Networking a small apartment building

Hello guys,

A good friend of mine is renovating a whole apartment building (8 doors) and he wanted my help in upgrading his previous network infrastructure. He wants PoE camera with a NVR, a Akuvox intercom at the main entrance and 1 AP in each apartment with a couple of hardwired jack in every room. He also want to use a single ISP for the whole building (I think he have a good business deal for a 3Gbps up and down FTTH).

What would you recommand as a setup for this situation? Here’s my idea:

  • CAT 6 UTP Solid Copper cabling everywhere (or 6A if he can approve the cost difference). For 10Gbe over CAT6 with run - of less than 55m he should be good right?
  • 1x 25U Rack to store everything
  • 1x Used Dell R210 II Server (8Gb Ram, E3-1220 v2 3.1GHz) with a 10Gbe SFP+ PCIe Card with a cat 6a cable to the ISP modem I’m thinking of running PfSense.
  • 1x Used Dell X1052P 48 Port PoE Gigabit SFP+ Switch
  • 1x Used Optiplex 7040 SFF ( (Intel Core i5-6500, 16GB Ram) as the NVR for the cameras running BlueIris under Windows 10
  • 1x CyberPower CP1500AVRT UPS
  • 8x TP-Link EAP610v2 APs

Here’s my vLAN ideas:

Management network
Cameras NVR
Intercom VoIP
One in each of the apartement

Couple of ideas for the APs. Should I broadcast 8 differents SSID on every APs so they can roam around and still be in their own vLAN? Doing that would open the door to someone using the AP’s ethernet port to access all those vlans right (like a bad neighbor)? Or should I limit the vlan to their own AP (the one in their own apartment)?

I’m all ear for your opinion and recommendation for that kind of project.

Thanks!

Provide additional info:

  • what materials is the building made from? (wood, concrete, glass, steel, etc)
  • is each apartment a single room or more then 1 room?
  • how do you plan to deal with illegal activities on the network?
  • how do you plan to deal with data hoarders (streamers to normies :stuck_out_tongue: )

I’d recommend against having a single ISP for the entire building, let each tenant have their own ISP of choice. This helps (but doesn’t fully negate) on the last pair of points above.

Big +1 to Dutch_Master’s points.

Single ISP that all share can cause a lot of headache/potential liability. Better to have them split and subscribe to their own service. Even if it is just all subscriptions to a single ISP that services the building, they’ll be happy to work with you on how to set that up.

1 Like
  • what materials is the building made from? (wood, concrete, glass, steel, etc)
    Wood
  • is each apartment a single room or more then 1 room?
    3 and 1/2
  • how do you plan to deal with illegal activities on the network?
    I’d have to ask my friend but I don’t think we could do much on that point.
  • how do you plan to deal with data hoarders (streamers to normies :stuck_out_tongue: )
    QoS per tenant.

I’d have to agree that a single ISP isn’t the best option. I will have a talk to him.