Denwood
Well-known member
There's been a few posts here asking questions about running internet/wifi out to one's shop. Oddly enough, when we ran a gas line to the detached shop, I also ran extra conduit and two CAT5 cables. I just finished the job and ran them inside at either end. Being that it's -20 to -30C out every day (coldest month in recorded history) It'll be months before I tackle that project. A wired connection is always going to be the most reliable in my experience. I built a 10Gbe network, server and editing workstations for the office last winter so was knee deep in the technical documents to get reliable 1000MB/s transfer rates for the video/photo creative team. Surprisingly we did this all over CAT5e existing cable. The data rate possible over plain old CAT5e is pretty impressive. It was quite a project, ending up as a 6 part guest blog series over at smallnetbuilder.net on the process.
For my shop all that is required is a decent web connection to stream tunes to the sound system, and provide a good connection for the iPhone while in the shop. As a temporary solution, I figured I'd give powerline networking a go.
The shop is about 50ft from the house, with a 75 ft buried cable feeding it. My main use for wifi in the shop is to stream Spotify (at a higher quality bitrate) to the 5.1 channel amp. This Dlink unit serves two purposes. It manages a powerline network connection over the shop power feed, and also provides a wireless access point in the shop (wireless N wifi). It works quite well after doing two things:
1. Installed a receptacle right next to the panel in the house feeding the garage. This provides the shortest powerline path to the garage. My router is also in the same space so it was very easy to plug the powerline adapter into my network switch. We have two meters, therefore two panels in our house left from it's previous life with a basement apartment.
2. Tested the shop powerline transceiver on receptacles run from each side of the panel in the shop. One side was definitely faster than the other. This makes sense when you consider that one phase will be a cleaner/shorter path depending on the house/garage wiring.
This also fixes the dead area at the back of our lot so the kids can stream their tunes whilst hanging in their play area. Speed from the shop (internet over wifi) is just a bit slower than the same test in the house.
This is a temporary solution, but if you're looking for better performance, Zyxel powerline adapters and a standalone wifi access point will be faster. A great review series here: http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-powerline-networking-kit/
For my shop all that is required is a decent web connection to stream tunes to the sound system, and provide a good connection for the iPhone while in the shop. As a temporary solution, I figured I'd give powerline networking a go.
The shop is about 50ft from the house, with a 75 ft buried cable feeding it. My main use for wifi in the shop is to stream Spotify (at a higher quality bitrate) to the 5.1 channel amp. This Dlink unit serves two purposes. It manages a powerline network connection over the shop power feed, and also provides a wireless access point in the shop (wireless N wifi). It works quite well after doing two things:
1. Installed a receptacle right next to the panel in the house feeding the garage. This provides the shortest powerline path to the garage. My router is also in the same space so it was very easy to plug the powerline adapter into my network switch. We have two meters, therefore two panels in our house left from it's previous life with a basement apartment.
2. Tested the shop powerline transceiver on receptacles run from each side of the panel in the shop. One side was definitely faster than the other. This makes sense when you consider that one phase will be a cleaner/shorter path depending on the house/garage wiring.
This also fixes the dead area at the back of our lot so the kids can stream their tunes whilst hanging in their play area. Speed from the shop (internet over wifi) is just a bit slower than the same test in the house.
This is a temporary solution, but if you're looking for better performance, Zyxel powerline adapters and a standalone wifi access point will be faster. A great review series here: http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-powerline-networking-kit/
There is a lot of material covered in the 10GBe series, but it was a great learning experience. The ability to do video and photo work all shared from the 10GBe server is pretty amazing from the collaborative point of view with my team...and they're loving it. The shop needs are rather more pedestrian. Ha.