WiFi for an apartment building

I'm looking for some resources that will give me enough information
regarding installing a WiFi "hotspot" for my apartment building.

I'm thinking that it may be cost effective for the entire building to
have a wireless connection to the internet. Currently the only
high speed internet available to residents is DSL service. While
we have cable TV, our cable TV provider does not have internet
access, as it is an extremely small CATV company.

The building has 150 apartments on 15 floors, 10 per floor. It has
a concrete structure, not a steel frame. I'm guessing that it is
about 200 to 250 feet wide and about 50 feet deep.

I need to have good and hopefuly complete information before
I make a proposal to the Board of Directors.

Any advice would be appreciated.

TIA and no e-mail please.

I gotta tell you, letting 150 apartments onto your open network is going to
be hellish. You are going to have 40 people who want to do filesharing or
streaming audio.
Unless you have a closed network and sell subscriptions. In any case,
concrete material is not conducive to wireless internet.

-- Gnarlie
http://www.Gnarlodious.com/Cogent/Cogent.html

Entity xenman spoke thus:

> I'm looking for some resources that will give me enough information
> regarding installing a WiFi "hotspot" for my apartment building.
>
> I'm thinking that it may be cost effective for the entire building to
> have a wireless connection to the internet. Currently the only
> high speed internet available to residents is DSL service. While
> we have cable TV, our cable TV provider does not have internet
> access, as it is an extremely small CATV company.
>
> The building has 150 apartments on 15 floors, 10 per floor. It has
> a concrete structure, not a steel frame. I'm guessing that it is
> about 200 to 250 feet wide and about 50 feet deep.
>
> I need to have good and hopefuly complete information before
> I make a proposal to the Board of Directors.
>
> Any advice would be appreciated.
>
> TIA and no e-mail please.

xenman wrote:

> I'm looking for some resources that will give me enough information
> regarding installing a WiFi "hotspot" for my apartment building.
>
> I'm thinking that it may be cost effective for the entire building to
> have a wireless connection to the internet. Currently the only
> high speed internet available to residents is DSL service. While
> we have cable TV, our cable TV provider does not have internet
> access, as it is an extremely small CATV company.
>
> The building has 150 apartments on 15 floors, 10 per floor. It has
> a concrete structure, not a steel frame. I'm guessing that it is
> about 200 to 250 feet wide and about 50 feet deep.
>
> I need to have good and hopefuly complete information before
> I make a proposal to the Board of Directors.
>
> Any advice would be appreciated.
>
> TIA and no e-mail please.

I suspect that your flooring concrete is really reinforced concrete,
which is reinforced with (guess what) steel. And I'll bet that there
is lots of other steel in a 15-floor building. Even without steel,
concrete causes signal degradation. Good luck getting WiFi to work
from a single WAP.

But, why not do a WiFi survey of your own, specific to your building?
Buy/rent/borrow a WAP and a WiFi laptop, and let the laptop run its
built-in link test continuously. Then park the WAP where a base WAP
might go, wander around the building (into every room of typical
apartments) with the laptop, watching the WiFi signal strength and bit
rate and dropped packet rate on the laptop.
--
Cheers, Bob

On Sat, 01 Nov 2003 15:12:15 GMT, Bob WIllard
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>xenman wrote:
>
>> I'm looking for some resources that will give me enough information
>> regarding installing a WiFi "hotspot" for my apartment building.
>>
>> I'm thinking that it may be cost effective for the entire building to
>> have a wireless connection to the internet. Currently the only
>> high speed internet available to residents is DSL service. While
>> we have cable TV, our cable TV provider does not have internet
>> access, as it is an extremely small CATV company.
>>
>> The building has 150 apartments on 15 floors, 10 per floor. It has
>> a concrete structure, not a steel frame. I'm guessing that it is
>> about 200 to 250 feet wide and about 50 feet deep.
>>
>> I need to have good and hopefuly complete information before
>> I make a proposal to the Board of Directors.
>>
>> Any advice would be appreciated.
>>
>> TIA and no e-mail please.
>
>I suspect that your flooring concrete is really reinforced concrete,
>which is reinforced with (guess what) steel. And I'll bet that there
>is lots of other steel in a 15-floor building.

