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Forum Discussion
no Repeater mode? RAX49 routers (house-to-house wifi)
I'm a lucky man. Got two houses on a street located 500 feet apart. Been shooting a Wi-Fi beam from house #1 downhill to house #2 for many years now; just bought TWO Nighthawks to "upgrade" my system...
While I have not use the RAX49 specifically, I have used the RAX50 and RAX45, and a few others in the AX line. They have been making some UI changes, thus some will have a dedicated UI option to simply switch to it a wireless bridge. while other models have it buried in a submenu where you have to go to the web UI > Advanced> Advanced Setup> Wireless Settings> check the box for "use other operation mode", and then you can set up the wireless bridge.
One annoying limitation that wireless bridge mode disables the AP functionality of the router, even though it is only using one of the radios for the backhaul, and there is nothing really stopping them from adding an option to use the other WiFi radio as a single band AP, e.g., if you use the 5GHz radio as a backhaul, then allow the 2.4GHz radio to still work as an AP.
Beyond that, the wireless bridge functions are quite good, especially in terms of performance since unlike normal where you will have a WiFi router with a 990milliwatt transmit power, and a smartphone with a 50-100milliwatt transmit power, you have devices on both ends will higher gain antennas as well as a better transmit power, thus they can maintain a stronger connection, better PHY rates, and fewer corrupt frames.
The Netgear range extenders are more purpose built for this use case and for both their newer WiFi routers and extenders, but on both cases, they use pretty high end radios and RF front ends on them, thus receiver sensitivity is really good.
The main thing I see lacking with Netgear's product line, especially for your use case,is a lack of consumer point to point directional units, thus you often see people gravitating towards things like the Ubiquiti nanobeam products for point to point since they will maintain a higher PHY rate over those distances, purely due to the high gain directional antenna.
Razor512 they do have one. WBC502 | Wireless AirBridge | NETGEAR Support
Depending on the demand at the other end, people have experimented with the Orbi RBS50Y outdoor satellite in simiilar circumstances.
It has both Orbi and non-Orbi modes, although I have never persuaded my (beta) model to work outside Orbi mode.
Thanks for all the detailed responses. I've decided to go forward and connect the two RAX49 units on wireless bridge mode.
But it would be really helpful to know about the four antennas. Are all four antennas dual band? Or is each individual antenna dedicated to the 2.4ghz OR the 5ghz band?
At house #1 I would aim the 2.4 signal down the street to bridge, and use the remaining antennas to enjoy 5ghz inside the rooms closest to the Parental unit.
I was talking with this Tech dude at TrendNet, who was suggesting that all manufacturers, and each router model differs in how this radio signal is handled over antennas.
The basic user manual for RAX49 (AX5300), does not feature a detailed schematic of the machine; but obviously such a diagram must exist. Anybody know where I can view it?
Sadly for these specific models, they have not offered detailed info on which antennas handle the 2.4GHz band, thus the only way to really find out, would be to do additional testing such as weighing the antennas to find which are dual band and which are single band, or if you can get access to a luggage x-ray machine, then run the antennas through to see which has ones have 2 differently sized antenna elements. If all are the same then there is a chance that the WiFi router is capable of routing RF signals to any of the antennas, and simply picking the 2 best ones for the 2.4GHz at any given time depending on client location, at which point it will not matter as much on which antennas you choose to angle.
Another method would be trial and error in terms of seeing which antennas can be angled. The antennas have a polar pattern largely shaped like a fat doughnut or bagel for the 5GHz band, and a shape more like an apple for the 2.4GHz band. Roughly 6.6dBi for the 5GHz band (around a 30 degree vertical broadcast angle for the bulk of the RF energy,with smaller amounts going straight up or in steeper angles.), and 3.73 dBi for the 2.4GHz band.
For that WiFi router line, all 4 antennas can handle the 5GHz band, and 2 will handle the 2.4GHz band.
Overall, based on the antennas, it is best to position them where there the center of the doughnut signal pattern is centered around where the client devices will be. The 2.4GHz band will be less sensitive to antenna position given large the vertical polar pattern will be for that band, thus in nearly all situations, they can simply remain perfectly vertical without issue while for 5GHz, depending on the environment, you may need to angle them to match the elevation of the client devices.
If you need more info, you can look at the FCC reports at https://gov.fccid.io/PY319400466
