Fibre? To Cabinet or Premises?

J_B

We are renovating a former seafront hotel in Barmouth (N Wales) and converting it to apartments, one 4 bed and two 2 bed ones.
We are also fitting a lift.
We are going to retain ownership of these and do holiday lets from them.

The lift needs a phone line for emergency use and we are wondering if we can use this phone line to carry broadband to the three properties, rather than having a separate phone line to each apartment.

Sam Knows says that the Fibre cabinet is around 300m away.

Would we benefit from having FTTP, or will FTTP be sufficient for holidaymakers?

jadziad

Depends on the distance to the cabinet, and what services are available to you.

https://www.dslchecker.bt.com/adsl/adslchecker.welcome

I suspect 20Mb would be sufficient for three apartments, unless they were all heavy users.

FTTP gets expensive fast. If you need to go via BT's "FTTP-on-demand" (FTTPoD), then you could be talking just £3,000 for setup costs - google for their price list.

If you want to give each apartment their own portion of the link, you will need a suitable router which can do traffic shaping (if you want to stop one person from slowing down others), and potentially also a managed switch depending on what router you get. There are expensive hardware options, and cheaper options, for example pfSense + some cheap low-power hardware. You should ideally also get a UPS to reduce the chance of mains power related issues. All this should ideally be in a dedicated comms room, which is often the same place as satellite or terrestrial TV splitters.

You could also be classed as a Communications Provider and should read up on the various legal implications. Talk to a lawyer:

http://aa.net.uk/legal-cp.html

Alternatively, you could just go completely wireless, perhaps with an AP in each apartment depending on signal reach. There are lots of options here as well - subscription based & "cloud" managed services such as Meraki are popular. There are cheaper options as well. However, going wifi-only would mean that the occupier would need a wifi card for any desktops, and wifi can sometimes suffer from spectrum issues and slower speeds.

J_B

jadziad wrote: »

Depends on the distance to the cabinet.

https://www.dslchecker.bt.com/adsl/adslchecker.welcome

Firefox says it's an insecure site!

As we don't have a phone number it can only do a postcode check which they says ..
<<Postcode only checks will not return any result for fibre services>>
Doh!

Address checker says:-



What does that tell me?

Mister_G

I suspect that you will not get FTTP to your premises.

With a distance of 300m to the cabinet, an ISP should be able to offer you the full 76Mb FTTC connection. (as shown in your ADSL check above). If you are going to share the internet across 3 flats, then you will probably need this.

You could put in a single line (for your lift) with a router and then distribute via ethernet to each flat, putting a wireless hub in each flat.

I assume that you wouldn't install a phone line to each flat, as most of your customers would have a mobile these days.

That would probably be the cheapest solution.

If you do not charge for the service, you have no need to become a 'Communications Provider'.

teddysmum

I don't know the security situation with three apartments sharing a communal line for broadband, but imagine it would be like one household sharing, so not secure

Mister_G

Indeed, but no more insecure than using the public wifi in pubs, coffee shops etc.

J_B

Mister_G wrote: »

You could put in a single line (for your lift) with a router and then distribute via ethernet to each flat, putting a wireless hub in each flat.

That's my plan, but would just like someone who is more knowledgeable than me confirm that!

teddysmum wrote: »

I don't know the security situation with three apartments sharing a communal line for broadband, but imagine it would be like one household sharing, so not secure

But, with a wireless hub in each flat, couldn't we password protect each one individually for security?

Mister_G wrote: »

I assume that you wouldn't install a phone line to each flat, as most of your customers would have a mobile these days.
That would probably be the cheapest solution.

Our developer talks about 'value engineering' rather than cheap.

Mister_G wrote: »

If you do not charge for the service, you have no need to become a 'Communications Provider'.

Sounds better!

jadziad

J_B wrote: »

That's my plan, but would just like someone who is more knowledgeable than me confirm that!

You can put each appartment on its own VLAN to isolate each apartment. Your router (or, alternatively, a switch) must support this feature. Most low-end home routers do not.

J_B wrote: »

But, with a wireless hub in each flat, couldn't we password protect each one individually for security?

You would have separate network names (SSIDs) for each apartment. Some access points can work together for this and support roaming between them, i.e. if one apartment manages to destroy their AP, the nearby ones would work, but at a slower speed due to the weaker signal. Obviously, completely separate cheap access points can be used and have their own network names. Be sure to get access point(s) that support 5GHz as well - not all do.