Of course the concrete is steel reinforced, why would you think
othwise?

> Even without steel,
>concrete causes signal degradation. Good luck getting WiFi to work
>from a single WAP.
>
>But, why not do a WiFi survey of your own, specific to your building?
>Buy/rent/borrow a WAP and a WiFi laptop, and let the laptop run its
>built-in link test continuously. Then park the WAP where a base WAP
>might go, wander around the building (into every room of typical
>apartments) with the laptop, watching the WiFi signal strength and bit
>rate and dropped packet rate on the laptop.

What is a WAP? I know very little about WiFi, which is why I wrote
my first sentence. I have no idea whether what I'm thinking about is
reasonable or not. I'm a software person (VMS) not a hardware
person. I'm also assuming that there is some rudimentary security
that would allow control of who connects to the base unit and who
doesn't.

Like I originally wrote, I'm looking for a resource that describes in
sufficient detail how things work from an end user and installer
viewpoint.

Jerry Pournelle's advice seems appropriate here: "If you don't know
what you're doing, hire someone who does." If you want to put a
hotspot somewhere in the building, you can probably learn enough on
your own to do that -- in fact, there are products that do this right
out of the box. On the other hand, if you want to light up every room
in every apartment in the building, that's not an amateur project and
you'll need expert help.

xenman <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message news:<(E-Mail Removed)>. ..
> I'm looking for some resources that will give me enough information
> regarding installing a WiFi "hotspot" for my apartment building.
>
> I'm thinking that it may be cost effective for the entire building to
> have a wireless connection to the internet. Currently the only
> high speed internet available to residents is DSL service. While
> we have cable TV, our cable TV provider does not have internet
> access, as it is an extremely small CATV company.
>
> The building has 150 apartments on 15 floors, 10 per floor. It has
> a concrete structure, not a steel frame. I'm guessing that it is
> about 200 to 250 feet wide and about 50 feet deep.
>
> I need to have good and hopefuly complete information before
> I make a proposal to the Board of Directors.
>
> Any advice would be appreciated.
>
> TIA and no e-mail please.

xenman wrote:

> On Sat, 01 Nov 2003 15:12:15 GMT, Bob WIllard
> <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>
>
>>xenman wrote:
>>
>>
>>>I'm looking for some resources that will give me enough information
>>>regarding installing a WiFi "hotspot" for my apartment building.
>>>
>>>I'm thinking that it may be cost effective for the entire building to
>>>have a wireless connection to the internet. Currently the only
>>>high speed internet available to residents is DSL service. While
>>>we have cable TV, our cable TV provider does not have internet
>>>access, as it is an extremely small CATV company.
>>>
>>>The building has 150 apartments on 15 floors, 10 per floor. It has
>>>a concrete structure, not a steel frame. I'm guessing that it is
>>>about 200 to 250 feet wide and about 50 feet deep.
>>>
>>>I need to have good and hopefuly complete information before
>>>I make a proposal to the Board of Directors.
>>>
>>>Any advice would be appreciated.
>>>
>>>TIA and no e-mail please.
>>
>>I suspect that your flooring concrete is really reinforced concrete,
>>which is reinforced with (guess what) steel. And I'll bet that there
>>is lots of other steel in a 15-floor building.
>
>
> Of course the concrete is steel reinforced, why would you think
> othwise?
>
>
>>Even without steel,
>>concrete causes signal degradation. Good luck getting WiFi to work
>
>>from a single WAP.
>
>>But, why not do a WiFi survey of your own, specific to your building?
>>Buy/rent/borrow a WAP and a WiFi laptop, and let the laptop run its
>>built-in link test continuously. Then park the WAP where a base WAP
>>might go, wander around the building (into every room of typical
>>apartments) with the laptop, watching the WiFi signal strength and bit
>>rate and dropped packet rate on the laptop.
>
>
> What is a WAP? I know very little about WiFi, which is why I wrote
> my first sentence. I have no idea whether what I'm thinking about is
> reasonable or not. I'm a software person (VMS) not a hardware
> person. I'm also assuming that there is some rudimentary security
> that would allow control of who connects to the base unit and who
> doesn't.
>
> Like I originally wrote, I'm looking for a resource that describes in
> sufficient detail how things work from an end user and installer
> viewpoint.
>

VMS rules! (But its kingdom is shrinking.)

