Hello,
TLDR: Trying to extend Wi-Fi to a building maybe 100-200 feet from a house. A third building exists between the two, a TP-Link extender I own ‘works’ from this third building to provide intermittently functional signal to the desired building. Looking for a stronger extender, preferably without Power over Ethernet to use it outdoors without needing to run a line through a wall/drill.
I’m trying to help someone extend their Wi-Fi coverage to a small extra building (b2), maybe a maximum of two hundred feet from the main house (b1).
She uses the old Google Wi-Fi pods right now, but the pod from the accessory building often disconnects and seemingly fails to ever reconnect without being unplugged and plugged back in.
She says it used to work okay, so I’ve troubleshot the one she had in the accessory building by bringing it into the main house for a few days, then swapping it with another pod for another few days; neither test showed the total failure as seems to occur in the other building.
Based on the specs of these pods, I’m not surprised it’s struggling, and confused that she says it’s seemingly worked fine in the past. She doesn’t spend much time out in the separate building, so it may just be a lack of seeing it fail.
I’ve briefly tested one of my own TP-Link AX1500 in a third building (b3), which sits between the main house and the desired accessory building. This has provided an intermittently functional signal in the desired accessory building (b2), but with, understandably, very low strength and frequent disconnects.
I’ve looked at additional extenders, for indoor and outdoor, but wanted to see what, if anything, people suggest.
Also, I’m finding some of the longer range extenders to be powered by Ethernet, or with a USB connector. Which, if using this extender outdoors to remove one wall of interference, creates the need to either drill a hole in an existing wall, or otherwise have a cable go into the house somewhere. Is anyone familiar with a medium/long-range extender powered just from a power adaptor or something?
Thank you very much for your time and I really appreciate any suggestions or direction you might be able to provide.
Is there lime of site between the main building and the target building or is the middle building blocking line of site? If there is line of site then directional antennas are your best bet. Problem with most access points and range extenders is they’re designed to broadcast and receive in all directions. With a directional antenna you concentrate the power and reduce the likelihood of interference. And if there’s nothing solid for the signal to penetrate, these can transmit signals pretty far.
You’ll want a point to point wireless bridge that’s purpose built for this. Alternatively is it possible to run a fibre optic line to the building in a micro-trench?
regular ethernet should work on this kind of distance, but it means digging
I’m not sure about digging or running lines.
I mentioned to the owner that the straightforward simplest solution is to run a secondary line to the house from their service provider. But that it’s an additional monthly cost as that provider will bill for a separate line of service, not to mention the recurring or initial cost of a modem. They weren’t wanting that and I mentioned I wouldn’t usually recommend it either because of that extra cost of almost $100 a month.
She is also 80 years old so I’m trying to find something which is as basic, and serviceable/replaceable as possible for whoever might come out to help her with it in the future, with the assumption it may be a less than technologically familiar person.
And it’s unlikely she’ll agree to drilling a hole in a wall for a cable as she’s a widow and the house was her husband’s dream home project. So, limited in options and trying to find some electrically powered device[s] to keep it simple.
can you pull ethernet cable along power cables, wherever they are?
Mate do i have just the right thing for you, but it requires some soldering. It’s also probably cheapest solution working over longer range than you need
First you need two directional antennas. Use this https://lea.hamradio.si/~s53mv/wumca/cup.html the 13cm design specifically. Design of the dipole element is on another page https://lea.hamradio.si/~s53mv/wumca/sbfa.html They’re using hard to get semirigid coax but you can really just use common RG178 with braid tinned to make it stiff. This way you don’t have to leave D section they way they did, you can just solder core to the shield at the end while preserving total length (or ~1-2 mm less, because wifi is slightly higher frequency; 53-52 mm total). That dummy cable thing can be just any stiff piece of wire. Good way to get this would be getting a pack of u.fl-SMA pigtails, which you can also use for connection.
You also don’t need special aluminum housing like they do, cookie tin of the right size would be sufficient, or any other container of similar nature. If you can’t weatherproof it, putting it inside on windowsill is also fine
Then, plug TL-WN722N into it, or some other single-antenna thing, and you’re set. This one connects over USB and has removable RPSMA antenna, so you can connect it easily with correct cable (SMA plug - RPSMA plug)
to your new directional antenna. This thing works well over 200m distance, provided clear line of sight, and probably more than that
I would use point to point wireless links between the buildings. Then connect an access point to the link to provide WiFi to the building. Something like the Omada EAP211 should work well for the link.
I’m not saying this is the ideal solution, but I’ve had decent performance from the house to a shed 60 feet away using Asus ZenWifi AX XT8 nodes in the house (with one in the window at the back of the house) and an Asus RT-AX56U extender in the shed. Most days I get decent speeds, good enough to use for work and watching videos. Very occasionally there’s a bad day. I originally tried with the dual-band Asus ZenWifi AX Mini cubes, but they were not powerful enough. Their bigger tri-band units work better.
There are probably better solutions though, using directional dishes. I just did this because, like you, I didn’t want to have to mess with holes for ethernet cables, mounting dishes to poles, etc.
Oh, and I once had bad signal so I put the unit at the back of the house at what would roughly be the focal point of a large metal kitchen bowl and pointed the bowl at the shed, and the signal improved dramatically
The Asus boxes are overpriced when new, but you can get them for cheap used.
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