Wifi and mesh systems

[Reit38]

Getting new internet hooked up in our new to us house. Provider will be CenturyLink (unfortunately only one available) my pole building shop is 100ft from the house. And would like to get wifi out there

Would a mesh system work for my situation ? Never used it before and some research has led me to think it might be the easiest way

 

[loganb]

Assuming no interest in trenching a fresh cable there and no existing phone line or open conduit there?

Yes, 100' away shouldn't be a problem, big improvement in strength if you use exterior rated units and mount both the house and shop units outside so that the walls aren't absorbing the signal strength. If there aren't significant trees between house and shop you may be able to get away with just an exterior mounted access point on the shop side of the house, but if not could then put shop one in as well

 

[skamp]

Use a point to point bridge like this. Get two of these. Less than $200 for both. Easy and reliable.

airMAX NanoBeam 5AC - Ubiquiti Store

Compact, UISP-ready, 5 GHz WiFi bridge with enhanced surge protection and an optimized radio and antenna.

www.ui.com

or this

Ubiquiti Store

Rethinking IT

www.ui.com

Here is a good article on point to point bridges. If you are only 100 feet away a mesh config may work but a point to point will definitely work.

Point-to-point Wi-Fi bridging between buildings—the cheap and easy way

It cost us ~$100 to wirelessly connect two buildings across a small wooded area.

arstechnica.com

Steve

 

[My Old Tools]

Getting new internet hooked up in our new to us house. Provider will be CenturyLink (unfortunately only one available) my pole building shop is 100ft from the house. And would like to get wifi out there

Would a mesh system work for my situation ? Never used it before and some research has led me to think it might be the easiest way

Yes, I do the same with a Google mesh. Put one near a window closest to the shop, another in a shop window closest to the house. Works fine for me.

 

[Showkey]

Same here on Orbi Mesh multiple level home, garage, surrounding acre and detached shop 100’ distance. One base and two satellite.

Only wild card with pole building is the metal siding ? That can be a problem.

 

[fuggle]

I had problems with asus routers running in mesh mode. The main problem was when I moved a device from the house to the shop. The connection was unreliable. It acted like it didn't want to switch between nodes. At work we had cisco wireless routers and they seemed to work well. I prefer running ethernet. Second would be the Ubiquiti wireless point-to-point mentioned above. A more expensive solution.

 

[nadogail]

My IT consultant fitted me up with a Linksys (sp) system, he is my trusted pro and that was his recommendation. Your results may vary.

 

[FredWanaker]

maybe if the ground wasn't too hard or rocky, I might bury a cat 6 cable a few inches deep and be happy with that until I could trench something deeper in conduit. Very reliable. Kinda wonder why there aren't spare conduits running between the house and workshop. That is the first thing I might consider doing when building a workshop. Could be for any future utility.

 

[Reit38]

I'm trying to stay away from trenching. More of a time issue then anything right now. No real big trees in the way other then 2 overgrown apple trees but they will be coming down soon. Then shed side closest to the house does not have any windows and the shed is insulated and has osb on inside walls

 

[duneslider]

The consumer level mesh may work okay at that distance but in the long run something more pro level like the ubiquiti stuff posted above will give you better results.

I have a ubiquity access point mounted in the eave of my covered patio and I can get internet really far away in some directions. It works considerably better than the google home wifi it replaced.

 

[dcg9381]

That's a long run for mesh. Maybe if you had the antennas on the outside of both buildings.
I agree with others (I do IT) - best option is a cat6 wire. 2nd best option is ubiquiti directional.

 

[Bad Habit]

I have a Netgear ORBI system. It's not a mesh, it uses a backhaul channel to the satellites/remotes, which then are APs. It was the only system I found that also had an ethernet port at the remote where I could hook up a POE switch to power cameras. It also doesn't require internet service to make changes, etc which a lot of systems seem to want (i.e. all stored on the cloud). We have a ripping 2-3mbs connection that goes down a lot. Internal network speeds are great, just have to crawl to see the outside would.

