I frequently house sit at a place out in the country. In the "main house", they have cable internet with wireless access. Their router is nothing standard (it's not Linksys, for example); it looks like an ugly black box that was provided by their ISP.
About 150 feet away, downhill and through the woods, is a "cottage". The signal from the main house is not strong enough to get to the cottage (I was actually surprised by this, but my notebook computer said "no wireless signals found").
SO, with the owners' permission, I am seeking a solution to get the signal to the cottage without running any wires.
Any wireless repeater or booster would have to be located OUTDOORS; there is no sheltered place between the cottage and the main house. And this is in New England, so there are extremes of weather and it can get very cold in the winter. I suppose we could build a little birdhouse type enclosure and nail it to a tree!
Any suggestions? Thanks.
This Question has been solved and asker verified All Experts Exchange premium technology solutions are available to subscription members.
Experts Exchange has been collecting answers to technology questions since 1996…3 million and counting! If you have a question, chances are we already have your answer.
If you can't find the exact answer you're looking for, ask our exclusive community of 50,000 experts. You’ll get a personalized answer from a trusted professional.
Thousands of free tech tips, tricks, how-to’s and tutorials are available in our peer reviewed articles section. See for yourself how smart our experts are, no login required.
Save solutions to your questions, answers you’ve discovered through searching plus helpful articles in your personal knowledgebase for easy future access.
Access the answers to your technology questions today.
30-day free trial. Register in 60 seconds.
Members of the expert community talk about why the experience at Experts Exchange is different than what you will find anywhere else.
Try it out and discover for yourself.
30-day free trial. Register in 60 seconds.
Join the community of experts here and help other tech pros by answering question in your area of expertise. You can earn FREE access to all Experts Exchange's premium features and resources.
By "same service entrance" do you mean this?: that ONE cable comes from the telephone pole at the street and runs to the main house and then on to the cottage? (I would call this "serial").
The other configuration is what I would call "parallel", where two separate lines come in from one or more poles in the street.
Would a good indicator be if they have only one electric meter?
> Would a good indicator be if they have only one electric meter?
Sorry - I should have used the same terminolgy in both places. I could give the definitions of service drop vs service entrance, but if there's a meter on the house and not one on the cottage it sounds like they share the same service entrance, so powerline adapters might work better than setting a consumer-grade wireless AP outside. If you get them from someplace like CDW or Newegg (http://www.newegg.com/Pro
If the phone was wired with cat5 it might be possible to use that wire; if it's cat3 you would be limited to 10Mbps if there are even spare conductors to use for that.
You would get faster speeds from a dialup modem on the phone line (up to about 53Kbps down; 33600 up) than you would by sending/receiving through it with 2 modems (limited to 33.6Kbps in both directions).
Is that shared phone line buried (like, right next to the power cables from the house) or up in the air?
I'm pretty sure the phone line is up in the air, not buried, and I doubt very much that it is cat5. If it would only get me dial-up speeds then there is no point.
FYI: Power cables are up in the air too. ;-)
I've been trying to find "repeaters" or "range extenders" but have not come up with anything that seems to fit the bill. I would need a "box" that requires no cables, would pick up the wireless signal from the house, and amplify it to get it to the cottage. Any ideas on this?
Thanks.
If you're determined to do this strictly with wireless, I just don't think you're going to get good results @150' through walls... even putting one outside won't help much. A directional antenna on both ends (a couple 11dBi yagi antennae would be about $80) connected to a couple used linksys WRT54G or WRT54GS modems ($20-$30 each on ebay/craigslist/etc.) would work, then cables to adapt the antennae to the routers would be another $40... but that list has already passed the cost of a PLK200 kit and used WRT54G for inside the cottage.
Is there a 2nd floor at the main house, or is it ranch style? If you could get a wireless unit up higher, and in a window on the same side of the house as the cottage is, that would give more/better range... even if it were a repeater (which cuts maximum speed in half) picking up the main signal and boosting it toward the cottage, that would help.
Thanks. I'm just thinking about a wireless solution until I confirm with the homeowners whether or not the main house and the cottage share a common service drop, because I really fear that they do not.
The main house is actually uphill about 50 feet from the cottage so technically the wireless unit is already "up high". Walls are an issue though. Also the wireless router, as I mentioned earlier, is not a standard one like Linksys or D-Link, so god only knows it's capabilities. I'm trying to find all of that stuff out. Also, thinking about this again, the actual distance to the cottage may be more like 300 feet (not 150).
A directional antenna might be a good solution. I've started looking at those and reviewing their specs. I'm not sure about how they actually connect though?
> the actual distance to the cottage may be more like 300 feet (not 150).
That makes directional antenna even more correct. You won't need ultra-high gain, but on 30 foot towers they can push/receive a wifi signal from an inexpensive WRT54G literally for miles. So 54Mbps at 300 feet might be easier to achieve than you think, and effective throughput from that's about 10x faster than most internet connections.
Linksys WRT54G and WRT54GS both have RP-TNC Jack connectors on them (so a RP-TNC Plug would connect to them).