WAP = Wireless Access Point. For a bunch of WiFi end-nodes, a WAP is
the hub, and all end-nodes communicate through the WAP. Many WAPs are
combo devices, consisting of a WAN port (usually 10baseT for connection
to a DSL or cable modem), a handful of LAN ports (usually 10baseTX for
connection to wired PCs), a WAP for connection to a bunch of WiFi
PCs, and a switch to tie them all together; some combo WAPs also have
a printer port, most (maybe all) have router firmware (to hand out
IPAddresses to wired and wireless PCs using DHCP), and most perform
NAT (Network Address Translation) to convert packets from the individual
IPAs to the single IPA which the router presents via its WAN port.
NAT acts as a firewall for inbound packets. {Clearly, I'm describing
one typical setup; there are skillions of ways to deploy a WAP.]

So, you use one combo router/switch/WAP to connect a single DSL or cable
modem to a bunch of wired and wireless PCs, with all of those wired and
wireless PCs on the downstream side of the router forming a LAN (Local
Area Network). A significant issue is the areal coverage of a single
WAP; and the answer is (drumroll, please) it depends. In an open field,
with no trees/walls/etc. and no interference, a single WAP can cover
(very) roughly one square kilometer, but:

1. WiFi depends on LOS (Line Of Sight) transmission; anything solid will
degrade the signal and, therefore, the distance-bitrate product.
2. WiFi vendors are like car salesfolks: they accentuate the positive
and eliminate the negative, sometimes called lying.

For example, the WAP I use at home claims to work for 457m outdoors and
for 91m indoors; I get full-rate error-free transmission up to roughly
100m outdoors (through one standard shingles-on-plyscore-on-2x4 exterior
wall) and about 20m indoors (through a couple of standard blueboard-on-2x4
walls).

Concrete walls/floors will cause serious signal degradation for WiFi.
My guess is that WiFi won't work well enough to cover even a single
floor with one WAP, and getting coverage over multiple floors sounds
pretty hopeless, since concrete floors are thicker than concrete walls.
But I suggest that you try it on your site, using a WAP and a laptop,
as I outlined in my previous reply; maybe the walls aren't really
concrete, but merely blueboard on metal studs.
--
Cheers, Bob

On Sat, 01 Nov 2003 19:19:27 GMT, Bob WIllard
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>xenman wrote:
>
>> On Sat, 01 Nov 2003 15:12:15 GMT, Bob WIllard
>> <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>xenman wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>I'm looking for some resources that will give me enough information
>>>>regarding installing a WiFi "hotspot" for my apartment building.
>>>>
>>>>I'm thinking that it may be cost effective for the entire building to
>>>>have a wireless connection to the internet. Currently the only
>>>>high speed internet available to residents is DSL service. While
>>>>we have cable TV, our cable TV provider does not have internet
>>>>access, as it is an extremely small CATV company.
>>>>
>>>>The building has 150 apartments on 15 floors, 10 per floor. It has
>>>>a concrete structure, not a steel frame. I'm guessing that it is
>>>>about 200 to 250 feet wide and about 50 feet deep.
>>>>
>>>>I need to have good and hopefuly complete information before
>>>>I make a proposal to the Board of Directors.
>>>>
>>>>Any advice would be appreciated.
>>>>
>>>>TIA and no e-mail please.
>>>
>>>I suspect that your flooring concrete is really reinforced concrete,
>>>which is reinforced with (guess what) steel. And I'll bet that there
>>>is lots of other steel in a 15-floor building.
>>
>>
>> Of course the concrete is steel reinforced, why would you think
>> othwise?
>>
>>
>>>Even without steel,
>>>concrete causes signal degradation. Good luck getting WiFi to work
>>
>>>from a single WAP.
>>
>>>But, why not do a WiFi survey of your own, specific to your building?
>>>Buy/rent/borrow a WAP and a WiFi laptop, and let the laptop run its
>>>built-in link test continuously. Then park the WAP where a base WAP
>>>might go, wander around the building (into every room of typical
>>>apartments) with the laptop, watching the WiFi signal strength and bit
>>>rate and dropped packet rate on the laptop.
>>
>>
>> What is a WAP? I know very little about WiFi, which is why I wrote
>> my first sentence. I have no idea whether what I'm thinking about is
>> reasonable or not. I'm a software person (VMS) not a hardware
>> person. I'm also assuming that there is some rudimentary security
>> that would allow control of who connects to the base unit and who
>> doesn't.
>>
>> Like I originally wrote, I'm looking for a resource that describes in
>> sufficient detail how things work from an end user and installer
>> viewpoint.
>>
>
>VMS rules! (But its kingdom is shrinking.)