 

[Git]

I'm trying to stay away from trenching. More of a time issue then anything right now. No real big trees in the way other then 2 overgrown apple trees but they will be coming down soon. Then shed side closest to the house does not have any windows and the shed is insulated and has osb on inside walls

$60 and a little work and your done. Extremely reliable wired system. Direct burial cable, just put it a couple of inches down if you have to.

 

[JazzBlueRT]

Getting new internet hooked up in our new to us house. Provider will be CenturyLink (unfortunately only one available) my pole building shop is 100ft from the house. And would like to get wifi out there

Would a mesh system work for my situation ? Never used it before and some research has led me to think it might be the easiest way

The further out the signal goes, the easier it will be to get compromised. It takes literally less than 5 minutes to run easily downloaded scripts and run them to get usernames ands passwords.

If you go with such a system, you will need to lock down the wifi to known mac addresses.

 

[Reit38]

Picked this up tonight hopefully it's strong enough. Price seemed to be right also

 

[davecz]

Interested to see how well that works, Im between the bridge route or mesh. Barn is about 100 ft from garage, wifi signal reaches but very weak. If I could do bridge without outdoor mounts I would do that.

 

[Reit38]

It'll be awhile before I know how it works. Century link was out yesterday and said that our service is bad so they'll have to redo it

 

[tthornto]

Century Link may not be your only option for very long. I would sign up here now to try and get Starlink, SpaceX is launching satellites and expanding their coverage very rapidly. https://www.starlink.com/

From the site:
"Starlink is now delivering initial beta service both domestically and internationally, and will continue expansion to near global coverage of the populated world in 2021.
During beta, users can expect to see data speeds vary from 50Mb/s to 150Mb/s and latency from 20ms to 40ms in most locations over the next several months as we enhance the Starlink system. There will also be brief periods of no connectivity at all.
As we launch more satellites, install more ground stations and improve our networking software, data speed, latency and uptime will improve dramatically."

I personally think this will soon be the best internet option for most rural areas worldwide.

 

[Bad Habit]

Still gonna be a while before it's readily available. Threw my name into the hat sometime last year. Put down my $99 to confirm my commitment in February. Just last week I got notified my ticket got pulled and sent them another $505. Now just waiting for them to ship. Looking like week of 10/25, but that's always subject to change (I have a Bronco on order to, so use to having delays...)

 

[eastbaysubaru]

I've been signed up for Starlink since March (I live in Northern California). Not expecting anything soon, but when it comes it will be night and day. The only reasonable option for internet here is a concatenated two-dsl line setup that tops out at 16Mbps. Starlink can't come fast enough.

I'll also second burying a line (either in a conduit (Best), or direct burial (Better)). It will ultimately be much more reliable than anything wireless.

-Brian

 

[davecz]

So I set up the wifi in my barn today. Barn is about 100ft from the closest part of my house (probably 200 from where the actual router is) What I ended up doing is getting a wifi bridge and an access point, each cost about $60 from amazon and the internet speed is just as fast in the barn as in the house. It took some tinkering because the bridge I got had horribly translated Chinese instructions. Quick version is power both sides of the bridge so they link, plug home bridge into router, put slave bridge in barn, plug access point into bridge in barn, configure access point to have same SSID and password as main wifi for seamless transition, and done. Even with both bridges inside it has a speed of 60+ mbps, can probably get it faster if I mount it outside the barn but not worth the hassle at this point.

Hope this helps, a lot cheaper than a mesh system and I think faster speeds.

 

[MattN03]

So I set up the wifi in my barn today. Barn is about 100ft from the closest part of my house (probably 200 from where the actual router is) What I ended up doing is getting a wifi bridge and an access point, each cost about $60 from amazon and the internet speed is just as fast in the barn as in the house. It took some tinkering because the bridge I got had horribly translated Chinese instructions. Quick version is power both sides of the bridge so they link, plug home bridge into router, put slave bridge in barn, plug access point into bridge in barn, configure access point to have same SSID and password as main wifi for seamless transition, and done. Even with both bridges inside it has a speed of 60+ mbps, can probably get it faster if I mount it outside the barn but not worth the hassle at this point.

Hope this helps, a lot cheaper than a mesh system and I think faster speeds.

Do you have Amazon links for us IT illiterate type folk?

