Garage Wireless

[keithh2oskier]

Hey GJ-

My wife and I are closing on our first house next week and my goal is to eventually get a computer out in the garage for interent browsing, reviewing PDF's for manuals and streaming music from pandora. The house will have have a wireless router for our laptop. Our garage is detached and I dont want to run an ethernet cable all that distance. My guess is the total distance between where the router and the garage is will be close to 75'. I think wireless is the way to go but the signal will be so weak it wouldnt work. Do any of you guys have creative solutions like wireless boosters or something?

Thanks.

 

[aandpdan]

Did you try it yet?

Place your router so that's its as close to the garage as possible, near a window. You can get different (better) antenna's for your router too. One is called the "Cantenna"

http://http://www.cantenna.com/

Or you can make your own.

 

[djkeev]

Exterior grade direct bury Cat5 will only cost about $100 or so.

A wire will bring you a faster signal than WiFi delivers in most cases.

Bite the bullet, bury the wire and call it good! Nothing worse than a weak slow connection!

Dave

 

[Long haul]

http://www.open-mesh.com/index.php/professional/om2p-us.html

I have one of these in my house and one inside my garage about 150' away. Works great and real secure setup.

 

[Busted_Knuckles]

It does not work for me, Im in the shop right now, on a pc, but I have to bring the air card out here. The shop is less than 100 ft from the house, maybe 60'.

If I put the air card in the middle of the yard, between the shop and the house, both the house and shop can use the connection, but it wont work in one for the other.

I will mention, the shop is all steel with no windows, doors are shut, and the house is wrapped with foil faced mylar house wrap for radiant heat blockage, which Im sure degrades the signal, so it might work for you, does not work for me.

As suggested, if it does not work, CAT5 cable buried would be the way to go.

 

[shoturtle]

You want the best throughput, go with a buried cat5. Expander for your wifi works, but after 50ft it gets real weak. I use an apple airport extreme, and couple of apple airport express though out the house to get strong signal in the basement and in the garden.

 

[Falcon67]

Buy a good router. We have a Linksys E3000 dual band unit. It's about 80' from the router to the bench - 4 sheetrock walls, a brick wall, concrete board, power panel, a double OSB wall all in between. No problems with signal. Pandora, etc - AOK in the shop. I'll take a signal reading sometime here with the laptop when I find the survey software.

EDIT - signal strength is -71, not great but usable. In the 60s is decent, 50s great. I only have a G chip in this laptop and none of my dual band test USB devices, so I can't tell how 5 Ghz would work. I have buildings at work with $20K worth of equipment in them that doesn't get better than what's here and the wireless subnets there are full.

 

[mzbk2l]

I had to connect to 5 different locations on our footprint in Balad, Iraq. We used these:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B002K683V0/?tag=atomicindus08-20

They advertise a range of up to 3 miles, but I can only vouch for about 1/2 mile (that's as far as I had to go).

They're completely plug and play - it's just like having a long ethernet cable between your two points; they're invisible to the network. They can also be used as a wireless access point, but I didn't do that - I had routers on each end.

Anyway, very simple, aim is not critical within 1/4 mile, and network speed did not seem to be affected at all. I did have some trouble with power supplies dying after a few months, but that may have had something to do with the 220v/50hz power over there.

 

[mryyc]

As the others said nothing beats a hard wire.

Other options are powerline connections assuming your electric is off the same panel, or creating a connected wifi network through bridges. Apple makes it easy if you're an Apple fan and use an Airport Extreme you could pick up an AirPort Express and use it to boost the signal in the garage. 75' is close enough it should work. LinkSys and other manufacturers have similar functionality but you need to be using the higher end consumer gear to get it to work.

 

[jonnyl95]

A wireless bridge will work. Some are better than others...I know some people who have their router in the basement and have a router on the 3rd floor and it works fine. We used to recommend these to people when I worked at a large electronics store, especially for PS3's and the like.

 

[Busted_Knuckles]

I had to connect to 5 different locations on our footprint in Balad, Iraq. We used these:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B002K683V0/?tag=atomicindus08-20

They advertise a range of up to 3 miles, but I can only vouch for about 1/2 mile (that's as far as I had to go).

They're completely plug and play - it's just like having a long ethernet cable between your two points; they're invisible to the network. They can also be used as a wireless access point, but I didn't do that - I had routers on each end.

Anyway, very simple, aim is not critical within 1/4 mile, and network speed did not seem to be affected at all. I did have some trouble with power supplies dying after a few months, but that may have had something to do with the 220v/50hz power over there.

I read the Amazon description, are these weather tight for outdoor mounting ?

 

[greg_0rs]

Get the older linksys units wrt54g...then get the enhanced antennae. Then install dd-wrt.....then boost the signal.

Ive played around with a lot of units and these things are the only one that function well in my 4,000 sq ft home.

 

[mzbk2l]

I read the Amazon description, are these weather tight for outdoor mounting ?

They're pretty tight, and have a dense foam gasket/seal along the bottom where the bottom snaps in.

We had them up for almost two years in Iraq, and they lived through numerous dust storms, 120*+ temps, and a few wind/rain storms strong enough to rip roof panels off. The only failure we had was a broken circuit board when I dropped one off the roof of a building.

 

[Busted_Knuckles]

They're pretty tight, and have a dense foam gasket/seal along the bottom where the bottom snaps in.

