information like apartment building footage, a map/blueprint with your location marked, etc., this will be a general approach that assumes you don't want to leave anything behind when you move out eventually.
1) Buy a WiFi card and an access point (AP) from your favorite company, but make sure it is at least 802.11g (D-Link comes to mind, since they claim near "wirespeed" encryption.
2) Setup your AP (with WEP, largest key available!) in your room (which hopefully is near the middle of the building), and then walk around and see what your signal looks like. Make a rough map of signal strength and note any shadows. While you are at it, you might see if anyone else has their own WiFi already. (You might be able to enlist them in your endeavor!)
3) Decide if you think you need to upgrade the AP's antenna to a larger "omnidirectional" antenna (6db or so. Anything larger than about 8db probably is a directional antenna) so you can reach the furthest recesses of the building.
4) Build a Linix box that firewalls your ISP line, any wire-based Lan you might have, and the wireless AP! You need to protect yourself, or one of you new "friends" will hack you.
4b) (optional) Setup an open source RADIUS server on the box and point the AP to it for authentication that is harder to break than MAC filtering + WEP.
5) Decide which services you will let go through the wireless. Traffic shape (QOS) anything that might get abused but you still want to let through anyway. Make sure to include any game ports you plan to use.
6) Decide how much of your ISP bandwith you want to let the wireless people have, and traffic-shape the interface card.
7) invite a select few of your neighbors to try out the system (give them the shared WEP key or a Radius login)
8) After you get their feedback and see how your network handles the load, decide if you still want to go through with telling everybody.
Costs:
~$300 AP + couple of nicks from D-Link
~$100 New antenna for AP to boost range
~$400 linux box + 3 NICs
$??? Your labor cost to set this all up
If you find that the above single AP setup is not sufficient, I respectfully suggest you give up as a more complex setup is beyond a simple slashdot post. Hire a professional.
- D
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
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.
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.
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.
The expensive part is going to be getting the building on the internet. You're going to need something like a 1.5Mbit business SDSL or T-1 with 64 or so IPs and a SLA. This is probably going to wind up being around $600-$800/mo depending on your provider.
If you really want to honor her memory, why not donate the money to a school (college or private HS). Then you can have a nice plaque with her name on it put up in the computer lab. That's a lot better way to honor someone's memory than throwing a year-long LAN party for your neighbors. Networking your building, while a fun geek project, probably isn't the best way to honor her memory. If you want to do that, get your neighbors to pitch in (labor, $, or equipment) and make it a community project.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Is your building mostly drywall? or concrete? Wireless does NOT like to penetrate concrete. 2 walls tops. A good 6DBI+ antenna will go through about 5-6 drywall for about 200 feet with a signal strength you can call "OK". If you mostly have open spaces, with insulated walls, one big antenna can reach about 400+feet with good WiFi cards.
A site survey needs to take place in your building. Otherwise you will probably purchase an antenna that you will not use. There are many flavors of antennas. 2.4Ghz - 5Ghz Wall mount, Ceiling mount. Directional & omnidirectional with different strengths. Most places will choose a directional 6-12DBI antenna on the far wall/corner to cover a floor. Depending on distance you may need a repeater or two.
I would recomend the Cisco Aironet AP with an antenna that would best fit your need. 4 Floors = 4 AP's w/Antennas which would probably be about $4,000. That does not count good client WNIC's for about $100-140/piece.
If you want security you are going to need to setup a server, and maintain it. Then if you want to use Cisco LEAP, you will have to setup a RADIUS server that supports LEAP. I recomend FreeRadius. Downside is that all client NICS must be Cisco for this to work. If this is not what you had in mind, and want cross-vendor support without PKI infrastucture which is a pain in the ass to maintain without smartcards, then install an EAP-TTLS server for PEAP authentication. All of this will require somebody with training to setup, as you will run into a lot of snags.
In any event, you have to support user / password requests from your tenants and any potential problems.
I notice everyone else can only tell you what else to do - so as a REAL geek, here's some answers:
a freenet.org/content/hillshub.htmlx .net/~mike/projects/waveguide/
:-)
1. Do it all with wireless - if the only wires involved are the plug pack to the nearest power point, it is no different to the clock-radio or television when it comes to taking it with you when you leave.
