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Ask Slashdot: Provisioning Internet For Condo Association?
An anonymous reader writes "I am on a committee to evaluate internet options for a medium sized condo association (80 units — 20 stories) in a major metropolitan area (Chicago). What options are out there? What questions should one ask of the various sales representatives? How should access be distributed within the building (wireless APs, ethernet cable). Does it make sense to provide any additional condo wide infrastructure (servers, services)? How much should it cost? How much dedicated bandwidth is required to support a community of this size?"
If you're asking all those questions, you should not be in that committee.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Step 1: hire a competent network engineer who isn't you.
Most of the people who want Internet service probably already have it.
If you're looking at consolidating that then you'd want to talk to a network engineer. That person would be able to tell you what your options were (wireless between floors probably won't work well) and how much to expect to pay for them and what kind of throughput to you will likely see.
Note that I only have experience as a user of internet services.
If you have the choice at all, please go for wired distribution. Wireless only if the association cannot afford the wire pulls. Wireless is subject to so many interference sources and there's nothing you can really do to fix it if "The Internet is Down!" or more likely, the high-definition video feed starts buffering because of someone's microwave oven.
You may also be able to distribute over cable TV cables and cable modems. Either because you made a deal with a cable provider, or because you purchased the same equipment they use on the server-side. Could be tricky though, as I assume the cable TV people don't approve of competition and won't make it easy.
Speaking of high-definition video feeds, you may as well assume that at prime time hours at least half and maybe all of the units are watching HD Netflix, Hulu, Youtube or some other video source. That is 7 Mbps each, minimum, right there.
I wouldn't do anything fancy.
The ISPs are very happy to offer service individually to residents. Rather then having some building wide system, let residents work it out for themselves.
In my building, we have cable and DSL. The cable is handled entirely by the cable company and the DSL is handled entirely by the phone company.
The homeowner's association pays to maintain the telephone box but mostly it doesn't pay for anything.
This isn't a bad thing. Residents pay no more for internet service then a home owner would and no one is forced into an agreement they don't want. If I didn't want internet service, I could cancel it and pay nothing. If there were a building agreement then I'd be paying whether I wanted to pay or not.
Keep it simple and let residents work it out on their own. Let the cable company worry about the logistics.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Ignore the children. They're just being snarky as well as useless.
I've set up an ISP or two that have had thier challenges...
Buildings of that height often have communication racks in place, so start with the telephone service provider, as well as the cable provider.
The cable provider is the most likely candidate to start with. The infrastructure is already in place. Additional services beyond a data connection can be as diverse as your imagination. If you see it on the net, chances are good you can have a private version for your building, including web pages, email services, etc. Typically, a sales rep will jump at a business set up for all the tennants and the internet service can be included into the rent or dues, and it can be a selling point as well.
At least from my perspective the standard for a new building of that type today is usually fiber to each apartment, then a converter box that offers TV, Internet and phone for so called triple play. Then you would normally pull a fiber cable to each apartment and have a magic box that breaks it out into the various services. I assume you don't have a cable TV provider today? Because if you're already wired for cable, hooking up cable modems is clearly the easiest way to go. And if they won't give you a nice price, threaten to switch providers for everything. I've never heard of an entire apartment building being supplied by wireless APs, sure people can set up their own APs but there's always been a wire to the wall. It might be a bit cheaper to retrofit to an existing building but I wouldn't recommend it, hotels and such have struggled a lot to get good reception in every room.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
This is exactly the kind of thing I don't want from a condo association - a middleman that takes a cut of my fees and adds no value. I would rather contract directly with DSL or cable provider. That way if it breaks I don't have to call the condo offices (during business hours only, of course) to call the internet contractor (again, only reachable during business hours) to commence the finger-pointing.
By the same logic why not do that for the whole country?
Republicans, that's why. Nation wide internet is a great idea for the same reason the interstate system is. But it will never happen as long as private profits are more important than the public good.
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