Broadband for multiple flats

[berryhill]

Brand is irrelivent, whats important is the device you use must be a service gateway, not a plain router, and critically it must support Layer 2 Isolation, otherwise an unscrupulous resident could wreak havoc.

U recomm any particular devices?

Also whats the view on the physical 'sharing' of broadband between diff homes, can you 'share' a line via WiFi for instance???

what other options are available?

[AdamL]

Im not sure what the current stock of devices are sorry, 2 years ago i ceased to sell and support multi tenant solutions and started an actinic website

Service Gateways are a bit of a niche. The main players will be Cisco, ZyXEL, Senao, lots of companies you probably wont have heard of (expect for Cicso)

The important thing to remember here, above all else, is not to worry about brand, just forget about doing it on the cheap, forget about DLink or Netgear routers that are on sale in PC World.

There are many people who use Dlink, Netgear, Belkin and the likes, and all will be happy with them and rightfully recommend them, but they dont use them to deliver an ISP service to 20 homes.

Remember that you arent knocking together a LAN for a few flat mates to play Doom on, you are providing Internet infrastructure to 20 homes, services that if supplied by BT, or NTL/Telewest, would cost the residents a combined total of well in excess of £250 a month, £3000 a year, for something like a contended 2mb service.

A MTU or wireless solution will be more cost effective, but not by a great deal.

And remember who will have to answer the phone calls when it stops working, it wont be BT or NTL, it will be you. And should the worst happen to a system that isnt set up with security at its core, if you cant prove that everything within reason that is technically possible to protect each dwelling from each other has been done, it will be you in the dock.


My advise would be -

- forget wireless, because basically, its crap for this application.

- use a proper DSLAM last mile solution and deliver the service over the existing telephone cable infrastructure

- Budget at least £400 per dwelling for the project

If the customer isnt willing to spend that much... give him BT Openworlds sales number, walk away from the job, and let someone else suffer from it.

[wjcampbe]

I actually agree with Adam's last post. I did not realise when I first posted here that you are talking about 20 separate households. My first thinking was that you were wiring a student hostel or something of that nature.

While a lot can be done with a managed switch and segmented allocation of IP number blocks, for proper information security when it is not one customer with 20 locations, but 20 disparate customers, you are going to have to go the DSLAM route.

[berryhill]

Adam/Bill

Thanks again for the advice, much appreciated.

Your postings have really brought some things to my attention. Not just a case of purchasing a bit of equipment. As you mentioned more of a Internet infrastructure. Really need to put some thought into a possible but realistic solution (both price and skill wise).

A real concern of mine is the speed of the connection, no good all sharing 2mb!!! when they could quite easily get 10mb each. Cannot really offer a service to anyone based on less that they can get now

Thanks

Andy

[AdamL]

Another thing to consider if you are serious about doing it properly, is ADSL2+ provision.

The original ADSL standard (ADSL1) (which most of the UK is still using), has a max downstream bandwidth of 8Mbps, this will change soon though as BT roll out ADSL2+ to exchanges with a maximium donwstream of 24Mbps.

ADSL2+ has been in Japan for a while now, and in 2004 the average interenet connection there was about 20Mbps!! So much for Blair's 'broadband britain'

If you were to install an ADSL1 DSLAM solution, you would limit the connection speed of each node to 8Mbps, fine for today's ADSL service, but not for tomorrow's, so to speak.

So if you do do it, I would recommend installing an ADSL2+ solution, then, as BT get around to upgrading the local exchange to ADSL2+ (could take a few years), then the users in the flats would be able to take advantage of the increased bandwidth.


If you want more bandwidth, you could sit a device called an port-aggregator (usually a feature of high-end firewalls), where there will be 2 or even 4 WAN ports in the firewall, allowing you to physically bond upto 4 xDSL connections (with session based restrictions) into a single connection.

Then, as each session(user) sent a new request to the web(clicked a link in a browser) it would be sent of down 1 of the 4 channels, as the next session sent a request, it would go down line 2, and so on.

This would never give a single user 4x the single line bandwidth, but it would allow 4 users to make use of 4x the single line bandwidth simultaneously.



So the topology would be something like....

ADSL line 1 | ADSL  Line 2 | ADSL Line 3 | ADSL Line 4

                             All feed into...

  Router 1  |  Router 2   |  Router 3  |  Router 4
  

                            All feed into...              
           
      4 x WAN Port H/W Firewall / Aggregator

                  Firewall LAN port feeds into....

                   ADSL 2+ IP DSLAM WAN port

Then, the 20 incoming PSTN lines are spliced into the DSLAM, along with the 20 copper pairs that deliver the PSTN service to the rooms, and those pairs then deliver both the PSTN and ADSL service.



The professional method would be to use an uncontended leased line. But that adds to the cost and is normally only used when a system is being built into a new construction. Existing landlords never seem to bother.

[berryhill]

Thanks Adam,

Gettin more complex than I originally thought. I will have to go back to the drawing board and find out what exactly the cust requires. I can see the benfits of implementing a solution, ie cost, planned structure but as usual inital outlay may be a little too large.

Also as you mention the need to getting the security side of things correctly configured with no loopholes so as to not leave myself exposed for numerous hours of support is imperative.

I do see the benfits of such a solid/planned infrastructure but my concern is wether the outlay versus eventual possible savings will mean this task is a non runner esp as it involved individual flats as opposed to a communal block, ie student accom

Thanks for your time and advice, very much appreciated

Andy

[jont]

There is also a legal aspect from the ISP point of view - most, if not all, frown upon sharing like this between what in effect is different households (they obvisouy want to charge each person rather than just the one).

Some countries have over come this with some very tricky grey areas in the T&C and in the UK some government backed schemes for socially deprived areas have been implemented.

Worth checking with your proposed ISP before splashing out on a lot of kit

[berryhill]

There is also a legal aspect from the ISP point of view - most, if not all, frown upon sharing like this between what in effect is different households (they obvisouy want to charge each person rather than just the one).

Cheers Jont

My thoughts exactly, and is the one I'm most concerned about. Anyone know about providers who provide this sort of solution? I know most have packages for business style options, but these tend to be for relatively slow speeds

Almost thinking about the whole leased line concept. (But then this may be the same issue????)

if your offering a solution always best practice to be totally above board legally, as AdamL says aint the ISP who gotta deal with problems, its poor old me.

[whirlex]

is ther any particular reason as to why you want to set up a shared connection, why not just let the other residents get their own connection.

You can get 2mb BB for less that £14.99 a month, by the time all the kit is bought and all the time is taken to set up, it would probs work out at a similar price.

Where are you located?

[berryhill]

the customer (management company for the flats) was looking to create a single BB connectionwhich could then be shared between all owners inc in the yearly maint fee they charge.

Situated in Bournemouth, Dorset