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Bradley Gray
11-15-2017, 9:36 AM
So, I live way in the country, too far from town for broadband, so we use a satellite for internet access. No cell service either.

We have a land line and the last year or so it has been out of order as much as it has worked and the service repairing it (Frontier Comm) is horrible - 2-3 week wait.

I have been looking into switching my land line to a cell phone. Newer iphones will make calls over wifi.

The sticking point is my shop, which is 150 yards from my house. I need to extend wifi to replace the hard wired land line I now use in the shop.

I have been looking at wifi antennas and I am confused about what to get.

Any words of wisdom?

roger wiegand
11-15-2017, 10:23 AM
What kind of wire is currently between your shop and house? You may be able to run wired ethernet out to the shop over it, which would give by far the best connection. If you've got two pairs of wires (pretty typical phone line), you can run ethernet over it. Pulling a cat5 or cat6 cable would be another option for a high speed and reliability connection.

Failing that, look at the Ubiqiti line of products at their long range APs. I think their return policy is such that you can see if it works without risk.

Others more expert than I can comment on point-to-point wireless solutions. We used one at my last office to connect to an ISP about two miles away, but it was quite expensive and stopped working when it rained or snowed. (If you think in 2014 you'd be able to get a decent internet connection in an MIT-owned building on the edge of MIT's campus in Cambridge, you'd be wrong!)

Bradley Gray
11-15-2017, 1:00 PM
My shop is along the road, ahead of my house which is at the end of the phone line. The shop phone is tapped into the line on the pole. The shop is also on a separate AC transformer.

roger wiegand
11-15-2017, 1:55 PM
I rented a ditch witch and pulled a buried cable between the house and shop, about 150 ft. I got it back to the Borg in well under the 4 hr minimum rental so the expense was minimal. The connection is rock solid with gigabit speed. Cost-wise it was a wash between wired and wireless. I could use much cheaper APs at each end to offset the cost of the wire and trencher. It's just me out in the shop so I didn't need to worry about supporting many users.

I am a luddite when it comes to networks-- give me copper any day for trouble-free performance.

Robert Engel
11-15-2017, 2:34 PM
I've tried the a signal repeater all I can say is the reach is WAY overrated at least on the brand I bought (Ubiquiti). It won't penetrate walls very well at all.

My brother in law does networking for a living. He ran cable out to the shop (200')and along with a second wireless modem.

Works great just as fast as the house.

John K Jordan
11-15-2017, 2:51 PM
So, I live way in the country, too far from town for broadband, so we use a satellite for internet access. No cell service either.
We have a land line and the last year or so it has been out of order as much as it has worked and the service repairing it (Frontier Comm) is horrible - 2-3 week wait.
I have been looking into switching my land line to a cell phone. Newer iphones will make calls over wifi.
The sticking point is my shop, which is 150 yards from my house. I need to extend wifi to replace the hard wired land line I now use in the shop.
I have been looking at wifi antennas and I am confused about what to get.
Any words of wisdom?

Bradley,

I am usually short on wisdom but longer on experience. :) I had a similar problem with phone service in my shop - in my case the cell coverage was unusable under the metal roof and in a bit of a valley. The shop is about 250' from the house.

Based on my experience with WiFi extenders and antennas I would not expect too much, although things may have changed in the last five years.

I had tried several top-of-the-line WiFi extenders at the house but they were both disappointing so I didn't even consider one when I built the shop. Instead, I ran special Cat-5 cable underground in conduit and installed a second WiFi router in the shop, configured as an extension of the first (uses the same SSID, etc.). Since phone service over WiFi was not available then (or at least I didn't know about it) that still left me with no cell service in the shop.

I first tried two cell extenders/amplifiers in the shop without joy. These had external pickup antennas I mounted high on a pole. I did get two bars of signal but still had flaky reception and dropped calls.

Then I installed a Samsung wireless Verizon network extender, sometimes called a "femtocell". This is in effect a miniature cell tower on the Verizon network just like the big towers. It connects to broadband ethernet and gives me full cell signal anywhere in the shop. There is no monthly charge. It doesn't reach very far so a close neighbor could not use it (although in my case I have no close neighbors.) It comes with a GPS module so it knows where you are for location services (and to keep you from registering it in one place and then carrying it to Mexico or something!)

