Restructured

Old Wiki/Columbia_Heights_Wireless.md

@@ -0,0 +1,147 @@
+The discussion list for this project is
+[neighborhoodwireless@hacdc.org](http://hacdc.org/mailman/listinfo/neighborhoodwireless_hacdc.org).
+
+# Proposal
+
+This project, in its current form, will be announced at the June 17
+member meeting
+
+The Columbia Heights Wireless Project aims to provide wireless access to
+the Internet to HacDC's neighbors in Columbia Heights. This project, in
+three phases, will help test different technologies and methods for
+providing this access as well as building local neighborhood IT
+infrastructure.
+
+## Phase One: Rewire St. Stephen's Church
+
+St. Stephen's Church is used by many community organizations, each of
+which are responsible for obtaining their own Internet and Telephone
+service.
+
+There are potential costs savings for the church and its tenants to
+upgrade the IT infrastructure of the facility, allowing the church and
+tenants to share common Internet access and Telephone service.
+
+After assessing the needs of the church, its tenants and occasional
+guests from out of town, HacDC will draft a plan to re-wire the
+telecommunications and networking infrastructure of the church. Prior to
+consultation with the tenants (this consultation meeting is scheduled
+for June 13) this phase has the following goals:
+
+- Replace the IT wiring infrastructure of the church.
+  - Remove all "dead cables" from the exterior and interior of the
+    church
+  - Run house cable to church office and basement and other key areas of
+    the church, reducing need for cabling on the outside of the building
+    and/or expansive cable runs within the building
+  - Replace the demarc with more modern equipment (should be done by
+    Verizon)
+  - Install wired outlets in offices and other places they may be
+    necessary
+  - Run wire to ares where wireless access points may be deployed
+- Provide building wide Internet access
+  - Replace multiple DSL lines with one solid, very high speed internet
+    connection
+  - Install building router to handle and segregate internet connection
+  - Provide church and its tenants with private subnet
+  - Provide wired network access to tenants who require it
+  - Provide infrastructure for building-wide wireless network
+- Build church wireless network
+  - Provide private wireless networks to tenants who require it
+  - Provide public wireless network for church and tenant guests, etc.
+- Integrate church security system into building wide network
+  - Replace existing church security and entry system (see also
+    [Physical_Access_Control_Project](Physical_Access_Control_Project "wikilink"))
+  - Provide method for tenants to view persons outside the building and
+    allow building access
+
+## Phase Two: Provide Wireless to the Housing Project Surrounding the Church
+
+Once the hurdles of providing wireless to a given area (the church) are
+handled, the goal is to extending the public church network to the
+housing project which surrounds the church. The goals of this project
+are relatively less complex:
+
+- Provide public wireless accessible in all rooms of the development
+  around the church
+- Work with community members on best methods for building and
+  supporting a public wireless network
+- Deploy specialized equipment on the roof of the church and possibly on
+  the development property
+- Work out technical challenges present in extending the public network
+  beyond church immediate line-of-sight
+
+## Phase Three: Provide Wireless to Neighborhood Buildings
+
+- Provide public wireless available throughout Columbia Heights
+- Attract public and government support to make such a public wireless
+  network viable and sustainable
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+# Implementation
+
+A meeting was held with the church coordinator and a few tenants on
+Friday, June 13th, to assess the needs and scope of the project. As
+outlined above, it looks quite viable, with a few considerations:
+
+All the tenants we met with are currently using some form of DSL or
+dialup access. They'd all be happy with a plain vanilla shared
+connection, using whatever sort of upstream we find appropriate. One
+tenant (CISPES) uses VoIP phones, and at least one other (Brainfood)
+uses Skype heavily, so QoS factors (latency, jitter) are important.
+
+Telephone needs were also discussed. Most tenants have POTS lines into
+their spaces, with a few using cellular phones exclusively, and one
+using VoIP, as mentioned above. There's at least one FAX line. The POTS
+customers weren't averse to going VoIP at some point in the future, as
+long as they can keep their existing numbers.
+
+As for security, it'd be nice to distribute front-door video to each
+space and provide tenants with an intercom and a way to buzz guests into
+the building. This would let the church go down to a nighttime guard
+only, saving the cost of the daytime guard.
+
+In my (Nate B) professional judgment, the voice and video projects
+should be considered separately from the data project, except where it
+would be wise to combine cabling installation. Running a PBX is a wholly
+separate set of administration skills and maintenance considerations.
+Likewise, assembling a video distribution network and interfacing with
+the door lock system is a separate job, only related because it also
+involves running wire in the building.
+
+Since inexpensive baluns are available to transmit video over a single
+pair of UTP, a single additional run of Cat-5 to each space should be
+adequate to support the access project. Since wire is cheap compared to
+labor (even volunteer labor, trust me!), I don't think there's any such
+thing as pulling "too many" drops into each space. Leave the unused ones
+coiled and tagged in the ceiling if need be, but run extra cable now.
+
+The next steps for the first phase, then, are as follows:
+
+- Formally present this project at the next HacDC meeting and get member
+  approval and buy-in.
+- Obtain, or draw, floor plans of the building. Scope out good cable
+  routes, be they inside walls, above drop ceilings, or held in surface
+  wiring raceways.
+- Perform a site-survey to ascertain the RF propagation characteristics
+  of the church building. Plaster lath walls are notorious for eating
+  wifi signals.
+- Determine whether it's appropriate to do everything as a home-run to a
+  single closet, or to have "vertical" house-cables that appear on each
+  floor. (I like home runs. --Nate B.)
+- Pick a location for a wiring closet. In addition to patch panels, it
+  should be able to hold (and provide cooling for) a moderate amount of
+  infrastructure gear: A DSL modem, a router, an Ethernet switch or two,
+  a midspan PoE injector, a video distribution amplifier, a small PBX,
+  and whatever lock control system gets built. A bit of room for growth
+  would be good, to allow for scope creep.
+- Solicit donations of wire, jacks, accesspoints, and the above
+  infrastructure gear.
+- Evaluate potential upstream connections. Nick mentioned that
+  point-to-point microwave access may be available in our location.
+  Consider multi-homing the network, if financially practical.
+- Contact community members who'd be interested in helping the project
+  and learning to maintain and administer the network.
+
+[Category:Proposed Projects](Category:Proposed_Projects "wikilink")