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Posted by Neal McLain on April 13, 2009, 3:16 pm
>Our situation is a mostly one-story 3500 sq ft house on the Stanford
>campus that includes an owner's section plus 3 self-contained
>studio-type rental units under one roof (the rental units are typically
>occupied by grad students or visitors on university fellows programs).
>
>Present connectivity includes Comcast cable TV with 4-way signal
>splitting; 5 hardwired phone lines (3 into the rental units, plus
>separate "residential" and "home office" lines for the owners); and
>AT&T DSL service on one of the owner lines.
>
>The DSL (which has only about 400KB data rate due to excessive
>distance from the nearest CO) comes in through an elderly Cayman
>router, one of whose 4 Ethernet ports is cabled via Cat 5 to a
>centrally positioned Apple Extreme base station. This base station
>then provides an in-house WIfI LAN to multiple laptops (mostly Macs)
>in all four parts of the house (it does get a bit overloaded at
>times). Some other misc Ethernet stuff (printers, etc) is hung off
>the other three Ethernet ports of the Cayman.
>
>We're hoping to convert essentially _all_ of this connectivity into
>the Comcast bundle, including dumping the DSL service after a testing
>and transition period. So, a variety of questions come up...
Have you discussed this with Comcast?
If you are planning to provide video services to four separate
residences under an agreement that covers service one customer, you may
be violating Comcast's billing policy. It's been a long time since I
worked in the cable TV industry (and even longer since I worked at
Comcast), but cable TV companies generally treat each separate residence
as a separate "dwelling unit" for billing purposes.
Most cable companies offer "bulk billing" for multi-unit buildings
(hotel/motels, retirement facilities, hospitals) billed under a single
bill. The per-dwelling-unit cost is lower than the cost would be if
each dwelling unit were billed as a separate customer, but the total is
higher than it would be for a single customer.
It's certainly possible to connect four dwelling units to a single cable
TV drop (as you are now doing) without getting involved in a bulk-bill
arrangement. But given the complexity of the project you are proposing,
it seems to me that at some point you are going to have to deal with
Comcast. I'll leave it to other TD readers to comment on the
feasibility of running four internet connections and five VOIP telephone
lines over a Comcast drop intended to serve one customer, but I think I
can confidently predict that it will be more complicated than simply
splitting the cable TV video signal.
As to your specific question...
>5) Because of the 4-way splitting of the cable TV signal, we currently
> have a powered cable TV amplifier at the point where the current cable
> from Comcast enters the house. Will the Internet signals pass through
> that amplifier? -- or will they have to be split off and/or bypassed
> around it somehow?
It depends on the type of amplifier. If it's a one-way amplifier, then
it won't pass upstream signals; you'll have to bypass it or replace it.
If it's a two-way amplifier of appropriate noise figure, gain, and
bandwidth characteristics, then it should pass data signals. But I
can't tell you what the "appropriate" characteristics are: that question
hinges on other factors such as the signal levels provided by Comcast,
the frequencies Comcast uses for data, and the length and condition of
the existing coax inside your building.
My advice: If you are determined to convert everything to Comcast, then
contact Comcast, explain what you want to do, and ask them for a
quotation. You can expect that it will cost more than you'd pay as a
single customer, but the price will include the appropriate design,
equipment and service.
As to your question...
>
>6) Part of the overall deal is also supposed to be converting at least
> three, maybe four of the existing 5 phone lines over to VOIP, so as
> to get substantially reduced cost and and unified billing (might
> even drop phone service for the tenants, and let them live with the
> individual cell phones they generally come to us with, or with VOIP
> they set up on their own).
Do you really want to put all of your eggs in one basket? Bear in mind
that if Comcast's signal fails, you'd loose everything: video, internet,
and telephone.
Keeping your phone service separate provides "route diversity," ensuring
that you won't lose everything at once. Notwithstanding the recent
sabotage problems in San Jose, I'd keep at least one phone line
connected to AT&T.
Neal McLain
Retired cable guy
Brazoria, Texas
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Posted by Hudson Leighton on April 13, 2009, 9:18 pm
>
> >Our situation is a mostly one-story 3500 sq ft house on the Stanford
> >campus that includes an owner's section plus 3 self-contained
> >studio-type rental units under one roof (the rental units are typically
> >occupied by grad students or visitors on university fellows programs).
I also think you will run into problems with Comcast's usage
limits (250G ?)
-Hudson
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Posted by Tony Toews \[MVP\] on April 13, 2009, 9:18 pm
>Do you really want to put all of your eggs in one basket? Bear in mind
>that if Comcast's signal fails, you'd loose everything: video, internet,
>and telephone.
>Keeping your phone service separate provides "route diversity," ensuring
>that you won't lose everything at once. Notwithstanding the recent
>sabotage problems in San Jose, I'd keep at least one phone line
>connected to AT&T.
Also note that cableco's don't seem to do quite a good job at providing dial
tone in
a disaster or power failure as do the telco's. In my opinion there are a lot
more
things to go wrong with IP based telephone systems than POTS. Also cell phone
systems are typically overloaded in an disaster.
I would definitely dedicate a UPS just to running the "modem" and wireless hub,
etc
so you can possibly continue to make phone calls.
Tony
--
Tony Toews, Microsoft Access MVP
Please respond only in the newsgroups so that others can
read the entire thread of messages.
Microsoft Access Links, Hints, Tips & Accounting Systems at
http://www.granite.ab.ca/accsmstr.htm
Tony's Microsoft Access Blog - http://msmvps.com/blogs/access/
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>campus that includes an owner's section plus 3 self-contained
>studio-type rental units under one roof (the rental units are typically
>occupied by grad students or visitors on university fellows programs).
>
>Present connectivity includes Comcast cable TV with 4-way signal
>splitting; 5 hardwired phone lines (3 into the rental units, plus
>separate "residential" and "home office" lines for the owners); and
>AT&T DSL service on one of the owner lines.
>
>The DSL (which has only about 400KB data rate due to excessive
>distance from the nearest CO) comes in through an elderly Cayman
>router, one of whose 4 Ethernet ports is cabled via Cat 5 to a
>centrally positioned Apple Extreme base station. This base station
>then provides an in-house WIfI LAN to multiple laptops (mostly Macs)
>in all four parts of the house (it does get a bit overloaded at
>times). Some other misc Ethernet stuff (printers, etc) is hung off
>the other three Ethernet ports of the Cayman.
>
>We're hoping to convert essentially _all_ of this connectivity into
>the Comcast bundle, including dumping the DSL service after a testing
>and transition period. So, a variety of questions come up...