Yeh. Too bad security and reliability have such little value.

>
>WAP = Wireless Access Point. For a bunch of WiFi end-nodes, a WAP is
>the hub, and all end-nodes communicate through the WAP. Many WAPs are
>combo devices, consisting of a WAN port (usually 10baseT for connection
>to a DSL or cable modem), a handful of LAN ports (usually 10baseTX for
>connection to wired PCs), a WAP for connection to a bunch of WiFi
>PCs, and a switch to tie them all together; some combo WAPs also have
>a printer port, most (maybe all) have router firmware (to hand out
>IPAddresses to wired and wireless PCs using DHCP), and most perform
>NAT (Network Address Translation) to convert packets from the individual
>IPAs to the single IPA which the router presents via its WAN port.
>NAT acts as a firewall for inbound packets. {Clearly, I'm describing
>one typical setup; there are skillions of ways to deploy a WAP.]
>
>So, you use one combo router/switch/WAP to connect a single DSL or cable
>modem to a bunch of wired and wireless PCs, with all of those wired and
>wireless PCs on the downstream side of the router forming a LAN (Local
>Area Network). A significant issue is the areal coverage of a single
>WAP; and the answer is (drumroll, please) it depends. In an open field,
>with no trees/walls/etc. and no interference, a single WAP can cover
>(very) roughly one square kilometer, but:
>
>1. WiFi depends on LOS (Line Of Sight) transmission; anything solid will
> degrade the signal and, therefore, the distance-bitrate product.
>2. WiFi vendors are like car salesfolks: they accentuate the positive
> and eliminate the negative, sometimes called lying.
>
>For example, the WAP I use at home claims to work for 457m outdoors and
>for 91m indoors; I get full-rate error-free transmission up to roughly
>100m outdoors (through one standard shingles-on-plyscore-on-2x4 exterior
>wall) and about 20m indoors (through a couple of standard blueboard-on-2x4
>walls).
>
>Concrete walls/floors will cause serious signal degradation for WiFi.
>My guess is that WiFi won't work well enough to cover even a single
>floor with one WAP, and getting coverage over multiple floors sounds
>pretty hopeless, since concrete floors are thicker than concrete walls.
>But I suggest that you try it on your site, using a WAP and a laptop,
>as I outlined in my previous reply; maybe the walls aren't really
>concrete, but merely blueboard on metal studs.

While most walls in this 30 year old building are the typical
sheetrock with metal (aluminum?) studs, some of the walls
are definitely concrete. Throw in the concrete floors and
ceilings, it sounds like WiFi is not a good technology to use.
It looks like wired is the way, and in this case it would be DSL.
Since this is a part time home for myself and about 1/2 the
other residents, I was hoping that bulding wide WiFi might offer
a low cost solution. Oh well, it was worth the question anyway
and I learned something along the way.

Thanks

In article <(E-Mail Removed)>,
(E-Mail Removed) says...
> I'm looking for some resources that will give me enough information
> regarding installing a WiFi "hotspot" for my apartment building.
>
> I'm thinking that it may be cost effective for the entire building to
> have a wireless connection to the internet. Currently the only
> high speed internet available to residents is DSL service. While
> we have cable TV, our cable TV provider does not have internet
> access, as it is an extremely small CATV company.
>
> The building has 150 apartments on 15 floors, 10 per floor. It has
> a concrete structure, not a steel frame. I'm guessing that it is
> about 200 to 250 feet wide and about 50 feet deep.

Good idea; sharing a broadband connection in a high-density area like
this.

You'll need to do a survey (or hire it done) to see if wireless is going
to work for you. In steel-reinforced concrete building, its going to be
tough. If you can get away with three or fewer AP's on each floor, or
every other floor, consider yourself lucky.

