Hello,
TLDR: Trying to extend Wi-Fi to a building maybe 100-200 feet from a house. A third building exists between the two, a TP-Link extender I own ‘works’ from this third building to provide intermittently functional signal to the desired building. Looking for a stronger extender, preferably without Power over Ethernet to use it outdoors without needing to run a line through a wall/drill.
I’m trying to help someone extend their Wi-Fi coverage to a small extra building (b2), maybe a maximum of two hundred feet from the main house (b1).
She uses the old Google Wi-Fi pods right now, but the pod from the accessory building often disconnects and seemingly fails to ever reconnect without being unplugged and plugged back in.
She says it used to work okay, so I’ve troubleshot the one she had in the accessory building by bringing it into the main house for a few days, then swapping it with another pod for another few days; neither test showed the total failure as seems to occur in the other building.
Based on the specs of these pods, I’m not surprised it’s struggling, and confused that she says it’s seemingly worked fine in the past. She doesn’t spend much time out in the separate building, so it may just be a lack of seeing it fail.
I’ve briefly tested one of my own TP-Link AX1500 in a third building (b3), which sits between the main house and the desired accessory building. This has provided an intermittently functional signal in the desired accessory building (b2), but with, understandably, very low strength and frequent disconnects.
I’ve looked at additional extenders, for indoor and outdoor, but wanted to see what, if anything, people suggest.
Also, I’m finding some of the longer range extenders to be powered by Ethernet, or with a USB connector. Which, if using this extender outdoors to remove one wall of interference, creates the need to either drill a hole in an existing wall, or otherwise have a cable go into the house somewhere. Is anyone familiar with a medium/long-range extender powered just from a power adaptor or something?
Thank you very much for your time and I really appreciate any suggestions or direction you might be able to provide.
There is a line of sight, which is only slightly obstructed by very thin bushes/branches. Someone posted about some TP-Link type brand of bridges with a range in multiple miles; so much further than is needed but would certainly do the job. Though, I saw some single devices from the same brand, OMA…something?, with stated ranges of 300-600 ft.
So, as long as; the very sparse branches don’t impede that range much; I can place it outside or it reaches through the external wall of the house AND the external wall of the small desired building; then I may get away with just the one additional device and the original device (if the Google pod doesn’t fight the use of a non-google extender as it’s link to the main network, which I suppose isn’t a guarantee).
I’ve informed her the network speed at the secondary building would be slower than inside the house after linking through each connection, but the desire to keep it simple for her and whoever she has come by to troubleshoot it in the future is more of a preference for her.
After talking with her today she is also not interested in drilling holes in any walls. So, confirmation there.
Could you mount the antennas, or even just one of them, externally? That may improve performance. A small parabolic antenna a few inches wide or a purpose made building to building bridging kit only needs a small mounting surface with a few screws, and as for the wire you might not need to drill a hole, though properly patched that’s not a big deal either, but instead use an existing hole by removing old, unused phone or cable wire.
Alternatively, is there a window facing in the correct direction? Signals penetrate glass way better than all of the siding, insulation, drywall, etc in an external wall. Remember there’s way more material than an internal wall to penetrate. And if you have aluminum or other metal siding, cement block or brick, or certain kinds of insulation, it may not work at all. The tree branches may or may not be an issue depending on how thick they are, if they are branches with lots of leaves, the types of leaves, the density of the wood, etc. But the exterior wall penetration means it’s literally not line of site (you can’t visually see from one antenna to the other), so the rated ranges are moot and may or may not work reliably.