How to link computer in shop and (temp) house

[Rick Prosser]

I have a couple options on how to do this, and Wes's question about what to put in conduit reminded me to get some opinions.

When I bought my property, I built my shop (metal sided pole building) first - and plan to build a house. In the mean time, we are living in a temporary single wide (metal sided) mobile home/trailer. The shop is about 200 feet from the trailer. There is no phone line to the trailer. Once I build the house, I will have phone line run to house (and shop).

I had a phone line installed into the shop (before the trailer move) so that we could use DSL for internet access (we use cell phones for phone service). I have a wireless router sitting in the window of the shop that transmits internet thru a window of the trailer to my desktop PC. The signal is OK if the PC antenna is right at the window, but at my desk across the room - not so good. The angle of the two windows is not close to parallel, so the line of sight is very limited. I am sure the metal of the trailer and shop is blocking a lot of signal.

I am thinking I have the following options:

-Deal with the situation as is. (getting old after a year...)

-Bury a phone line from the shop to the trailer, hook up the wireless router in the trailer to beam the signal back to the shop where I only need minimal internet access.

-Bury a cat5 cable from the shop router to the trailer to connect hard line to hub/PC in the trailer.

-bury a phone line from the shop to the trailer, hook up the wireless router in the trailer, and bury a cat5 cable back to the shop for hardline connection in shop.

-Connect another router as a bridge with routers set up in the windows of the shop and trailer. (kind of ruins the view out the windows...)

-maybe a great option I am missing?

Not sure about signal loss differences between the options. Is there a significant difference between the cat5 and phone line loss over 200 ft?

I have not priced any cable yet, so cost may be a consideration as well.

[Matt Meiser]

Rick, take a look at DD-WRT. Find a compatible router, flash the firmware, and run it in "bridge" mode. Put the router by the window like you said, or even better buy a couple exterior directional antennas and aim them at each other. I've bought a few Linksys WRT54G's that are less desirable versions but still capable of running DD-WRT doing everything you need for $15-20 on Ebay or Craigslist. Just make sure of the version before buying, and don't buy one that doesn't have removable antennas if you want to use exterior antennas.

I ran wireless between my shop and house for 6 years. The house access point had an inexpensive high gain omnidirectional antenna and the shop had an inexpensive high gain directional antenna. Both were inside the respective buildings about 125' apart, but I don't have metal walls. My connection was 48MB-54MB consistently. With a couple exterior directional antennas 200' will be a piece of cake.

There are tons of directional antennas on Ebay.

[Gerald Senburn]

I do something very similar but using two wireless units. The house unit is a Apple Airport hooked via ethernet to the house network, which includes the dsl modem. All the wifi stuff in the house (several iMacs, television, xbox, etc) connect to this unit. The shop has a second Airport that acts as a bridge to retransmit the wifi signal into the shop. Each unit is sitting in a window with direct line-of-sight.

[Mike Kelsey]

Check with these guys: http://www.radiolabs.com/ - they were very helpful: I have wireless between the house & barn/shop (250') & a studio 500 feet further in the woods

[Anthony Whitesell]

I have a couple options on how to do this, and Wes's question about what to put in conduit reminded me to get some opinions.

When I bought my property, I built my shop (metal sided pole building) first - and plan to build a house. In the mean time, we are living in a temporary single wide (metal sided) mobile home/trailer. The shop is about 200 feet from the trailer. There is no phone line to the trailer. Once I build the house, I will have phone line run to house (and shop).

I had a phone line installed into the shop (before the trailer move) so that we could use DSL for internet access (we use cell phones for phone service). I have a wireless router sitting in the window of the shop that transmits internet thru a window of the trailer to my desktop PC. The signal is OK if the PC antenna is right at the window, but at my desk across the room - not so good. The angle of the two windows is not close to parallel, so the line of sight is very limited. I am sure the metal of the trailer and shop is blocking a lot of signal.

Bingo! I was once asked to setup a wireless network between two metal buildings with no windows in line and a third in the middle. I borrowed some equipment (couple of wireless routers) and tried it. Didn't work one bit, unless both routers were outside which wasn't so great if it rained.

I am thinking I have the following options:

-Deal with the situation as is. (getting old after a year...)

-Bury a phone line from the shop to the trailer, hook up the wireless router in the trailer to beam the signal back to the shop where I only need minimal internet access.

-Bury a cat5 cable from the shop router to the trailer to connect hard line to hub/PC in the trailer.

-bury a phone line from the shop to the trailer, hook up the wireless router in the trailer, and bury a cat5 cable back to the shop for hardline connection in shop.

-Connect another router as a bridge with routers set up in the windows of the shop and trailer. (kind of ruins the view out the windows...)

-maybe a great option I am missing?

Not sure about signal loss differences between the options. Is there a significant difference between the cat5 and phone line loss over 200 ft?

I have not priced any cable yet, so cost may be a consideration as well.

You have hit all the options.

Running a phone line and a cat5 back and forth seems aweful expensive, overkill, and prone to more issues. K.I.S.S.