The reason for using those particular models is they're ubiquitous, lots of companies make accessories for them, plus they readily take DD-WRT or OpenWRT firmware if you want to add more features later (that's why I didn't recommend buying new - applying 3rd-party firmware technically voids the warranty, even if it can be completely restored... which is not always possible, either).
Here are some resources:
12dBi yagi - http://www.hyperlinktech.c
There are 2 styles to consider there... the N-Female connectorized version is cheaper, but the adapter cables may be more expensive, or you can pay more for the RP-TNC connectorized version and possibly get the cables cheaper. You want to avoid stringing together multiple cables, as every connection reduces gain. Nor do you want an extra 10 feet coiled up somewhere... ideally, you want the cable just long enough for neat routing without kinking it anywhere.
RP-TNC Plug to N-Male cables - http://www.hyperlinktech.c
RP-TNC Jack to RP-TNC Plug cables - http://www.hyperlinktech.c
16dBi yagi - http://www.wifi-link.com/p
The 12dBi on each end will probably be sufficient, and they're less than half the length of the 16dBi models, making them less obtrusive... plus, if you look at their pattern charts you might notice they're a lot-more forgiving on aim... If the aim's not within 5 degrees +/- on the 16dBi yagi, it will actually fall off to less gain than the 12dBi yagi at +/- 10 degrees off.
I confirmed with the home owners that there are two separate power lines: one to the main house and one to the cottage. So the power line solution is out.
I do believe that a Linksys wireless access point with a boosted antenna will do the trick, and I do already have a Linksys AP that I can try.
I took a quick look at the yagi link: the antennas look very obtrusive and as if they are meant to be mounted outdoors? I'll check into them further, but could you check this out?
http://www.wirelessnetwork
I know it's omni-directional but it looks like it would be fairly unobtrusive and could be mounted inside the main house. And it says it extends the "wireless network coverage of the device it is connected to" for 400 to 450 meters.
They have a directional one too that doesn't look too obtrusive:
http://www.wirelessnetwork
I don't know anything about antennas so I don't know what all the specs (like 5dBi and 2.4GHz) mean. I am planning to call the company tomorrow to ask specifically about these two antennas but would love to have your comments.
Thanks.
> look very obtrusive and as if they are meant to be mounted outdoors?
Designed to be, yes, but they will work mounted indoors, too.
> it says it extends the "wireless network coverage of the device it is connected to" for 400 to 450 meters
I don't see how... 5dBi is less gain than the 5.5dBi rubber duckies that come stock on the WRT54G/GS. The only way it would get more coverage is if you mounted it outside up high (but not too high, or it would overshoot anything less than 100 feet away).
> I don't know anything about antennas so I don't know what all the specs (like 5dBi and 2.4GHz) mean
2.4GHz is the unlicensed Industrial, Scientific and Medical (ISM) band of frequencies that 802.11b, 802.11g, Bluetooth, et al, operate in; 802.11a, proper 802.11n and some cordless phones operate in the 5GHz Unlicensed National Information Infrastructure (U-NII) band.
See wikipedia for an expanation of isotropic radiators - http://en.wikipedia.org/wi
I wouldn't try to explain it better than that for 1000 points. :-)
But I will say that a 10mW signal through a 3dBi antenna would have an Equivalent Isotropic Radiated Power (EIRP) of 20mW.
Through 6dBi, its EIRP is 40mW; 10dBi = 100mW; 13dBi = 200mW starting from that same 10mW radio output. So that 12dBi yagi antenna (properly aimed) would deliver the EIRP of about 170mW to an area about 20-degrees wide, while a 5dBi omni antenna would deliver only an EIRP of 34mW to a 360-degree field around it. (see why a directional antenna goes so much further?)
I used 10mW just to make it easier to grasp the figures. The actual output of a stock WRT54G/GS router's radio is about 32mW. That can be adjusted with 3rd-party firmware it shouldn't be necessary for what you want to do.
I talked with a tech sales rep at wirelessnetworkproducts.co
I think I've pursued this question as far as I can for now, so I will close it out. Thanks for the help and suggestions.
Business Accounts
Answer for Membership
by: Darr247Posted on 2008-09-22 at 11:25:41ID: 22542535
If both buildings are fed from the same service entrance, powerline units might work best.
e.g.
http://www.linksys.com/ser
their PLK200 kit contains 2 of those.
Plug 1 in near the router. Run a cat5e cable from one of the router's LAN ports to that PLE200.
Plug in the other PLE200 out in the 'cottage'. You may need to try a few different outlets to get it on the same pole as the one next to the router.
Then either connect your laptop's NIC to that PLE200 with a cat5e patch cord, or connect another wireless router/access point (if router, connect it to a LAN port, not the WAN/Internet port) to allow using the laptop wherever you want instead of being tethered to the PLE200. If you use the latter option, disable the router/AP's DHCP server and let the one in the main building assign IP addresses.
Of course, that's contingent on them sharing a service drop. Sharing the same transformer might not be enough.
But that would keep you from having to build weatherproof enclosures for indoor-rated equipment.