Detached Garage

Question

Hello,&nbsp;I'm thinking of buying Netgear&nbsp;Orbi but wanted to verify it will work for our setup. Our internet (25 mb/s) comes through a second story bedroom on top of our detached garage. That garage room has a window facing the back of our house. I would estimate that the distance between that garage window and the back of our house is about 75 feet. My plan was to set up the Orbi base station in the garage window facing our house and the satellite in a window at the back of our house so that there's direct line-of-sight between them. Our house is about 1,350 square feet, is two stories, and has mostly plaster walls.&nbsp;&nbsp;My question is whether we would get good coverage without much dropoff in our house using that setup. For some context, we're currently using a 7-year old&nbsp;Linksys WRT160N-RM Wireless-N router that's setup in the garage window facing our house and we can get a connection in most of the rooms of our house. However, the top-speed is about&nbsp;4 to 5&nbsp;mb/s, so there's significant drop-off.&nbsp;&nbsp;Any help or advice would be much appreciated. I've read that a wireless bridge system might work better for this sort of setup, but I'm not sure I have the technical skill or time to pull that off.&nbsp;&nbsp;Thanks!Tom

DarrenM · Answer

Here is the operating temperatures of orbi&nbsp;0° to 40°C (32º to 104ºF) but if you are worried it could get moisture then you may want to look at the outdoor orbi as it has weatherproofing.

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DarrenM

tkp2k2ba · Answer

Thanks for those who responded to this question. After mulling it over and looking into setting up a point-to-point wireless bridge, I decided to give the Orbi a try. I bought the RBK50 with one satellite. The router sits in a window of the second story of my detached garage facing the house. The satellite sits in a second story window in the back of my house, facing the garage. They're about 75 feet apart with a direct line of sight (no trees, etc., in the way). The connection between them is strong and, while there's probably some dropoff in speed, the performance has been high. I'm paying for up to 25 mbps and I consistently get speeds around 10mbps in our house. This is an improvement over the ~ 2 to 5 mbps we were getting with our old router. Note that I haven't tested speeds coming directly from the router, so I'm unsure how much dropoff there actually is. We're on a municipal wifi network and our modem doesn't have a great line of sight to the nearest node. If I remember correctly, when plugged directly into the router we were never getting speeds much about 15 mpbs anyway.&nbsp; Bottom line is that this was a fairly easy way to get a strong, fast-enough signal to our entire house.&nbsp;

tkp2k2ba · Answer

Also, as a clarification the garage and house are on different circuits so I don't think a Powerline adapter would work.&nbsp;&nbsp;Thanks,Tom

st_shaw · Answer

Best solution is to run a Cat5e cable from the garage to the house, and connect Orbi that way. Ethernet is good for 300'.
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Second best is to use a wireless point-to-point bridge between the buildings.
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You might get OK results with the Orbi router in the garage and one or two satellites in the house.&nbsp; However, the link between Orbi's router and sats is still just WiFi, so you shouldn't count on dramatically better throughput to the Internet than what you get now with the router you are using in the garage.

tkp2k2ba · Answer

Thanks for your response. Some day we would like to dig a trench and lay an ethernet line between the two buildings but until then I think wifi of some sort will be our best bet.

I'm interested in the point-to-point bridge and have looked at some Ubiquiti products but it all seems a bit beyond my abilities. One question I have: would a pair of Ubiquiti Nanostations effectively act as a wireless "ethernet cord" between two routers and/or a a base station and satellite? I.e. could I plug my modem into my router/base station in my garage, run a cord between that router/base station into a nanostation, beam the signal to the nanostation in the house, and then plug that nanostation into a router/satellite in my house?

A related question: If I did run a physical ethernet line between the buildings or if I used a point-to-point bridge, can the Orbi use it as a backhaul channel between the base station and satellite (as is the case with eero)?

Finally, I know people have asked this question elsewhere, but has Netgear ever difinitely stated how far the Orbi stations can be from each other before the connection suffers if there's a direct line of sight and no walls or obstacles between them (except, in my case, for some windows)?

Thanks again!

Tom

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Detached Garage

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