 

[liliysdad]

I'm running an Amazon Eero gen 1 system, and it works great. My shop is a steel pole barn about 150' from the nearest beacon, and a beacon in the shop works well enough for streaming music and television.

 

[davecz]

Amazon.com

This was the bridge I bought

Amazon.com

and I plugged it into this access point that is mounted in the ceiling of the barn. Set up to the access point is easy with their app.

 

[jshillin]

Is the electric in your shop fed from your house or is it separate? If it's fed from your house, get a set of powerline ethernet adapters and put a WAP or router in the building. That's how I have my garage setup and it's been rock solid for years.

 

[u3b3rg33k]

The further out the signal goes, the easier it will be to get compromised. It takes literally less than 5 minutes to run easily downloaded scripts and run them to get usernames ands passwords.

If you go with such a system, you will need to lock down the wifi to known mac addresses.

That's not how any of this works.

unless your password is on this list:

Have I Been Pwned: Pwned Passwords

Pwned Passwords is a huge corpus of previously breached passwords made freely available to help services block them from being used again.

haveibeenpwned.com

and mac address locking is trivial to bypass. don't even need a script to do it, just read the man page for ifconfig.

 

[Dodge]

Is the electric in your shop fed from your house or is it separate? If it's fed from your house, get a set of powerline ethernet adapters and put a WAP or router in the building. That's how I have my garage setup and it's been rock solid for years.

Could you explain in more detail how you did this install, please? I have heard of it, but not sure how to accomplish this. Thanks

 

[jshillin]

Could you explain in more detail how you did this install, please? I have heard of it, but not sure how to accomplish this. Thanks

It's actually pretty simple. Buy a set like this: https://www.bestbuy.com/site/netgea...77&gclid=CImO9b_G-_QCFYH2swodptgPtA&gclsrc=ds

Plug one in the wall near your router, run a network cable from your router to the adapter. Plug the other adapter in your garage, run a network cable from the adapter to another router or WAP. It simply uses your electric lines from the house to the external building to carry the signal.

 

[Metal-Marc]

$60 and a little work and your done. Extremely reliable wired system. Direct burial cable, just put it a couple of inches down if you have to.

This comes up all the time. If you run cat6 cable between two buildings, you run the real risk to fry the electronics at both ends if there is a nearby lightning strike.

 

[Metal-Marc]

It's actually pretty simple. Buy a set like this: https://www.bestbuy.com/site/netgea...77&gclid=CImO9b_G-_QCFYH2swodptgPtA&gclsrc=ds

Plug one in the wall near your router, run a network cable from your router to the adapter. Plug the other adapter in your garage, run a network cable from the adapter to another router or WAP. It simply uses your electric lines from the house to the external building to carry the signal.

I'm using this setup to bring the internet to my garage from the house including phone service (voip). It works great.

 

[Git]

This comes up all the time. If you run cat6 cable between two buildings, you run the real risk to fry the electronics at both ends if there is a nearby lightning strike.

Or you if you live in area with a lot of rain and lightning (I don't), you could simply buy a surge protector

I have a POE IP Cam with about 300' of outdoor rated Cat6 running to it in my backyard, and I have never had a problem

 

[Metal-Marc]

Or you if you live in area with a lot of rain and lightning (I don't), you could simply buy a surge protector

I have a POE IP Cam with about 300' of outdoor rated Cat6 running to it in my backyard, and I have never had a problem

Good for you. I wish you the best of luck for the future. As long as you don't experience a somewhat close hit, you're good.

I'm just putting the info out there for those who are interested in doing it the right way.

Lightning arrestors are only as good as your grounding sysyem, which most residential buildings don't have.

C.F. the Motorola grounding bible.

 

[Dodge]

It's actually pretty simple. Buy a set like this: https://www.bestbuy.com/site/netgea...77&gclid=CImO9b_G-_QCFYH2swodptgPtA&gclsrc=ds

Plug one in the wall near your router, run a network cable from your router to the adapter. Plug the other adapter in your garage, run a network cable from the adapter to another router or WAP. It simply uses your electric lines from the house to the external building to carry the signal.

That does sound simple and easy. Thanks, jshillin