Will check on Gumtree, thanks for the help.
1 Internet Connection for 25 Student Flats
- Thread starter foz2000
- Start date
Will check on Gumtree, thanks for the help.
Let's get serious a little bit here.
Personally, I think you are asking in the wrong place. Here you will find people that will ALWAYS want the fastest connection possible, especially if someone else is paying for it.
At the end of the day, these are students, paying rent. I recommend you weigh up all the options and work out the reasonable costs that you can afford.
50mbps / 100mbps between 25 or 40 people is better then nothing. Internet in university halls is very bad at most places, do they care when you complain? No. My university halls was something like 100mbps between hundreds, it served purpose for research and some downloading (which by the way was all blocked) anything else was just not possible...e.g. Games etc.
I would recommend the above and then monitor bandwidth usage / see who abuses it at the disrespect of other people in the household. If the abuse continues you can look at blocking ports, download limits between set times etc.
Personally, I think you are asking in the wrong place. Here you will find people that will ALWAYS want the fastest connection possible, especially if someone else is paying for it.
At the end of the day, these are students, paying rent. I recommend you weigh up all the options and work out the reasonable costs that you can afford.
50mbps / 100mbps between 25 or 40 people is better then nothing. Internet in university halls is very bad at most places, do they care when you complain? No. My university halls was something like 100mbps between hundreds, it served purpose for research and some downloading (which by the way was all blocked) anything else was just not possible...e.g. Games etc.
I would recommend the above and then monitor bandwidth usage / see who abuses it at the disrespect of other people in the household. If the abuse continues you can look at blocking ports, download limits between set times etc.
Soldato
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Couldn't you get 2 100mbps lines from Virgin or something, then assign 12 flats to 1 line and 13 to another?
Permabanned
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That's what I would do, it's really easy to do. Would just require some access points connected into the right location. Might swell build a cabinet while your on something smallish. Any networking company could put you the required kit in just about.
By "25 flats" I assumed 25 flats each with a few people in them. If it's 25 single flats then 100 Mbps is probably fine.
My university internet was fantastic - it was usually possible to max out the 100 Mbps that the room ports were set to (11.5 MB/s downloads). Games all worked great too. Torrents were blocked but nothing else.
I would consider 2 x Virgin Media 100mb lines. I thought Virgin were also trialing 150mbps in some places? It will only ever get more. So a good starting point would be 100mb lines. The problem is...it's not really something you would want to trust to Virgin media equipment staying up 24/7. If you pay for standard home user lines, then you will get standard home user service and support along with having to use a Virgin Media superhub.
This all assumes virgin is even accessible to the property.
You have to ask what realistic support you are going to have to do on behalf of the users in the property. Are you going to want to "own" the Internet and have to deal with Virgin when one of them rings up saying the internet has stopped working? Do you want to put your name - a single name - on an account liable to be accessed by 25-40 people, with various friends and family all going through your name downloading anything and everything?
There is a reason tenants are left to do these things themselves even in flats etc, and it's because of the above.
I'm not sure why you promised free internet to all, but if you must go down that road, then perhaps to minimize cost and hassle of equipment, it could be done either using wireless repeaters, or installing cat5e/cat6 to each room all going back to a decent switch or two, and then onto a supplied modem.
Surely a dedicated business line is the way to go here for proper support and ownership or just let the people sort each room themselves?
This all assumes virgin is even accessible to the property.
You have to ask what realistic support you are going to have to do on behalf of the users in the property. Are you going to want to "own" the Internet and have to deal with Virgin when one of them rings up saying the internet has stopped working? Do you want to put your name - a single name - on an account liable to be accessed by 25-40 people, with various friends and family all going through your name downloading anything and everything?
There is a reason tenants are left to do these things themselves even in flats etc, and it's because of the above.
I'm not sure why you promised free internet to all, but if you must go down that road, then perhaps to minimize cost and hassle of equipment, it could be done either using wireless repeaters, or installing cat5e/cat6 to each room all going back to a decent switch or two, and then onto a supplied modem.
Surely a dedicated business line is the way to go here for proper support and ownership or just let the people sort each room themselves?
200Mbit for 25 students is ridiculous though.
Even 100Mbit is ridiculous really.
Many university campuses terminate their Halls networks into Janet with only 100Mbit. So that gets shared between thousands of students...
It really depends what the OP is trying to do. Reading between the lines it appears as though he wants to offer some sort of "premium student lodgings" that include super fast internet as part of the deal. But you don't need to spend £8000/yr to do that. That is ridiculous.
I still think a single shared Virgin Media Business circuit is the way to go. You can get a 50Mbit one of those for no much per month. Assuming the area is cabled. If not, then BT Infinity Business may be a decent alternative. If not, then you're screwed really. As the costs on anything else will be lolskyhigh.
Even 100Mbit is ridiculous really.
Many university campuses terminate their Halls networks into Janet with only 100Mbit. So that gets shared between thousands of students...
It really depends what the OP is trying to do. Reading between the lines it appears as though he wants to offer some sort of "premium student lodgings" that include super fast internet as part of the deal. But you don't need to spend £8000/yr to do that. That is ridiculous.
I still think a single shared Virgin Media Business circuit is the way to go. You can get a 50Mbit one of those for no much per month. Assuming the area is cabled. If not, then BT Infinity Business may be a decent alternative. If not, then you're screwed really. As the costs on anything else will be lolskyhigh.
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You need a mix of QoS and bandwidth throttling. Period.
50MBit line
2 MBit limit to each student/flat as a whole. Might want to do a minimum guaranteed bandwidth instead of a hard upper limit so in quiet times you can use the free bandwidth.
QoS to downclass torrents and other latency insensitive traffic.
QoS to prioritise VoIP, Gaming and other latency sensitive apps
QoS to put HTTP somewhere in the middle - Above Torrents but below VoIP for example.
Do not forget to inform your ISP you are a 'service provider' otherwise you might be liable for naughty occurrences on the line. You may even want to put a much more managable solution in. Dedicated Linux box so you have some kind of recourse when Pirate Paedo Peter starts downloading mental datas.
Some people might not like the idea of that but you are providing a managed service -it's not like they are provisioning their own.
50MBit line
2 MBit limit to each student/flat as a whole. Might want to do a minimum guaranteed bandwidth instead of a hard upper limit so in quiet times you can use the free bandwidth.
QoS to downclass torrents and other latency insensitive traffic.
QoS to prioritise VoIP, Gaming and other latency sensitive apps
QoS to put HTTP somewhere in the middle - Above Torrents but below VoIP for example.
Do not forget to inform your ISP you are a 'service provider' otherwise you might be liable for naughty occurrences on the line. You may even want to put a much more managable solution in. Dedicated Linux box so you have some kind of recourse when Pirate Paedo Peter starts downloading mental datas.
Some people might not like the idea of that but you are providing a managed service -it's not like they are provisioning their own.
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