Making an apartment building Wi-Fi?

Question

Hello,

My Father owns an apartment building, he wants to do the whole building in wi-fi so all of the residents can have free wireless internet. His building has fifty apartments. If he limits each apartments to two computers, that would make 100 computers getting free internet.

What kind of hardware would we need to have a stable 100 computer network with internet.
Also what type of connection would we need to purchase from an ISP?


Thanks for all and any help.

Answer 1

Technically all of the above answers are true. However legally he'd better check with the isp before doing that. He could get in trouble. He's going to be generating a lot of traffic and they won't like him "stealing" their potential customers.

Answer 2

Any wireless router will handle 100 computers, but I don't know how he will enforce 2 computers / apartment. I'm assuming the apartment building is rather large, and I don't know the deatils of it's construction.

I suspect the cost effective solution is a router, attached to a hub on each floor. Each hub attaches to some number of access points, depending on the size of the floor. In general, you don';t get much more that 200 feet out of a wireless signal, even under good conditions.

If you don't use DHCP, you can use assigned fixed IP addresses, 2 per apartment. But them you have to worry about collisions, and it's a hassle getting non-technical people to configure fixed addresses. I recommend using DHCP.

To figure out what you need from your ISP, you have to estimate the number of concurrent users. To give great service, you may need a fractional T-1, which can get pricey, talk nice to your ISP and the phone company.

Answer 3

going wi-fi in general means to have access to wireless internet. As for to go wifi, it can be easily done usig a wireless router. The internet connection cable connects to the wireless router and thats it..
As for the number of connections and or houses in a building, everyone in the range of the wifi can connect to it.
The foremost thing is to go for good connection speed because if say 50 people are logged in the network then the connection is shared and the speed goes down for every one.
The second thing to decide is that the range of the router chosen so as to cover entire building or you can even go for using 2 routers at two different levels by using a hub.
AND please ensure that the network created has a password that is with the building members or else everyone in the range.. say building besides can access the connection as well..

Answer 4

More than likely you will need a broadband internet connection such as Cable, or you could get satellite. . . . Now, as for the wireless connection, all you would need is a Wireless Router, to hook up to one computer, then all the other 99 computers can just connect to that one computer. Of course, if you wanna have file sharing (which isn't a good idea), then you'll have to set all that up too.

Answer 5

is there a way to secure your network... yes use WEP... also if you're really crazy about it change the key every few weeks. can you figure out who the peeping tom was..... no, it's impossible to figure out who's listening to your network. Wireless works like this say you and your friend were separated by two walls and had to yell information to each other o| |o you'd have no idea whether or not there was somebody in between the two walls listening to your conversation but if there was he could hear everything you said. o|o|o