Vonage for an apartment building?

Posts: 17 · Posted: Sun Mar 05, 2006 4:03 pm Post subject:

On the technical side, you'd need quite a lot of bandwidth to provide Vonage to all your tenants if you're routing them all through one connection. Download bandwith (non-VOIP) can be throttled, but, hypothetically, if for any reason all 14 of your tenants were to use Vonage at the same time, you'd need upstream bandwidth of (90kbpsx14) 1260kbps, not including any internet traffic. Most providers don't have more than 600kbps upstream, so that would be something of a concern, depending on what type of connection you have. Upstream throttling I think would inherently cause problems with any Voip connection, and thus complaints. In my opinion, it would be best to leave the Voip option up to the tenant, but the WiFi would be an excellent option.

Posts: 1715 · Posted: Sun Mar 05, 2006 5:54 pm Post subject:

I don't know that I'd want to offer free 'net to everyone... I DO have a couple of public access points out & about, BUT, I have them heavily filtered/blocked. All it takes is 1 user to start sending out viruses, spam, or doing illegal things for the authorities to come knocking on your door.

Posts: 170 · Vonage Forum Master Joined: Dec 05, 2004 Posts: 170

Yeah, a wireless bridge would work, provided there was adequate signal, but then every tenant would need one, at least the ones who want Vonage or to be able to hook up a computer without a wireless network adapter. I'm not sure which method would be more cost-effective. However, if I was the landlord, I'd just run a cable to each apartment and leave everything else to the tenant. If course, you would need a good hardware firewall as well.

Also, I agree with the others on the bandwidth issue. You'd need at least a T1 for this project, or at very minimum SDSL (1.54 Mbps). Cable and ADSL probably wouldn't be enough bandwidth.

Maaz