NYC Mesh

Brian

Mesh Ready

The most difficult thing about connecting a building to the internet is the internal wiring. If a building has its own wiring to the apartments, it is quick and easy to connect it to the internet. The building is free to negotiate the best connection at a price way below individual apartments paying for a connection.

This post will describe how to make your building “mesh ready”. Once a building is mesh ready it can choose how it will connect to the internet- either wireless or fiber. An NYC Mesh wireless connection will probably be the best value and the quickest to install. It is also possible to connect with fiber, either a business fiber lease or “dark” unused fiber that can be connected inside a data center. NYC Mesh can also manage fiber connections.

Large Buildings

Large buildings are more than 6 floors and more apartments than say 30 apartments connecting. For these building it is usually good to have the wiring go back to a telecom closets in the basement or to closets every third floor.

Conduit and raceways

Existing conduits and raceways makes wiring apartments easier. There’s a few ways to do this-

  1. Ideally there would be a small telecom closet in each apartment with a conduit going to the basement. There would also be a main conduit going from the basement to the roof.

  2. A telecom closet in the basement and a telecom closet (or shared room) on each floor. The shared space could be a compactor chute or a janitor closet. From this space there would be a raceway to each apartment door

Telecom closets (or shared rooms) need not be on each floor. If they are every third floor, there can be a small conduit going 1 floor up and 1 floor down to reach the other floors.

Wiring to apartments

For large buildings we will run our own fiber. With fiber, the speed can be upgraded easily in the future. Fiber also takes up less space in the conduits and raceways.

Smaller buildings

For small buildings you can often install an outdoor antenna and ethernet switch on the roof and run cables down the outside of the building and in under the window frames. This will work for up to say 40 apartments.