My suggestion is to decide where you would like to have the phone line and DSL modem to be located. Then run a cat5 cable between the buildings with an expensive network switch on both ends. Use a switch instead of a hub, it will provide some signal conditioning and boosting that a hub will not. You may only find switches today as hubs have gone by the wayside. I way to tell them apart, is that switches will have separate lights for 100M and 10M connections, as part of their function they will speed switch signals allowing you to connect 10M and 100M computers/cards on the same network.

[John Brown]

Rick,
I had the same situation. You have another option, if you have a coax cable between house and shop or if you bury one. I had an extra coax between house and shop,this setup works great, it transmits the signal,over the coax cable. http://dealnay.com/950764/netgear-mo...apter-kit.html

[Ryan Mooney]

You don't have to mount the routers outside, just the antennas. You can make a pringles cantenna or a coffee can antenna (etc.. you can search from that, there are a ton of guides) or even just buy a cheap patch panel antenna (performance with the homemade tin can ones is very competitive->better unless you buy a relatively expensive antenna and they are very easy to make - I've done runs up to several miles with these.. granted it was down to lower speeds at that) , poke a small hole for the cable to go through, mount the antenna on the outside wall and you're good to go.

As far as converting cheapo routers to wireless bridges (Matt: +1 to the idea), your options include:
- tomato firmware
- ddwtr (previously mentioned)
- buy a router pre-loaded (buffalo routers come to mind as reasonably cost effective and ppl I know with them don't seem to hate them to much)
if you're not technical in this regard, the latter option is somewhat attractive

You should be able to do all of this for well under $200 with all new parts and under $100 if you look around. Total build and install time is likely around 3-4 hours.

to quote some dude on an antenna website: "If you can eat a big can of stew, you can make a high performance antenna." so true.

[Curt Harms]

Does anyone here have any experience with powerline networking? I do not but it seems like a nice option for Rick if it worked. One thing to be aware of that I've read about is to make sure the outlet the network adapter is plugged into is the same leg in the panel that the other network adapter is plugged into. Some adapters work on different legs, some do not it seems. Here are some links that come up on google:

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/power-network.htm
http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCateg...ine-Networking
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/Powerlin...view-1333.html

[Matt Meiser]

I don't know if its comparable, but I tried to get some X10 stuff working between my shop and house and couldn't. I think the distance was just too great.

I forgot about the Buffalo routers with DD-WRT, and I even have one, a WHR-HP-G300N. Two things to know about this particular one. 1) N-requires 2 antennas but I'm guessing you don't care about that. With just one, you'll get G speeds. You can just use one and turn the other off in standard DD-WRT I can't find that setting in the Buffalo firmware at a quick look. The Buffalo DD-WRT version has been customized somewhat from the standard version. I believe Buffalo has a support forum where you might be able to get some help on that issue. 2) the antenna ports are standard RP-SMA, but they are somewhat shrouded by the plastic case. Some high gain omni antennas I bought won't work with it because the integral connectors are too fat. I don't think you'd have a problem with a standard cable-end connector.

[Richard Jones]

Have you thought about a mirror? Worked fine for me once when I had the ceiling-mounted air filter controls facing away from normal use..................

You did say this was temporary, right?

Rich (offering redneck solutions to hi-tech issues) in VA

[Matt Meiser]

Uh...I don't think a mirror will be very effective on microwave signals....

[Richard Jones]

Well, I'll ask why not since I don't know everything.

Rich

[Alan Lightstone]

DD-WRT may work, but I've seen tests showing that increasing the router power doesn't necessarily improve things. If you use it, make sure to go into the menus and increase the power, otherwise not sure what the point in using it would be.

The external, directional hi-gain antennas work quite well. I think I'd try that approach first, followed by the DD-WRT or tomato approach.

[Scott T Smith]

Does anyone here have any experience with powerline networking? I do not but it seems like a nice option for Rick if it worked. One thing to be aware of that I've read about is to make sure the outlet the network adapter is plugged into is the same leg in the panel that the other network adapter is plugged into. Some adapters work on different legs, some do not it seems. Here are some links that come up on google:

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/power-network.htm
http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCateg...ine-Networking
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/Powerlin...view-1333.html

Curt, we tried this at our farm, with poor results. The building that we were attempting to network to was about 200' away from our house (and network). The signal was inconsistent.

Rick, I recently went through some of the same challenges as you, with the exception that my DSL line is in the house and I wanted to extend it to the shop (about 600' away). Since I was beyond the limits of ethernet (100 meter max) and did not want to have an amplifier installed in my pasture (cable midpoint), I burried a Cat5E gell filled cable between the two locations, and installed my own DSL converters to run DSL over the burried cable. In the shop, I convert it back to ethernet. Works great, utterly dependable and no speed degradation.

If it were me, I would bury a gel filled Cat5E or Cat6 cable between your two locations, and extend your ethernet out. You can use the extra pairs for phone service, if you wish, instead of burying two different cables. A guy working down the street trenching in cable took care of the cable trenching chores for a couple of hundred bucks. A 1000' spool of cable cost me about $160.00. This should be your most dependable, and fastest performing option.

[paul cottingham]

If you pull cat 5 between buildings be very careful of power issues (common ground between 2 building or separate grounds.) If the grounds aren't set up correctly, you will create headaches (and possibly danger) for yourself.

For what its worth, if it were me, I would pull cat 5/6 or fibre out there. less problems. In fact, with fibre, no problems!