Of course if you go the the trouble of running ethernet you could just install the WiFi router and make your calls that way with your newer phone and skip the network extender. (And I have no idea if other cell companies besides Verizon offer a similar service.)

JKJ

Travis Porter
11-15-2017, 3:20 PM
I would be suspicious of trying to do Cell service over wfii especially if satellite internet service is involved. Isn't there about 1.5 seconds of latency each way?

Jerome Stanek
11-15-2017, 3:40 PM
You could rent a vibrator plow to pull a cable in and you would not have any work with back filling Around here that is how we pull under ground cables.

Edwin Santos
11-15-2017, 3:47 PM
Hi, two words - mesh network.

Mesh networks operate on a different type of technology as compared to traditional wi-fi, extenders, access points. In the past, mesh networks were mostly found in enterprise situations, but now there are affordable offerings available to consumer end users. You might look into the Linksys Velop, Amplifi HD or Google products. The Amazon reviews on these products might be informative.

Here is a layperson's article on the subject:
https://wtop.com/news/2017/06/data-doctors-mesh-network/

daryl moses
11-15-2017, 4:03 PM
I would be suspicious of trying to do Cell service over wfii especially if satellite internet service is involved. Isn't there about 1.5 seconds of latency each way?
X2, we don't have cell service where I live and we tried the cell over wifi.................!!! Maybe because our only source of internet is via satellite??

John K Jordan
11-15-2017, 4:28 PM
Hi, two words - mesh network.
...
Here is a layperson's article on the subject:
https://wtop.com/news/2017/06/data-doctors-mesh-network/

At a glance, that article seemed to describe providing a stronger WiFi signal inside a house. Would a mesh network extend WiFi from Bradley's house to his shop 450 feet away?

If so, I may be interested for WiFi at the barn, in the fields, etc.

JKJ

Edwin Santos
11-15-2017, 6:07 PM
At a glance, that article seemed to describe providing a stronger WiFi signal inside a house. Would a mesh network extend WiFi from Bradley's house to his shop 450 feet away?

If so, I may be interested for WiFi at the barn, in the fields, etc.

JKJ

Well maybe not. For the AmplifiHD product, the manufacturer rates the coverage at 20,000 feet. So to find the radius of a circle having an area of 20,000 square feet, it would be r^2=20000/3.14159 so a radius of 80 feet in each direction from the router, not enough. Thus even if the manufacturer was being real with their estimate, it would still fall short of his shop.

The same company, Ubiquiti, makes the UniFi Access Point which comes in a long range version like someone else in this thread mentioned. Their spec claims it to have a range of "up to" 600 feet, so in theory that would work. I've heard good things about the UniFi AP in general.

Bradley Gray
11-15-2017, 6:31 PM
Thanks for all of the suggestions. Sounds like extending wifi is dicey at best. I do have line of sight between the 2 buildings.

I was thinking directional wifi antennas on both buildings then(I guess) another wireless router?

I like the idea of hard wiring it, but it is 450' and boy are there a lot of rocks here.

Or maybe 2 tin cans and some string...

David L Morse
11-15-2017, 6:48 PM
Or maybe 2 tin cans and some string...

Not really that far fetched ...http://www.turnpoint.net/wireless/cantennahowto.html
(http://www.turnpoint.net/wireless/cantennahowto.html)

John K Jordan
11-15-2017, 7:11 PM
Thanks for all of the suggestions. Sounds like extending wifi is dicey at best. I do have line of sight between the 2 buildings.
I was thinking directional wifi antennas on both buildings then(I guess) another wireless router?
I like the idea of hard wiring it, but it is 450' and boy are there a lot of rocks here.
Or maybe 2 tin cans and some string...


Laser comm! Fiber optic without the fiber. Might quit in the rain though...

