I know this topic has come up before but I'm looking for a simple way to extend my wifi service to my shop. My shop is a few hundred feet from the house. My home wifi network can be picked up at the upstairs window, of the shop, but that's it. I'm guessing the metal siding is working like a Faraday cage and sheilding the signal. Can I just mount a cheap repeater like this on the outside of the shop and connect it to a wifi router inside?
I use a Ethernet Over Power adapter to plug into a old router switched into "access point" mode. If you're not a networking nerd with a plethora of old junk around, the commercial version is this: https://www.newegg.com/tp-link-tl-wpa7510-kit-up-to-1gbps/p/1BV-0009-00063?Description=ethernet%20over%20power%20wifi&cm_re=ethernet_over_power_wifi-_-1BV-0009-00063-_-Product
Those are the same EoP adapters I use, except those ones have wifi built in.
I think your solution would work - but if it's 2.4, you're leaving some bandwidth on the table.
For me, I went with a Nanobridge from Ubiquiti. Basically, it's a dedicated transmitter/receiver combo with a pretty narrow beam, and it bridged the 150' between my shop and my house like it wasn't there. I've got the house side inside and shooting through the stucco wall, and the shop side is in a window. Then you just plug it into an access point.
Not to muddy up your thread but would something like this also help a weak WIFI signal in the basement or is there a different solution for that?
Patientzero said:Not to muddy up your thread but would something like this also help a weak WIFI signal in the basement or is there a different solution for that?
This is a simple solution for inside the house. I use one to get through the concrete wall of my garage.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00R92CL5E/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Keith Tanner said:Patientzero said:Not to muddy up your thread but would something like this also help a weak WIFI signal in the basement or is there a different solution for that?
This is a simple solution for inside the house. I use one to get through the concrete wall of my garage.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00R92CL5E/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Yep, that's the Netgear version of what I posted above.. they work well and simply..
Second the ubiquiti recommendation from Keith. I was the one that recommended that setup to him after running my own bridge around 300ft it works amazingly well, for not that much money. Latency is like 50ms. Low enough I don't care.
Been there, tried all that. Had pretty good luck with a couple Ubiquiti Nanostations, but the latency was not always up to par for live broadcasts. Eventually I just buried a 400' piece of cat5 cable. It was like under $100 for underground grade wire, and for the short runs that weren't in dirt I was able to run it through some concrete seams that I sawed out a bit then sealed over. Unless there's a regularly-plowed field between the house and the shop, hardwire is cheap and fast.
JG Pasterjak said:Been there, tried all that. Had pretty good luck with a couple Ubiquiti Nanostations, but the latency was not always up to par for live broadcasts. Eventually I just buried a 400' piece of cat5 cable. It was like under $100 for underground grade wire, and for the short runs that weren't in dirt I was able to run it through some concrete seams that I sawed out a bit then sealed over. Unless there's a regularly-plowed field between the house and the shop, hardwire is cheap and fast.
I looked into the cost of direct burial cable and it's certainly the easy button. My only concern is we have a Husky cross that loves to dig. The routing of the cable would also take it directly over our septic weeping bed but since the cable wouldn't be very deep I don't see that being an issue.
Along the lines of JG's hard wired shop, i have my service to the garage running through a 2" conduit underground. I left a pull wire in there with it so i can take another run of something from garage to house. Would being in the same conduit as the electric supply jack up the signals going through a cat5 cable if i were to put a router in the garage?
How far is the shop from the house?
This is what I have for my house and garage. It's super easy to setup, and works well. You can get additional mesh points if needed. https://amzn.to/39jMAYl (affiliate link)
I had to mount my mesh point in the rafters so it wasn't going through the block wall. A window would work too.
Alternatively, for a greater distance, you could mount on of these on the outside of the house, and one on the outside of the garage. As long as they have line of sight, they have great bandwidth. https://amzn.to/3cjDSuG (affiliate link)
The reason I didn't hardwire my shop was grounding concerns. It's worth checking.
I wish I had ran some CAT6 when I ran the electric to my garage, but at this point I don't feel like trying to dig it back up.
I used older versions of Ubiquiti hardware about a decade ago to link up LED video signs in front of businesses, right through brick walls and roof structure. Sometimes over several hundred yards. They were the most solid of any system I used. Mind you, it was for file transfer not streaming, so no idea on the latency issue.
I stream via my Nanobridge all the time. I'll run a ping test next time I'm down there.
I use Ubiquiti stuff. Get two Loco M2's and a cheap wifi router and you're done.
In reply to Patrick :
I have exactly that setup spanning the ~250' to the shop.I haven't noticed any issues that have been traced to the power and network cabling sharing the same conduit. My only problems have been with the various bits of networking hardware as the shop always gets the cast-offs from the house when that gets upgraded.
My shop is only 120' from the router in my concrete block house, but a set of these turned it from no signal to nearly full speed:
If you didn't want to go to the trouble of burying it, plant a telephone pole every 125' or so and string some UV-protected cat 6 cable.
1988RedT2 said:If you didn't want to go to the trouble of burying it, plant a telephone pole every 125' or so and string some UV-protected cat 6 cable.
I can 100% guarantee you SWMBO will not accept utility poles and a wire running from our house to my shop. It'll interfere with the view of our horses. Otherwise this Is reasonable suggestion.
This is relevant to my interests. OK if I piggyback my personal situation in the thread here?
Wayslow said:1988RedT2 said:If you didn't want to go to the trouble of burying it, plant a telephone pole every 125' or so and string some UV-protected cat 6 cable.
I can 100% guarantee you SWMBO will not accept utility poles and a wire running from our house to my shop. It'll interfere with the view of our horses. Otherwise this Is reasonable suggestion.
Y'all must have some skinny-ass horses...
I'm just laughing at the idea that planting telephone poles is easier than trenching.
Keith Tanner said:I stream via my Nanobridge all the time. I'll run a ping test next time I'm down there.
We used to stream on the nanos as well. I could run speed tests all day and they'd show great numbers, except when they didn't. About 90% of the time they were rock solid, but that last 10% just became too frustrating.
Now, if anything were to happen to my hardline, I'd probably start fresh with some state-of-the-art wireless bridges, just because I could have that up and running quicker than burying another line, and I'd figure things have to have gotten better since the decade-old nanos.
Correction, I use Nanobeam M5-16 wireless bridges. The Nanobridge is different and an older design. Can't imagine how I might have mixed that up :)
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