Consider the economics...

For a wired network, figure about $125 per drop to wire for ethernet.
This might go up or down, depending on several factors, so it's just a
rule-of-thumb estimate. $35-$40 per managed port at the network edge
switch, $10 per port if you don't need management capabilities on the
switch. Personally, I think you do NOT need it. So we're at about $1,350
per floor.

For wireless, let's say you need three AP's per floor. At ~$250 each for
a commercial quality AP, that's $750, per floor for AP's. Ethernet drop
for each AP, $125. So we're at $1,125 per floor for wireless.

Pretty close to a push...
Other expenses (inter-floor backbone, AAA infrastructure, etc.) are
going to be pretty much the same for either media.

If you can provide coverage with significantly fewer AP's, the balance
quickly starts to tip towards WiFi.

Other things to consider in your presentation:

Security. How big of an issue is it to the residents/customers? To the
board?

Support. Who will provide it?

As an ISP, of sorts, what services will you provide your "customers"?
Web space, email boxes, etc.?

Don't forget to identify a connectivity vendor that will allow you to
"resell" that bandwidth. Many ISP's prohibit this.

Speaking of bandwidth, will you limit it or "shape" it in any way? I'd
plan on an infrastructure that would allow me to do this because its a
sure thing that there will be a few people who will use huge amounts
with Kazaa, and the like.

Good luck.

--
********************************************
John Nelson
Flatline Wi-Fi -- Un-Wiring You To The World
http://www.flatline.com
********************************************

In article <(E-Mail Removed) >,
Jawn <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
:Good idea; sharing a broadband connection in a high-density area like
:this.

:Consider the economics...

:For a wired network, figure about $125 per drop to wire for ethernet.
:This might go up or down, depending on several factors, so it's just a
:rule-of-thumb estimate. $35-$40 per managed port at the network edge
:switch, $10 per port if you don't need management capabilities on the
:switch. Personally, I think you do NOT need it. So we're at about $1,350
er floor.

I'd hate to do a building like that and NOT have management capabilities.
You can't run into each of the apartments to test the cabling quality
every time you have late collisions or jabber showing up on the
network. You are going to want to have RMON capable switches and
MRTG (or equivilent) the whole setup so you can track down problems.
--
Rump-Titty-Titty-Tum-TAH-Tee -- Fritz Lieber