Hard to beat hardwired. Since it is not AC power, you might consider burying a cable in a very shallow trench. I used 1" conduit but smaller would work. I actually buried mine 2-4 ft deep since I had dug a 16" wide trench for the AC power with my backhoe. (My biggest problem was not rocks but tree roots.) Methinks, er, wonders if you could scratch a shallow trench between the rocks with a pick or mattock and put down some conduit. A healthy teenager looking for some Christmas money might make this easier.

BTW, I usually find it easier to slide the conduit over the wire and glue one 10' section at a time. This is especially helpful for big wire which is difficult to pull. However you can usually use an air compressor to blow a wad of rag through tied to a ball of string then pull a small cable. Cat-5 should pull easily. I found a roll of 1000 ft of ethernet cable at an electrical supplier rated for underground use and actually ran two cables in the conduit, one for a spare. If I watched TV I might have run a cable as well but the WiFi handles instructional videos.

I don't know what kinds of devices are available for phone calls these days but since you already have a hard wired phone line can you connect something to your satellite receiver that would let you plug in a standard phone?

We have Comcast cable internet service now but for years after we moved to this farm it was unavailable. Since I worked from a home office I had to use satellite internet. I sure hope it's faster now than it was in 2003! I've still got the (Hughes) antenna on my roof for the birds to perch on.

If the utilities can ever quit fighting each other we could all get broadband as a signal riding on our AC power. :(

JKJ

Chris Parks
11-15-2017, 7:26 PM
Aerial ethernet cable would be my choice. String some wire between two poles and then fasten the CAT 6 to that or perhaps run a UV resistant conduit along the wire and run the CAT 6 in that. Be careful to make sure the entry to the conduit is facing down at both ends or out of the weather to prevent water entry. Leave a draw wire in the conduit for any further maintenance.

Jim Becker
11-15-2017, 8:41 PM
150 yards (450') is beyond the 100 meter limit for wired Ethernet using copper wire. (The limit for MOCA over COAX is the same) It would require a fiber optic run to get that distance...which is certainly doable and likely less expensive than laser over-the-air transmission. You could also use point-to-point wireless connections between the building. You'd still need an access point in your shop to provide wireless (and/or wired) networking to your devices.

I will also caution you that voice calling via sat service will likely be maddening for you because of the delays if you try to leverage WiFi Calling from your mobile phone. You can't change the laws of physics relative to the time it takes packets to reach out from your home to the satellite in orbit and back down to the terrestrial system. Honestly, the land line is still your friend in your particular situation, IMHO, if you don't have good cellular service to your property.

Chris Parks
11-15-2017, 8:56 PM
150 yards (450') is beyond the 100 meter limit for wired Ethernet using copper wire.

You beat me to it, I was just thinking the same thing. There are extenders but they need to be in the cable. Google might have the answer but it may not be cheap....https://www.google.com.au/search?client=opera&q=wifi+over+a+long+distance&sourceid=opera&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

Bruce Wrenn
11-15-2017, 9:07 PM
Have you considered making your own wifi antenna system? There are tons of videos on you tube. Many use an old satellite dish and a wireless card to operate. Even a "cantenna" might work. Dongles can be had on ebay for as little as $5, and old satellite dishes are FREE at the dumpsters. Just remember that you have to mount satellite dish up side down, or point it towards the ground.

Ethan Spronk
11-24-2017, 5:56 PM
I have used ubiquiti nanobeam m5 to bring faster internet over 2 miles and then splitting it up in between several buildings on that site. They work very reliably but take some knowledge to get them set up the first time, basically making sure the correct boxes are check. You are able to find all of this online on several forums. I will be setting up another this winter. Well worth the money. You might be able to use one of their cheaper products since you are only going 150 yards.

Roy Petersen
11-24-2017, 9:24 PM
If this is about sharing the internet from the house, you may want to give this a go:
https://www.amazon.com/TP-LINK-TL-PA4010KIT-Powerline-Adapter-Starter/dp/B00AWRUICG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1443905440&sr=8-1&keywords=powerline+ethernet

Don't believe the hyped speeds, and it needs to be on the same circuit at both ends (where does the power for the shop come from?), but it's supposed to work up to a theoretical distance of 300+ meters. At around $40, it's likely worth trying?