2. Use access points that take PCMCIA cards to do the actual wireless stuff. You can then take out the card that comes with it and install a long range card, like one of the 200mw Senao cards. Apart from the higher output, they are also more sensitive on the receive side.
3. If you are the handyman type, you can build an antenna from scratch (the slotted waveguide I am thinking of can also be bought pre-built). In western Australia we have a wireless group that has gotten 30km (about 19miles) line-of-sight between two of these - and they are NOT directional. You may be able to use just one access point with this and the standard antennas on the clients.
4. Prefer client cards that take an external whip, rather than relying on the internal antennas that are built into most pcmcia cards. This may not be necessary in all cases, but use them where it is convenient.
Some places to start looking:
http://www.wafreenet.org/
http://www.w
http://www.nar
The slotted waveguide in the second link is a 180 degree version - but you can get (or make) a 360 degree version.
Retail on these is about $600 australian.
If you are lucky, one of these on the edge of the 2nd or 3rd floor might cover the building - but probably better to have one at each side of the building, or maybe a 360degree installed in the middle - you'll have to experiment. (you might need one for each floor, or one in each corridor or something). The right gear WILL punch through walls, but not that well (I have a high powered card with small home made whip antenna reaching through two layers of thick earth wall and a brick wall to a normal 30mw access point with its standard 6" whip. the signal is poor, but it's there. My brother-in-law's 30mw card can get through one brick and one earth wall to the access point)
Also make sure your access points can operate as a wireless backbone (if you need more than one). If you can avoid cables through the building you don't need permission, and they can't stop you taking the gear when you leave.
Once you have it up and running, odds are you will be able to re-coup some of the expense from the users if you want (I know how hard it is to get people to invest in something that might work, as opposed to something that is working). That would mean you'll have to leave it there when you leave, but you will also have most of your money back, and can go spend it on networking your next residence
As for all the people that blasted him for wasting money on a rented property - did anyone stop to think he might be a student, or not want to be stuck with a fixed asset for some other reason? Perhaps he is employed in that city for a couple of years, and it's pointless buying a house when he knows he will have to sell it before the value goes up enough to cover the associated fees.
Much of the time, your rent will be cheaper than what you pay on a mortgage . . .
That's not exactly true. A mortgage just covers the cost of the property. You rent a property that someone else owns outright (not likely if it's an apartment), or they are paying a mortgage. So your rent is covering their mortgage + building insurance (and flood insurance near the coast) + property taxes + landscaping (frequently).
So for a given piece of property, it's a pretty safe assumption that strictly speaking, the mortgage would cost less. But then you've got multiple other bills on top of the mortgage to foot now.
A lot of people talk about rent as if it is "wasted money." That's not at all true, most of the time.
I would agree with your statement if the "most of the time" were changed to every now and then, or "rarely"
I bought a condo a couple years ago. with a 15 year mortgage, and throwing some extra principle in the payment, I'm starting off with a 50/50 split between interest and principle. So i've socked away a little cash in equity. Now during this same period of time, the appraised value of my condo has come close to doubling, which blew my mind when I found that out. I've "made" a lot more money through appreciation than I have actually paying down my loan.
Now doubling in price in just a couple years (almost 3) is pretty incredible, and has a lot to do with the fact that interest rates are so low. So when things finally settle down, and the fed finally starts fearing inflation... interest rates will climb back up, savings accounts will have meaning again, and the value of my condo will probably drop in appraised value, but even if things got really bad, and it dropped all the way back down to the price I bought it for, I still have the principle that I've paid off.
Buying a house is not a guaranteed win... if somebody were to buy my condo at it's current value, and the fed raised interest rates the week after, they'd probably be stuck with the place for a few years.
But it's pretty easy to get recent sales information for properties in a given neighborhood. And it's not too difficult to look at a neighborhood and imagine whether or not it could turn into a crack warehouse in a few years.
And house values make a whole lot more sense in terms of rationality than the stock market does. Right now I think my condo is over valued, but definitely worth more now than when I bought it.
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
One word. Equity.
a mortgage builds equity, renting is throwing your money away. Buy less house than you can afford. Get a 30-year mortgage and pay it off in 10-15 years. You'll save alot of that money, and not have thrown it away in interest or rent.
I 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
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
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 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.
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
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
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
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).
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