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Forum Discussion
Detached Garage
Hello, I'm thinking of buying Netgear 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 ...
Also, as a clarification the garage and house are on different circuits so I don't think a Powerline adapter would work.
Thanks,
Tom
Best solution is to run a Cat5e cable from the garage to the house, and connect Orbi that way. Ethernet is good for 300'.
Second best is to use a wireless point-to-point bridge between the buildings.
You might get OK results with the Orbi router in the garage and one or two satellites in the house. 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.
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
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?
Yes-like a wireless cord. A permanent installation with maximum speed would probably require the bridges (or at least their antennas) to be mounted outside the house. It might work well enough inside though.
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)?
You cannot currently connect the Orbi router and sat with a wire, but the feature should be coming in a future firmware release. You could run a wire between the modem in the garage and the Orbi router though.
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)?
Netgear cannot give a meaningful specific distance, because it depends upon the RF environment and reflections off nearby obstacles, which will always be unknown factors. Also different types of windows can affect the signal differently. People on this board have estimated ~50' as a typical max distance for a decent sat-router connection in a home. Mine are 33' apart, with a couple walls between.
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. Bottom line is that this was a fairly easy way to get a strong, fast-enough signal to our entire house.