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Forum Discussion
tjm1962
May 01, 2022Aspirant
Can I use a mesh network to provide wired interent?
I'm using wireless internet (T-Mobile). But I live in a rural area and have to place the T-Mobile modem in a barn to get a good signal (barn has a good one of sight view of the cell tower).
Is there a way to drive the router ("Internet port") of a mesh system with a wifi signal?
I would like to setup the router to use the wifi signal as the "Internet" port and then use one of the ethernet ports to drive my home network, where I would drop satellites of the mesh off the wired network.
Thanks!
I got my configuration up and running.
T-Mobile Home Internet in the barn, with ethernet cable going to RBR, which is placed in front of a single pane window.
RBS in line of sight of RBR, about 70 feet away, in front of a dual-pane window.
Additional RBS on other side of house.
No wired backhaul.
Backhaul status for 2nd satellite listed as poor, but still seems to have good connectivity.
I have connected the 1st RBS to my wired network in the house, which goes to a netgear switch (GS316).
Attached to the netgear switch is a AC1000 wifi router that devices in my basement use. Not important, I just wanted to point out that the RBS did handle connecting to my switch and the ability for other routers/access points to use (which I confirmed with Netgear support).
However, speed tests when connected to the AC1000 were low (20 MB/s), so that would not be a viable method for everyday use. It works for me because the devices down there (water leak detector, energy monitor) are low bandwidth.
I connected a single device (laptop) to the 2nd satellite via ethernet and did not see the same speed reduction, the speed seemed appropriate for the backhaul status being reported (around 100 MB/s).
It appears that the wifi of the Orbi is much better than that provided by the T-Mobile Home Network device. When measured back to back I got 125 MB/s from the T-Mobile wifi, and 140 from the Orbi wifi.
Once I had the Orbi I was able to relocate the T-Mobile device to a better location, and I now get results in the 160-200 MB/s for my network (from an iMac located in the same room as the 1st satellite.
Summary: You can connect a satellite to a switch and it will handle multiple connections, but the speed through a router connected to that wired network does not come close to the speed of a direct connection (I only saw about 5 MB/s).
Very happy with my purchase (RBK753), before the rest of the house had very limited bandwidth (could not see the T-Mobile internet device), and now I have excellent bandwidth in the entire house.
Thanks for all the help! Much appreciated.
15 Replies
tjm1962 wrote:
Is there a way to drive the router ("Internet port") of a mesh system with a wifi signal?
In effect, you want a wireless to wireless connection between the first router and another device?
Not easy.
How far is the barn from where you need the wifi?
- tjm1962Aspirant
It's about 70 feet to the barn.
House is around 2000 sq. feet, do you think a mesh network would work? It would seem to me that everything would have to go through the satellite that is in line of sight of the barn, I wasn't sure if that would hurt performance or not.
Being that short of the distance, one could run a CAT6A STP cable from the home out to the barn.
Or try something like this:
https://www.netgear.com/business/products/wireless/wireless-airbridge/wbc502.aspx