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Wiring a Neighborhood?
mklencke writes "I'm part of a project that is developing a small neighborhood of about 30 houses in the Netherlands with technology, durability and ecological features in mind. We are looking at centralizing the Internet, TV, phone and radio access. Options we have come across are a central satellite dish, a central subscriber line, etc. Preferably, fiber optics will be used. However, it is very difficult to have a good overview of possibilities, and fiber optics technology is apparently very expensive to implement. Have any Slashdot readers been engaged in a similar project? Do you have hints or resources on how to go about wiring our neighborhood?"
This isn't a direct answer to the question since I don't know how to best wire a neighbourhood, however if it has to be an ecological solution then less wires are good, so wireless internet access might be the way to go (depending upon how much weight ecological gets in comparison to the others). Of course you will want to wrap some good security around that.
Otherwise if you need wires then double up on the power lines for internet access instead of laying new wires.
Just a couple of quick thoughts off the top of my head.
Get tons of cat5 connections in the walls. Even if you dont get a port there, wire every foot of the wall with Cat5. Cat5 is so cheap these days, why not?
Not sure about it but try applying to some Voice-over-IP pliot project thing. When you pick up your phone it routes that call through your network, to some pbx, then out to the real world. You would have to plug in each phone, but these days, most need to be in an outlet anyway.
Also try WiFiMAX. It is this new standard that is fast and covers a large area.
my $000.00003 cents
I don't have experience in such project, but what comes to my mind is: Try not to lock out options. Buildings last long times, it-infrastructrures change. Scalability, upgradability, options. Don't choose one technology. Choose flexibility to change media later.
Your project sounds very interesting!
Well, seems like there's 30 people who decided to build their hoses together. They probably know each other. They will get a much better deal by doing it themselves. If I was doing this, I'd not want the phone company in on the deal.
Go with fiber. Running fiber is cheap. The expensive part is the network equipment to go with it. But fiber is the future. You can run anything over it. And technology is used to enhance existing fiber runs, therefore your investment in fiber will last a long time.
Use VoIP across the fiber for telco.
Not sure about TV, but I'm sure someone out there has something to multiplex video and data.
Run everything to a central closet in each house and use it to do runs to every location in the house. Run CAT6+ everywhere using it for telco and PC. At least dual jack plates. Consider multiple plates in each room, especially living room. Use very high grade cabling in the home to avoid having to replace it.
You can use Asterisk for VoIP. Use something like a Catalyst 4000 for the fiber. Put each house on it's own VLAN and the telco to each house on another.
noone has mentioned wireless yet. Requires no house-house wiring, RF technology can be changed/upgraded in the future without having to upgrade house-house wiring like you would if say in 5 years cat10 is required for the most speed. Just swap your radio when the next 1Gbit wireless technology is here. There are several well documented neighborhood wireless projects out there.
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This is an example of a Swedish town that has done it a couple of years ago:
http://www.bjornerback.com/tomas/mattgrand
[Dutch story]
In het noord-Zweedse plaatsje Umeå hebben een paar bewoners van de gemeenschap Måttgränd zelf het initiatief genomen tot de aanleg van een hoogwaardige 100Mb aansluiting. Eerst hebben de initiatiefnemers een deal gesloten met een kabelbedrijf en met een ISP en hebben hen ervan overtuigd een prijs te berekenen gebaseerd op 95-100 % aansluiters. De initiatiefnemers zijn vervolgens van deur tot deur gegaan en hebben de wijkbewoners ervan overtuigd dat ze mee moeten doen. Inderdaad hebben 60 van de 62 huizen ja gezegd, meer dan 95% van de inwoners dus, "because they saw it was 'The Future' standing on their doorstep". In 1999 is men begonnen met de aanleg. Sommige stukken hebben de bewoners eigenhandig gegraven.
...specifically speaking plastic smurf tubes aka conduit. Don't debate over fiber versus twisted pair, allow for either or both.
To each home run two or three unpopulated tubes to a central wiring area (I prefer a 1st floor closet or under a stairwell, anywhere that dinky 16" space between exterior studs). This would be in addition to a separate run for power (keep away from telephone/twisted pair).
Have the houses go to a central wiring pot in the street/block, and from there a more central wiring pot and so on. When you are ready to begin offering service, push a CAT 6e cable down the tube to intitially get everyone on, say, standard 10/100 network. If VoIP isn't happening, a second CAT-5/6 will provide your phone. Later one, you can replace the switch to upgrade everyone to gigabit on the same cable. There's talk of even faster twisted pair connections so I think it's clearly the way to go. But, fast forward a few years, and suddenly everything is fiber? Well, push one of those down too.
Here's the best part...competition. If some ISP comes along as wants to offer service, lease them a tube. You get income from leasing them tubes that would otherwise be unoccupied. The ISP gets instant customers who would otherwise not pay the cost of installtion themselves or not be economically viable if the streets had to be trenched. It another ISP comes along and wants to offer service, they can too, which ultimately is what is best for the homeowner.
Where I live, we have a choice of cable TV and phone provides...which is extremely rare in most settings. As a result, we have much lower prices and better features since the two companies know they can't just shaft their customers endelessly or they will just jump ship to the other guy.
- JoeShmoe
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-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
One benefit of shared IT is the ability to provide smart water conservation and irrigation.
By tying the rain override together you can easily apply the weather forecast to the rain override and avoid unnecessary watering.
Most semi-smart irrigations use a real time rain detector which is better than nothing - but the best that can be done is actuall forecasted weather.
There may be other benefits - such as seriously secure home burglary systems (not the dial up kind that can be so easily cut off from outside the building)
AIK
After a lot of thinking, meeting, and planning, we decided that while we had the resources to install some sort of community network (we were looking at getting our own DSLAM and doing our our DSL installation), we didn't have a large enough subscriber base to enable us to keep such a network maintained.
Instead, we were agressive with the local cable franchise holder and are now starting to get broadband installed in our community. While having our own cable plant may have saved us a few dollars, we don't have the headaches of keeping a system up and running.
The one thing that we don't get with this approach is a private subnet for our community; something that many of us would like to have for all sorts of reasons. I've managed to get myself politically active on this issue and the next time our local cable franchise is up for renegotiation, private neighborhood subnets will be proposed and discussed.
wherever I go, there I am.
I live in a similar sized neighborhood (24 houses) in the US. Frustrated by the lousy local cable TV internet service, I looked into getting a T1 into the neighborhood, and hooking everyone up myself.
As it turns out, the cost is not that much less than cable internet or DSL. Not counting labor, maintenance, and technical support, the cost for a wireless setup would be about $25/month per household. That sounds pretty good, but since then, DSL has arrived on the scene at $35 a month, and cable internet has both dropped in price and service improved, because of the competition. It seems like a homebrew network would still be cheaper, but it's only $10 a month cheaper. It also involves bringing all the homeowners together and getting them to agree on the plan, and doesn't count maintenanace costs. What happens if I move? Who will they call? How much will it cost? They're still enthusiastic about the idea, but I'm not sure it's so good.