Wi Fi range question

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narsbars

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I own a house in the country, with a guest house 300 feet away. I have set up mesh with one unit downstairs and another upstairs facing the other building. Sometimes the signal is good, sometimes it is spotty and miserable due to distance and in the winter, heavy rain and/or snow. I am using two Wi Fi 6 units as a base. I am looking for suggestions to get better reception at the far end.
I have just had the idea that maybe I can use my third currently unused router in mesh and just put it at the far end...comments? I am looking at getting an external antenna for the far end, using it's own router but the $200.00 or more cost is something I can't handle. I have tried moving all of the home units multiple times with no luck. I would even buy another brand used router is something was FAMOUS for distance. I am looking to run a PC, and a 4K tv at the other end so I need to only get a stable 50meg connection.
Ideas Please?
 
5ghz is going to suck going through external walls and siding and insulation. 2.4 has a better chance but you may not get the bandwidth you may want. I would put your mesh points one in the house and 2nd in the guest house as close as you can to each other.

Unifi LR access points do great for distance, i usually maintain wifi on my phone mowing my 2 acre yard.

Could also get a waterproof box to put a router outside if you want to save a little, it is at least less material to go through (get plastic of course).

300ft+ through two sets of external walls is asking a lot.
 
pendragon1 said:
if your units have antennas get bigger ones. could go with a actual long range solution, like suggested.
could also just run some inground rated cat cable too(use a trench spade or edger), its within range...
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I can't run in ground cat cable as the necessary grounding would be excessive. All cables would be out of the building shadow of adjacent buildings and if anything were to happen my insurance company would burn me if not installed by a licensed contractor. The routers have no accessible antennas. I still remember being able to use DDWRT and boost the output wattage of your router....also maybe frying it. Anyone got 300ft plus of terminated fiber? LOL
 
narsbars said:
Thanks but the cost of trenching and 300 ft plus of terminated fiber is big time expensive, although I do agree with you.
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You can get 150M of duplex 9/125 pre-terminated outdoor fiber suitable for aerial for ~$150 and direct bury 4 strand for about $300. If you can get by with 100M it's less. As far as trenching, get pickaxe and shovel and spend a Saturday morning diy.
 
pendragon1 said:
something something insurance says no...
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Insurance would allow the trenching but unless I want to dig a few feet deep and throw $$ at schedule 80 it wouldn't work as it would go under a driveway and truck access point for my yard. Direct burial cable needs conduit if you intend it to last. Still trying find out if there is just maybe something that will get me another 75 to 100 ft range and still give me 50 to 60 meg reliably. I had it but it comes and goes.
 
Nicklebon said:
You can get 150M of duplex 9/125 pre-terminated outdoor fiber suitable for aerial for ~$150 and direct bury 4 strand for about $300. If you can get by with 100M it's less. As far as trenching, get pickaxe and shovel and spend a Saturday morning diy.
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I haven't found it at that price, any chance of a link?
 
kydsid said:
Get a P2P setup then?
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I second this if line of sight is no issue.

One of the cheapest ways to get in would probably be two Mikrotik SXTsq Lite2 (about $40 a pop). They only have 10/100 Mb Ethernet but would work great across 300ft and get you pretty close to that 100 Mbps reliably.
 
Get a moca setup and hook it to a satellite setup on each building, profit?
 
I have cat6 direct burial cable going to a house about 150 ft away. It probably took an hour or two to trench and run just using shovels.

It works well, the problem is it been struck by lightning about 5 times. Each time taking out a port of the router on one of the ends. We even have some surge protector cat thingies on both ends, I'm not sure they really work or maybe they just don't work well. To solve for this we just put cheap gigabit switches on both ends. Since we've done that it hasn't been hit by lightning at all though.

I would go with fiber if I did it again.

At 300 ft you're getting close to the max length of ethernet.


Before we burried a line we used directional antennas which actually helped pretty well. Assuming your router has an actual external antenna they're pretty easy to swap out.
 
sharknice said:
I have cat6 direct burial cable going to a house about 150 ft away. It probably took an hour or two to trench and run just using shovels.

It works well, the problem is it been struck by lightning about 5 times. Each time taking out a port of the router on one of the ends. We even have some surge protector cat thingies on both ends, I'm not sure they really work or maybe they just don't work well. To solve for this we just put cheap gigabit switches on both ends. Since we've done that it hasn't been hit by lightning at all though.

I would go with fiber if I did it again.

At 300 ft you're getting close to the max length of ethernet.


Before we burried a line we used directional antennas which actually helped pretty well. Assuming your router has an actual external antenna they're pretty easy to swap out.
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Next time bury a copper wire above the cat6 and hook it to a long buried copper rod on each end.

Edit: actually, maybe burying the rod in the middle, away from the house, would be better. Consult a mad scientist.
 
Dopamin3 said:
I second this if line of sight is no issue.

One of the cheapest ways to get in would probably be two Mikrotik SXTsq Lite2 (about $40 a pop). They only have 10/100 Mb Ethernet but would work great across 300ft and get you pretty close to that 100 Mbps reliably.
Click to expand...

