Furnished Rooms for Rent

High Speed Internet

We supply access to the Internet to all tenants using a Bell Fibe high speed 25 MBit connection, a firewall and provide WiFi and a wired Ethernet 10_Base-T receptacle in each rental room. There are no wires running down the halls and taped to the floors, nothing to trip on, and much more reliable.

This is one of three outlets in our media access outlet. They look like this:

The center outlet is usually location of the Internet connection receptacle. It is labeled "Cat 5".

You will also find two of these in the Den.

All connections are located behind a firewall that is enabled in the wireless access point device.

We also provide a 802.11/g wireless network for our tenants. We operate the network using the highest level of security available, to protect you and ourselves from unwanted access. We use WPA security, which is only available for Windows XP, Windows 2000 and Vista and beyond.

If we have tenants that use MACs, and they are OS-X 10.3 or later, then these will work seamlessly for Internet access.

All of the Internet access services are included in the rent. Your only cost is to provide the cable from the media outlet jack to your computer. Each tenant may arrange furniture in their room differently, and so they need a cable of the appropriate length. They will cost about $12 at Staples (conveniently located just over a mile away.) This cable is the only item that is subject to wear, and it may be wise to have a spare stored away in case of problems.

Use of the Internet: This is provided as a service mainly to facilitate school work and communicating with family and friends. In addition, it may be used for a limited extent as entertainment providing that this use does not impact the primary purpose of the Internet connection. We insist that the Internet connection MUST only be used for legal purposes, this is part of our rental agreement. We automatically block access to Internet web sites which contain illegal copies of copyrighted music and movies, and other sites with illegal or prohibited content such as pornography. Other limitations apply to fairly provide bandwidth for all users. These include prohibiting the use of peer-to-peer file sharing software, which we block. We apply traffic shaping to give interactive use of the Internet a high priority, and low priority to large downloads. We monitor the bandwidth used by each tenant, and have data quotas per tenant to keep the Internet connection fast and responsive for all users. We keep logs for 6 months, similar to federal requirements for all Canadian ISP's. This is so we can identify the exact tenant responsible if we receive a copyright infringement notice, or other law enforcement request.

If you have never connected your computer to a high speed Internet connection, or to a home network, you may not have an Ethernet NIC card, or a 802.11g Wireless LAN adaptor card. These can be purchased nearby. We can help you with choosing the right equipment to buy and we can help you install and configure these if you are not certain how to do it. Any laptop purchased within the last 5 years will have both wired and wireless capability built in. Some very thin laptops such as a Mac book Air will need a dongle to connect to the wired Ethernet.

Confused about wired or wireless? I suggest if you have a desktop computer, you use a wired connection and if you have a laptop, then you use a wireless connection.

 

Shared Computer

We have a desktop computer that is located in the Den for use by all of our Tenants. This is using Windows XP Professional SP3. This provides everyone with:

• Printing using a Samsung ML-2010 Monochrome Laser printer for high quality prints
• CD-R and CR-RW burning to backup your work on your personal computer
• Private, password protected disk storage to backup your work
• Secure password protected logon accounts for each user
• Internet access
• Open Office suite (Microsoft Office compatible)
• A substitute computer to use if yours breaks down, or you don't own one
• 6 USB ports, 3.5" Floppy drive
• NOTE: This is an older computer, and it is slow compared to the latest computers

There is no charge, we just ask you to replenish the printer consumables. We will sell you blank bulk CD-Rs one at a time, but at our bulk purchase cost when we buy 50 or 100 in a package.

You can print remotely from your room, you only need to go to the Den to pick up the prints. If you have Windows 8.1 or later, this is tricky and often does not work.

Television

We provide a basic coax wiring to all rental rooms. We also provide a 32" Sony HD 1080I TV connected to a broadcast antenna in the Den, for everyone to use. There is a DVD player connected to the same TV. This TV also has analog game input, as well so it may be used to connect to older games console using baseband video and stereo audio cables. This is all included in your rent.

You can also have a HD TV in your room, at no extra charge. We have two HD LCD TVs that we supply for use in our two largest rooms. We have an over the air antenna which is available in each room at no charge, and all stations are high definition. This broadcast TV antenna receives 10 English stations, and four French, all broadcast in digital HD. You may bring your own TV, but it must be a HD capable and have a digital turner, or it will not receive any channels.

We also have an older DVD player that can be borrowed from us to use in a Tenant's room to hook up to their TV. This uses the less convenient component + 2 RCA cables for sound hookup, and does not have HDMI capability. This is for sharing among all the Tenants, and not for exclusive use by one Tenant.

If you wish to bring a HD TV for your room, then also bring an appropriate length of coax with F-series connectors on it to connect your TV to the cable connection in the media outlet receptacle. An older standard definition TV will not work, there are no analog stations in our area..

We also recommend that if you are purchasing a new TV to bring, that you select one with a headphone/earphone jack so that you do not disturb others late at night. A headphone jack is commonly available in 13 to 19" TV models intended for bedroom use.

We require that all A/V entertainment devices and computers be silent or inaudible after 11:00 at night, so that you do not disturb others.

Telephone

Private land line telephone service is not included in your rent, and is not provided unless you make specific arrangements for service. We expect you to use a cell phone for private phone service.

If you can get your family and close friends to use Skype, you can use free VOIP telephony using your computer. You can also pay a fee and make low cost outgoing calls to regular wired phones all over the world. We suggest that you get this working with at least one friend or family member before you come here. We have had students from Europe and from Asia, and they each used Skype and did not have any problems with it.

VOIP notes:

• This does not support 911 service, and is not as reliable as a regular phone. (And it does not work if your computer is not turned on and running the Skype program.)
• We do not support any other VOIP program other than Skype as a high priority service, so other VOIP programs may not work well when other students are doing downloads at the same time.