We are a property management company seeking the best way and most affordable way to set up a VPN for our tenants in both a 2 & 3 story (22 units) apartment complex and also for a cafe in a commercial complex. We have contacted Verizon but they seem eager to provide the same old box setup to increase their sales instead of helping to create a "bubble" network that EVERYONE can tap into. PLEASE HELP! Everyone seems to be selling their service and not their expertise in the field.
2 Answers
Do you mean wireless network that only the residents could use? If so you could put in A wireless point and connect it using wireless repeaters to ensure good signal strength throughout the building. You could lock it down by using a strong password and by requiring users to give their Mac address and then you could turn off DHCP and statically allocate IP addresses using MAC address, or only allow certain MAC addresses to use the router.
thats how the company who ran our student halls did it. (Roughly)
answered Feb 23, 2010 at 15:44
Assuming you are talking about wireless and not VPN, placing one or more access points to cover the area that you need and securing them is what you need to do. You could do like Joe suggested an lock everything down by MAC address, but that can still be spoofed and creates a headache on your end if someone gets a new computer.
I would suggest getting access points, leaving them wide open, but installing a captive portal like http://dev.wifidog.org/ so that only users that you have given access will be able to actually use the wireless. This is similar to the way that most hotel's and coffee shops provide wireless internet services.
