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Forum Discussion
Metal building wifi
Another remote metal building question.
i live on an acreage. Added a wavlink extender to my network at the house. Works good everywhere across the acreage, good signal, except wifi signal inside metal building is bad. Great outside the building but can’t get through the steel.
so I have an older netgear ac1600 extender that I decided I would put inside the metal shop building. It gets some signal but not great. So I realize the antennas can only pick up signal that’s in the building.
my question, can I take the antennas off and mount them outside and connect with cables? We are talking 1’ or less. NETGEAR extender on inside wall and antennas on outside. That way I would get the good wifi signal from outside and send it through the building.
if this makes sense what cable, fittings, etc would I need?
or is there a simpler way to accomplish my goal?
thanks
warren
40 Replies
Just an update after resetting and reloading every piece at lest 6 times, adjusting settings, etc. I finally got it all working. Have the house wifi network, the wavlink AC3000 access point getting signal across the acreage, the wavlink AC600 as an access point at the metal building, with an Ethernet cable going to the netgear EX6200.
have a pretty good signal in the building now .
thanks for everyone’s thoughts.
What device did you end up getting?
And you placed it outdoors?What speed did you get connected directly to the outdoor AP?
And then you ran an ethernet wire indoors to the Netgear AP?
Did you re-run the install on the Netgear ex6200 to place it in access point mode? (or it'll still be running as an extender)
Well that was a failed experiment. Got everything connected and the signal got worse! But it was worth trying.
guess I will be trying to figure out a Ethernet cable from the house out there this spring.
An extender by its very nature cuts throughput by 50% because it uses the same chip to go router---->extender and then extender----devices. And it can't do both at once. Plus you have to factor in distance/obstruction. Because of those its usually 30-45% that most people see for speed. So you won't see that 900+ speed out of any extender setup. The router that CrimpOn posted will be your best bet and provide a solid connection. maybe not as good as a point to point system but it should be "good enough". Good enough means that streaming 4k only takes 25-50mbps. You should hit that without issue with what your plan is.
another
another image:
Ok have lots of numbers to analyze…
signal in building before netgear box 86.3/63.7
signal in building out of netgear box 60.8/8.85
signal outside before netgear box. 904/119
signal outside out of netgear box 5G. 112
signal “. “. “. “. “. 2.4G. 50.1
the signal inside isn’t to bad today. At times it’s much slower.
so, looks like this netgear box isn’t a very good option.
any thoughts on how to get more of the 904/119 signal from outside to the inside?
signal in building before netgear box 86.3/63.7Are you measuring this at the spot where you have the Netgear extender installed?
What speeds are you getting w/o the netgear extender in various places in the building?
the signal inside isn’t too bad today. At times it’s much slower.
I am wondering what equipment is in the shop. Electric motors can generate a lot of wifi interference, which could be the main cause of your performance problem.
any thoughts on how to get more of the 904/119 signal from outside to the inside?
The shop looks fairly close to the house. Another path is to run an ethernet cable to the shop (easiest done overhead), and then set up the extender in AP mode. Standard ethernet cable can carry gigabit 100 meters (328 feet).
Just started raining and high winds, so won’t be able to test for a little while. But I’ll post as soon as I can.
Any way you could email me so I can attach some pictures?
warrenhardman@comcast.net
You can send them via PM if you want. But its just to give you an idea of what speeds you'd be getting