Shoot $40 more and you'll be good for 500 outa an Omada p2p. I've setup 2 both as long or more than 300ft and handling 500 fine.
 
Dopamin3 said:
I second this if line of sight is no issue.

One of the cheapest ways to get in would probably be two Mikrotik SXTsq Lite2 (about $40 a pop). They only have 10/100 Mb Ethernet but would work great across 300ft and get you pretty close to that 100 Mbps reliably.
Click to expand...
I just researched the Mikrotik and they look like they might hit the spot.
 
Nobu said:
Next time bury a copper wire above the cat6 and hook it to a long buried copper rod on each end.

Edit: actually, maybe burying the rod in the middle, away from the house, would be better. Consult a mad scientist.
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Thanks, but insurance would demand a licensed contractor or I would have done it.
 
Any chance the guest house was wired for phone or cable?

I've owned two places with detatched buildings, and there's always been a phone line already underground. Terminate for ethernet and bob's your uncle.
 
So there's other way to get ethernet to a building and two of the good ones have been mentioned in this thread. It all depends on a couple of things.

Does the other building have its own power panel or is a subpanel or on the main panel? Reason is that power line adapters might be the solution.

If you have coaxial cable or old telephone wire (even pots lines) between the two buildings, you can use a moca adapter or vdsl ethernet adapters. Cable companies leave unburied coax all the time so you could just get one of those and string it out there and throw moca adapters on both ends and be done.
 
SamirD said:
So there's other way to get ethernet to a building and two of the good ones have been mentioned in this thread. It all depends on a couple of things.

Does the other building have its own power panel or is a subpanel or on the main panel? Reason is that power line adapters might be the solution.

If you have coaxial cable or old telephone wire (even pots lines) between the two buildings, you can use a moca adapter or vdsl ethernet adapters. Cable companies leave unburied coax all the time so you could just get one of those and string it out there and throw moca adapters on both ends and be done.
Click to expand...
Separate power, the problem is we are on two different sides of a transformer. Can't run copper cable due to insurance, and fiber is too pricey. Got this comment earlier "One of the cheapest ways to get in would probably be two Mikrotik SXTsq Lite2 (about $40 a pop). They only have 10/100 Mb Ethernet but would work great across 300ft and get you pretty close to that 100 Mbps reliably." They look like they might be nasty to set up but seem to fit the bill.
 
narsbars said:
Separate power, the problem is we are on two different sides of a transformer. Can't run copper cable due to insurance, and fiber is too pricey. Got this comment earlier "One of the cheapest ways to get in would probably be two Mikrotik SXTsq Lite2 (about $40 a pop). They only have 10/100 Mb Ethernet but would work great across 300ft and get you pretty close to that 100 Mbps reliably." They look like they might be nasty to set up but seem to fit the bill.
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Got it. Yep saw that solution.

So you can still do this--run the coax and the moca adapters for 2.5Gb of bandwidth. Then on either end, use a pair of these media converters and convert to fibre and back to ethernet at either end (or both if you really want to isolate the coax): https://www.provantage.com/~7TPLM002.htm

This setup should give you a nice connection that you don't have really 'bury' (the cable company left a coax like this unburied for years in my parents back yard until it just got covered by enough grass to not be noticed and it still works), and it should isolate the grounds enough that you should have to worry about differential voltage. All the advantages of a fibre run without a fibre run. :)

And this same principle almost applies to anything--you could literally run an extension cord over from one building to another and put in a powerline at the end of the extension cord and at the same plug where it is plugged into. Then you can use the fibre convertors again on the destination end to isolate the copper. There's a couple of different ways to skin the cat here.
 
SamirD said:
Got it. Yep saw that solution.

So you can still do this--run the coax and the moca adapters for 2.5Gb of bandwidth. Then on either end, use a pair of these media converters and convert to fibre and back to ethernet at either end (or both if you really want to isolate the coax): https://www.provantage.com/~7TPLM002.htm

This setup should give you a nice connection that you don't have really 'bury' (the cable company left a coax like this unburied for years in my parents back yard until it just got covered by enough grass to not be noticed and it still works), and it should isolate the grounds enough that you should have to worry about differential voltage. All the advantages of a fibre run without a fibre run. :)

And this same principle almost applies to anything--you could literally run an extension cord over from one building to another and put in a powerline at the end of the extension cord and at the same plug where it is plugged into. Then you can use the fibre convertors again on the destination end to isolate the copper. There's a couple of different ways to skin the cat here.
Click to expand...
I can't run coax without a licensed contractor and that kills the price. Since there are connecting yards and they need mowing and driving over that removes the idea of laying on the ground.
 
SOLVED! I had a matching unused router. I got to thinking that part of the problem may have been the return leg maybe causing a large number of no ack situations among other thing. The max the far end was running at with Speedtest was 35 meg but it kept dropping out. I figured the router had far more broadcast strength than cheap TV or PC and the antennas were a duplicate of my home unit. I set it up, line of sight and immediately got between 130 to 200 down. I am hoping the increase in speed should leave enough slack to allow 50 to 60 meg even in bad weather.
 
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