Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Site wide internet?

[Will Carter (will.carter]

Hi Bryan,
Thanks for the details and the open mesh tip, I appreciate it. Sounds like
you have a great set up and I like the redundancy again with 2 isps. I will
be in touch again soon.
Best,
Will
Hearthstone Denver Cohousing


On Sat, Jan 28, 2017 at 12:12 PM, Bryan Syverson <
bryan.syverson [at] fresnocohousing.org> wrote:

>
> Hi, Will,
>
> Here at La Querencia Cohousing in Fresno, CA, we have site-wide internet,
> both wired and wireless.  Everything is paid for out of our HOA dues.  (For
> the first couple of years, we charged extra for the service, but it was a
> pain for the Treasurer (me, at the time) to charge and collect this so we
> bundled it into the dues.)
>
> Geeky details:  We have 8 residential buildings (either duplex or six-plex)
> that make up our 28 homes.  The distance to the common house for the
> furthest was too long for copper, so we have fiber-optic pulls between all
> the buildings.  In addition, this provides us the future possibility of
> providing gigabit to the desktop without pulling new cables.
>
> In the common house we have a layer-3 Ethernet switch that feeds the 8
> building switches.  We have two high-speed internet service providers
> (Comcast cable @150Mbps & AT&T DSL @20Mbps).  We are likely going to
> upgrade the Comcast service to 250Mbps.  When we first got the Comcast line
> 8 years ago, Comcast balked at us "sharing" the line which was a violation
> of their terms of service.  However, they still provided service and
> haven't mentioned it again.  AT&T never asked.
>
> The two modems feed into a Mushroom Network Broadband Bonding Network
> Appliance (BBNA) which feeds into the main switch.  The BBNA is somewhat
> convenient but not essential.  It does load-balancing between the two ISPs
> (and could do so for up to 2 more ISPs, if we had others available here,
> which we don't).  We set it up 8 years ago with two ISPs and the BBNA
> because of fears of outages of one ISP or the other.  That happened more
> frequently back then; we might do away with AT&T as 2nd ISP and the BBNA in
> the near future.
>
> We provide wired access available in each home and in the common house and
> exercise building, although wired access is almost never used in the common
> building (except by guests in the guest room).  We have community-wide WiFi
> with 14 Wireless Access Points (WAPs).  These are made by Open Mesh, are
> inexpensive, and work great (I got that tip from Cohousing-L, thank you!).
> Highly recommended.
>
> Our buildings are extremely well insulated, which also makes each home a
> tidy Faraday cage which diminishes signal strength inside each unit.  So
> most homes have their own WiFi router rather than relying solely on the
> Community WIFi.
>
> Users love WiFi, but don't neglect the wired infrastructure necessary to
> distribute it.  Good luck.
>
> -Bryan
> La Querencia Fresno Cohousing
>
> Hi,
>
> I am new to cohousing (less than a year) and just found/subscribed to this
> list. I live at the Hearthstone in Denver, CO:http://
> hearthstonecohousing.com/
>
> There is a long standing committee here to implement some sort of shared
> community internet I wondered if anyone might have suggestions. I have just
> joined the committee here and am researching possibilities.
>
> The idea here is to have a large capacity connection to our common house,
> then feed each unit from there.
>
> Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
>
> Will Carter
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