"xenman" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> On Sat, 01 Nov 2003 19:19:27 GMT, Bob WIllard
> <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>
> >xenman wrote:
> >
> >> On Sat, 01 Nov 2003 15:12:15 GMT, Bob WIllard
> >> <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>>xenman wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>>I'm looking for some resources that will give me enough information
> >>>>regarding installing a WiFi "hotspot" for my apartment building.
> >>>>
> >>>>I'm thinking that it may be cost effective for the entire building to
> >>>>have a wireless connection to the internet. Currently the only
> >>>>high speed internet available to residents is DSL service. While
> >>>>we have cable TV, our cable TV provider does not have internet
> >>>>access, as it is an extremely small CATV company.
> >>>>
> >>>>The building has 150 apartments on 15 floors, 10 per floor. It has
> >>>>a concrete structure, not a steel frame. I'm guessing that it is
> >>>>about 200 to 250 feet wide and about 50 feet deep.
> >>>>
> >>>>I need to have good and hopefuly complete information before
> >>>>I make a proposal to the Board of Directors.
> >>>>
> >>>>Any advice would be appreciated.
> >>>>
> >>>>TIA and no e-mail please.
> >>>
> >>>I suspect that your flooring concrete is really reinforced concrete,
> >>>which is reinforced with (guess what) steel. And I'll bet that there
> >>>is lots of other steel in a 15-floor building.
> >>
> >>
> >> Of course the concrete is steel reinforced, why would you think
> >> othwise?
> >>
> >>
> >>>Even without steel,
> >>>concrete causes signal degradation. Good luck getting WiFi to work
> >>
> >>>from a single WAP.
> >>
> >>>But, why not do a WiFi survey of your own, specific to your building?
> >>>Buy/rent/borrow a WAP and a WiFi laptop, and let the laptop run its
> >>>built-in link test continuously. Then park the WAP where a base WAP
> >>>might go, wander around the building (into every room of typical
> >>>apartments) with the laptop, watching the WiFi signal strength and bit
> >>>rate and dropped packet rate on the laptop.
> >>
> >>
> >> What is a WAP? I know very little about WiFi, which is why I wrote
> >> my first sentence. I have no idea whether what I'm thinking about is
> >> reasonable or not. I'm a software person (VMS) not a hardware
> >> person. I'm also assuming that there is some rudimentary security
> >> that would allow control of who connects to the base unit and who
> >> doesn't.
> >>
> >> Like I originally wrote, I'm looking for a resource that describes in
> >> sufficient detail how things work from an end user and installer
> >> viewpoint.
> >>
> >
> >VMS rules! (But its kingdom is shrinking.)
>
> Yeh. Too bad security and reliability have such little value.
>
> >
> >WAP = Wireless Access Point. For a bunch of WiFi end-nodes, a WAP is
> >the hub, and all end-nodes communicate through the WAP. Many WAPs are
> >combo devices, consisting of a WAN port (usually 10baseT for connection
> >to a DSL or cable modem), a handful of LAN ports (usually 10baseTX for
> >connection to wired PCs), a WAP for connection to a bunch of WiFi
> >PCs, and a switch to tie them all together; some combo WAPs also have
> >a printer port, most (maybe all) have router firmware (to hand out
> >IPAddresses to wired and wireless PCs using DHCP), and most perform
> >NAT (Network Address Translation) to convert packets from the individual
> >IPAs to the single IPA which the router presents via its WAN port.
> >NAT acts as a firewall for inbound packets. {Clearly, I'm describing
> >one typical setup; there are skillions of ways to deploy a WAP.]
> >
> >So, you use one combo router/switch/WAP to connect a single DSL or cable
> >modem to a bunch of wired and wireless PCs, with all of those wired and
> >wireless PCs on the downstream side of the router forming a LAN (Local
> >Area Network). A significant issue is the areal coverage of a single
> >WAP; and the answer is (drumroll, please) it depends. In an open field,
> >with no trees/walls/etc. and no interference, a single WAP can cover
> >(very) roughly one square kilometer, but:
> >
> >1. WiFi depends on LOS (Line Of Sight) transmission; anything solid will
> > degrade the signal and, therefore, the distance-bitrate product.
> >2. WiFi vendors are like car salesfolks: they accentuate the positive
> > and eliminate the negative, sometimes called lying.
> >
> >For example, the WAP I use at home claims to work for 457m outdoors and
> >for 91m indoors; I get full-rate error-free transmission up to roughly
> >100m outdoors (through one standard shingles-on-plyscore-on-2x4 exterior
> >wall) and about 20m indoors (through a couple of standard
blueboard-on-2x4
> >walls).
> >
> >Concrete walls/floors will cause serious signal degradation for WiFi.
> >My guess is that WiFi won't work well enough to cover even a single
> >floor with one WAP, and getting coverage over multiple floors sounds
> >pretty hopeless, since concrete floors are thicker than concrete walls.
> >But I suggest that you try it on your site, using a WAP and a laptop,
> >as I outlined in my previous reply; maybe the walls aren't really
> >concrete, but merely blueboard on metal studs.
>
> While most walls in this 30 year old building are the typical
> sheetrock with metal (aluminum?) studs, some of the walls
> are definitely concrete. Throw in the concrete floors and
> ceilings, it sounds like WiFi is not a good technology to use.
> It looks like wired is the way, and in this case it would be DSL.
> Since this is a part time home for myself and about 1/2 the
> other residents, I was hoping that bulding wide WiFi might offer
> a low cost solution. Oh well, it was worth the question anyway
> and I learned something along the way.
>
> Thanks

One option could be a WAP on each floor if the signal strenght holds up
level by level - and a wired connection between them back to a switch, but
with this kind of configuration, I hope you aren't trying to do it with a
single residential type DSL account - with that many users, they might as
well stay with dialup. Not sure what you could work with a business line -
maybe run subscriptions to "your" wireless service, and use that to fund a
higher bandwidth line. I have no ideas on the legality of this, but it's an
idea, but definatly do your research.