Sharing NTL Broadband Wirelessly Query

Stu

Hi. I am looking to get NTL installed in a flat where there are 6 tenants spread over 3 floors in the house. The landlord has told me to get 20 or 40 meg broadband and split the bill with the other tenants.

My question is ........ will the other tenants have any problems obtaining a strong signal from my flat on the first floor and they will be all connecting wirelessly to the router. Has anybody tried to link to an NTL broadband in a house but couldn't connect and if so is there a stronger antenna that i could get from NTL to guarantee strong coverage throughout the house.

Thanks in advance for your replys.

dub45

It is virtually impossible to predict the performance of wireless (irrespective of who the isp might be) in advance unfortunately. What type of 'house' is it?

Are you talking about wooden or concrete floors for example?

Damien360

If you sign the contract the axe falls with you alone should people refuse to pay or tenants leave . Either landlord signs and you agree to pay your share only of the bill (I.e. Divide by 6) or you could get stung . My sister got stung for tv service shared in a flat as there was a minimum term of contract .

As for your wireless query , even my house has signal blackspots and it is a semi-d . Wireless not reliable and may end up as a bone of contention for some of the users.

Stu

Thanks for the replys. Yeah, the floors are wooden and the house is 3 stories high so i guess wireless may be unreliable on any given day and i'll have to bare the brunt of my disgruntled neighbours if the broadband is not performing well. Hmm, decisions, decisions.

dunworth1

you could get home plugs they work through the houses electrical wiring

only problem is these can be expensive

dub45

dunworth1 wrote: »

you could get home plugs they work through the houses electrical wiring

only problem is these can be expensive

Dont they need to be on the same circuit too?

dub45

Stu wrote: »

Thanks for the replys. Yeah, the floors are wooden and the house is 3 stories high so i guess wireless may be unreliable on any given day and i'll have to bare the brunt of my disgruntled neighbours if the broadband is not performing well. Hmm, decisions, decisions.

Have you given any consideration as to how you are going to divide and monitor the 'cap' over the various tenants?

vibe666

homeplugs don't technically have to be on the same electrical circuit, but performance will take a big kick in the nuts if it's not and generally the plug sockets on each floor of a house will each have their own circuit (i.e. they'll be on seperate fuses in your fuse box).

you might be lucky with the ntl modem, but given the amount of issues we see on the forum that people have with them, i wouldn't count on it working flawlessly.

personally, if it was me i'd forego the ntl router and get my own and make sure it has removable antenna and that you can get high gain ones online to replace them if it comes to it.

you'd increase your chances with a high end mimo wireless N router, but you wouldn't see a huge improvement unless you and your flat mates were all willing to replace all the wifi cards in your pc's and/or laptops to make it worthwhile and the total investment would be bordering on silly, even split between you.

you might get away with a 200mbps homeplug adapter from your router and a homeplug wireless adapter on each floor. you might lose a lot of the speed, but it *should* still work.

ideally, i'd ask if the landlord would be willing to drill a little hole in the wall on each floor and just run ethernet cable from the router then up the wall outside your house to each floor and be done with it, but he might not go for that, i guess it depends on how geek friendly he is.

jor el

vibe666 wrote: »

ideally, i'd ask if the landlord would be willing to drill a little hole in the wall on each floor and just run ethernet cable from the router then up the wall outside your house to each floor and be done with it, but he might not go for that, i guess it depends on how geek friendly he is.

That's really the only way this would work. any other option is just going to be unreliable for most users, and they won't pay for that.

Having said that, sharing the connection across multiple households (which they are) would be against UPC's terms of use. Then there's the issue of the cap, 250GB/6 is 41GB to each flat. How do you monitor and control that? The bill will be paid by one person (most likely by direct debit from their bank account), so who takes responsibility for collecting the money from the other tenants? What if one of the tenants does something illegal? The person who's name the broadband is in takes all the responsibility and blame. Who fields all the technical queries when something goes wrong, or if one of the users is a bandwidth hog?

My advice is; DO NOT do this under any circumstance. You're asking for a world of trouble. Get broadband for yourself, and pay for it yourself. Let the other's take care of themselves too.

If the landlord is willing to take all this responsibility for himself, then maybe, but you'll still end up sharing with 5 other households, any one of which could be doing something that will impact what you want to do.

vibe666

i hadn't really considered that side of thing, but jor el is right, you're potentially looking at a world of hurt if this goes south.

HattieMcDoogal

jor el wrote: »

Then there's the issue of the cap, 250GB/6 is 41GB to each flat. How do you monitor and control that?.

Word on this! You have to think about the bandwidth/speed issues you would have if a few people are using it. Say someone leaves a huge torrent running while they're out of the house ... everybody elses connection might go snail slow but you've no way of knowing why.