From the perspective of someone living in a rented flat, a wired connection is *far* more preferable over wifi.

I can absolutely recommend Meraki hardware. They are very configurable, but they are not cheap & are subscription based. There are cheaper methods that would work just as well for your own purposes, i.e. "get the occupiers wifi, at the cheapest cost & requiring the least maintenance."

Consider also....

- in addition to being mains powered, many wifi APs can be powered via the ethernet cable - PoE or 802.3af. This would require a PoE-enabled switch or router, and PoE-enabled routers are generally at least "prosumer" or business grade, and expensive. PoE switches are cheaper. *Managed* PoE switches (which will probably also support VLANs) cost more.

- Optional: if you power all the access points via PoE, and the networking equipment is all attached to a UPS, during a power cut the occupier will still have working wifi for their 'phones until the UPS battery is drained. The battery in a UPS generally has a usable lifetime of around 3-4 years, but it's always prudent to proactively replace them after roughly this timeframe regardless. I can recommend either APC Smart-UPS, or Cyberpower (but not their really cheap ones).

- where to mount the access points. Almost all can be mounted to a wall, but some also come with a bracket to hook them onto the plastic bits between office ceiling tiles.

- not having a physical network jack does *potentially* limit the type of renter that you could attract. For example, I would never consider a flat that didn't have a physical ethernet jack going directly to the router, even though I could buy my own ethernet-to-wifi bridge to work around it - the nature of wifi is that it's simply not as reliable, for example professional gamers or traders would always prefer a wired connection.

J_B

Mister_G wrote: »

I suspect that you will not get FTTP to your premises.

Our developer just had this ..... :rotfl:
On 29 March 2017 at 12:42:30, xxx@openreach.co.uk
[FONT=&quot]There are two options available to provide this development with a fibre solution:[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]- [/FONT][FONT=&quot]FTTC (Fibre To The Cabinet) is available and the cabinet that serves this site is enabled to provide this. It will be at no extra cost to the developer and will afford the end users estimated superfast broadband speeds of 55-73 MBS[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]- [/FONT][FONT=&quot]FTTP (Fibre To The Premises) could be provided for this development and would afford the end users ultrafast broadband speeds of 300 MBS. To provide this, there would be a developer contribution required of £26,256.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]If you wish to progress with FTTC you need take no further action as this will be supplied automatically from the cabinet that serves the site. If you wish to opt for FTTP please let us know and we will send you an official offer letter with an agreement to sign and return.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]

jadziad wrote: »

From the perspective of someone living in a rented flat, a wired connection is *far* more preferable over wifi.

We are doing holiday lets, so I doubt this would be so relevant.

Mister_G

J_B wrote: »

Our developer just had this ..... :rotfl:
On 29 March 2017 at 12:42:30, xxx@openreach.co.uk
[FONT=&quot]There are two options available to provide this development with a fibre solution:[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]- [/FONT][FONT=&quot]FTTC (Fibre To The Cabinet) is available and the cabinet that serves this site is enabled to provide this. It will be at no extra cost to the developer and will afford the end users estimated superfast broadband speeds of 55-73 MBS[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]- [/FONT][FONT=&quot]FTTP (Fibre To The Premises) could be provided for this development and would afford the end users ultrafast broadband speeds of 300 MBS. To provide this, there would be a developer contribution required of £26,256.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]If you wish to progress with FTTC you need take no further action as this will be supplied automatically from the cabinet that serves the site. If you wish to opt for FTTP please let us know and we will send you an official offer letter with an agreement to sign and return.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]


We are doing holiday lets, so I doubt this would be so relevant.

I stand corrected over the FTTP, but at £26k I suspect that you won't be going down that route!

I would think for a holiday let, individual wireless hubs (with their own logins and passwords) off of your incoming 70Mb will be more than sufficient. If you explain the set up in your letting contract, you should have no issues with your renters.

[Deleted User]

I've checked for my exchange and doesn't appear to mention Fibre. Only WBC ADSL + 2. Giving speeds of up 5.5mb There is a roll out of VDSL by 31st Dec 2017. Whatever that is?

FTTC and FTTP doesn't get mentioned.