We had them up for almost two years in Iraq, and they lived through numerous dust storms, 120*+ temps, and a few wind/rain storms strong enough to rip roof panels off. The only failure we had was a broken circuit board when I dropped one off the roof of a building.

Thanks, Im going to look into this, I think this might be my solution for the shop !

 

[mzbk2l]

Thanks, Im going to look into this, I think this might be my solution for the shop !

Feel free to send me a PM if/when you get a set and go to install them... the included instructions aren't great, but once the setup "clicks" in your head, you won't believe how simple they are. There's no programming or setup necessary at all; you can literally plug them in and go (although there are many options you CAN program if you want to; they have a web interface that's accessible from the network).

I was hesitant playing with the first set, but once I started using them I chose to use those rather than running ethernet cable between any of our buildings, even if they were only 20-30 feet apart.

Having used them at work on the government's dime, I definitely plan to get a set for my house-garage connection.

 

[Busted_Knuckles]

Feel free to send me a PM if/when you get a set and go to install them... the included instructions aren't great, but once the setup "clicks" in your head, you won't believe how simple they are. There's no programming or setup necessary at all; you can literally plug them in and go (although there are many options you CAN program if you want to; they have a web interface that's accessible from the network).

I was hesitant playing with the first set, but once I started using them I chose to use those rather than running ethernet cable between any of our buildings, even if they were only 20-30 feet apart.

Having used them at work on the government's dime, I definitely plan to get a set for my house-garage connection.

My internet is coming in to me via a Verizon Air Card (cellular, about the speed of dial up, where Im at (rural), its either that, or sat, or actual dial up !)

Anyhow, does that system work with an air card, because the air card has no network plugs, or usb, nothing. So Im not sure, how this setup gets physically tied in, or do you need a traditional "router" to make this work ?

 

[vartz04]

At my parents I ran cable and then piggy backed it to our house router. So i had a sep wireless network out there.

 

[Goobzilla]

This is what I use, shop is metal and 100' away from the house.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B002WCEWU8/?tag=atomicindus08-20

 

[packet]

Get a wireless bridge and a directional antenna. Set up the bridge and point the antenna towards the garage. It should give you more than enough signal strength at that range.

 

[mzbk2l]

My internet is coming in to me via a Verizon Air Card (cellular, about the speed of dial up, where Im at (rural), its either that, or sat, or actual dial up !)

Anyhow, does that system work with an air card, because the air card has no network plugs, or usb, nothing. So Im not sure, how this setup gets physically tied in, or do you need a traditional "router" to make this work ?

Not sure how that would work. The bridges I linked to appear to the network to be the same as a piece of Cat 5 cable; anywhere that you could run an ethernet cable, you can replace it with the bridges. (So, if you would need additional hardware to share your current connection with your garage, you'll still need the additional hardware to share the wireless bridge connection with your garage.)

The only advantage to the wireless bridge is no Cat 5 cable to hang, bury, drive over, or break, and they are limited to miles, not yards, of transmission distance.

I've never used the air card type connection before, but I wonder if you can set up the "share my internet connection" on your connected computer and connect your garage that way (whether you use cable or a wireless bridge).

 

[keithh2oskier]

Thanks for all the great ideas. I will certainly let you guys know how it works out once we get all settled in over the next month or so.

 

[Busted_Knuckles]

Not sure how that would work. The bridges I linked to appear to the network to be the same as a piece of Cat 5 cable; anywhere that you could run an ethernet cable, you can replace it with the bridges. (So, if you would need additional hardware to share your current connection with your garage, you'll still need the additional hardware to share the wireless bridge connection with your garage.)

The only advantage to the wireless bridge is no Cat 5 cable to hang, bury, drive over, or break, and they are limited to miles, not yards, of transmission distance.

I've never used the air card type connection before, but I wonder if you can set up the "share my internet connection" on your connected computer and connect your garage that way (whether you use cable or a wireless bridge).

Thats what I was wondering, I was guessing there would be a piece of missing hardware, from the images, it looked like the bridge plugged into a network plug on a modem/router and then back out again.

Im looking for a way to get internet in the shop, without taking the air card out their with me. The girl friend uses the internet in the house for work, when I want to use it in the shop, so I cant always grab the air card, and take it too the shop with me. Weather does not always allow for me to have it sitting in the yard between both places, not to mention it needs power after a couple hours.

Ive got a buddy that does IT for a living, I will run it past him, maybe he can figure out how to get the connection shared, to incorporate the bridge, thanks for info !

 

[Falcon67]

Thanks, Im going to look into this, I think this might be my solution for the shop !

Look at Ubiquity Nano Stations first - outdoor, cheaper than the other stuff posted. We're using them for a .4 and a .6 mile bridge to remote buildings on campus.

The Nano stations come devoid of instructions, but are not that hard to set up. Or to aim, either. You give them IP addresses on the same subnet you're extending so you can hit the web interface. I'm trunking phone traffic and regular data over them, no complaints from the remotes so far. These are replacing T1 lines that cost us nearly $500 a month each.

 

[Busted_Knuckles]

Look at Ubiquity Nano Stations first - outdoor, cheaper than the other stuff posted. We're using them for a .4 and a .6 mile bridge to remote buildings on campus.

The Nano stations come devoid of instructions, but are not that hard to set up. Or to aim, either. You give them IP addresses on the same subnet you're extending so you can hit the web interface. I'm trunking phone traffic and regular data over them, no complaints from the remotes so far. These are replacing T1 lines that cost us nearly $500 a month each.

Thanks, will do !