Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Shared community internet service

[R.P. Aditya (aditya]

Hi Alan,

On Mon, Mar 31, 2014 at 11:07:29AM -0400, Alan Goldblatt wrote:
> Unfortunately, they don't like our sharing scheme, and really want each
> house to purchase its own service (of course).  I'm curious what others
> have done about this.  Do you subscribe to a "business" plan that allows
> shared usage?  Make everyone purchase their own service?  Other scenarios?

We purchase a Comcast business service (50Mbps for our 37 units has
worked well over the last 2 years, we had lower bandwidth before that
for the previous 8 years) which allows use across a business, and since
we're a Condo association, we can legally provide the service to all of
our households (and also resell to any other tenants we might have). The
$250/month charge is paid as part of our association dues.

We have a ethernet network connecting all our buildings to our common
house, and a shared, managed wifi network built on top of that:

  http://www.gocoho.org/campus/go-net

If we were to do it over, we would probably run optical fiber between
buildings in grounded conduit rather than direct bury copper, as copper
conducts lightning strikes and blows out ethernet ports (we have
ethernet surge protectors which help, but don't entirely deal with the
problem). Aside from that and the occasional garden digging accident,
this setup has served us well.

Hope that helps,
-- 
Adi
Great Oak Cohousing
Ann Arbor, MI, USA
http://www.gocoho.org