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Forum Discussion
Extend Wifi to an outbuilding what hardware needed?
Moving to a flat above the garage, about 50 feet from main house. Have a 2-piece Orbi RBR20 unit, thinking I might need more hardware to boost the signal in my new apartment (a 2 room setup). My ex...
Posts I have come across say while Orbi is 'fine' inside a contiguous structure, it is "less fine" when long distances between structures become involved. To give an example, inside the landlords house using a regular Netgear cable modem, the signal strength from upstairs to downstairs is approximately -74db out of a possible -24db max this is about a 50% drop in signal strength for just downstairs vs upstairs where the router is. Walk outside go into my apartment over the standalone garage and a 300 mbps signal drops to like 15 mbps because of the distance and the physical structures (windows closed).
Goal: to avoid paying stupid money to Comcast (landlord is close personal relative and is willing to let me an 'extra room' on his comcast bill with my own UHD Comcast box ($10 a month). That's great, but no Internet to speak of.
Running a Cat 6 cable could work well, but physically improbable as it woud be ugly hanging in space between the buildings.
Frustrated!
An gigabit ethernet cable can be up to 90m, which means it could take a "roundabout" path from house to garage and still be within specs. There is outdoor rated Cat6. Your observations about how 2.4G and 5G penetrate structures are correct. A brief Google search turned up refererces to how 2.4G and 5G penetrate different materials: https://www.am1.us/wp-content/uploads/Documents/E10589_Propagation_Losses_2_and_5GHz.pdf
I skipped over all the formulas to the end where it appears that things like brick, wood, and stucco have several times the attenuation that glass does.
Are you able to mount things to the outside of these buildings? Several community members have reported using Ubiquiti Nanostations to bridge between the main house and other structures. There is one model that is powered over PoE, which means only the ethernet cable has to penetrate the building wall. In essence, using a pair of wireless units create the same result as running an ethernet cable. The electronics on each end have no idea that they are not talking over ethernet.
- My landlord is 80 yr old friend of a friend. I don't want to stress him out. The home routers do not provide phantom power for PoE. I would need a pricey switch for that no deal. I know about the type of solution you mention I will call a vendor who put in outdoor WiFi commercial boosters in our car dealership. It was quite pricey. I had a thought about Orbi but I think it's outside Orbi world.
Here's the product page for Nanostations: https://www.ui.com/airmax/nanostationm/
I looked up one of them on Amazon, and people talked about installing them "indoors" instead of outdoors on a pole mount. I guess if they will carry 10km, they will probably get through a wall or two and go 75ft. A package of two, complete with PoE injectors is under $150US. One end would plug into the landlord's router and the other end would plug into any old brand of Access Point.
p.s. I am not "pushing" Ubiquiti. Several community members have mentioned that product. Amazon is happy to suggest lots of other brands. And, a Google search might even turn up better alternatives.