Is there such thing as a 'sender' and 'receiver' unit for casting a wifi signal over distance? (eg. carpark)

Forums › LAN (ethernet/Wifi/routers/Bluetooth) › Is there such thing as a 'sender' and 'receiver' unit for casting a wifi signal over distance? (eg. carpark)

MattOffRoad

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#310803 23-Nov-2023 10:05

Hi team,

First time poster & I appreciate how frustrating the selfish 'help needed!' one timers can be, so I've donated to the site & I promise to delve into the forum and contribute where I can!

I'm currently trying to improve the WiFi at my bosses lodge out in the middle of no where, we've managed to get it from copper onto fibre & we're getting a healthy 521Mbps down beside the modem. (Spark Smart Modem 2)

We have 7 units on the property with a restaurant/bar kind of in the 'middle' of 5 of the units - the others are close-ish to the modem on the other side of the property.

The furthest distance as the crow flies from modem to where we need strong enough signal is 76m, but at 46m from the modem (toward the furthest point) we have the restaurant/bar which I figure could serve as another access point?

We've had a tech come out and assess it, and he's cottoned on to the old telephone lines running through the entire place which could be Cat.5's, there's a very impressive and extensive network switch board in the office & ethernet (I think) plugs in every room. - I really don't want to use these ports, I don't trust the cabling & I tihnk AP's in every room is massive overkill. His proposal was $4000+

I've got it in my head that I could 'send' the wifi over to the Restaurant/Bar from the Office & have two separate meshed networks running, one from the bar and one from the office - with nodes in each room or in specific strategic locations to blanket the necessary areas - I just can't seem to find the product I'm imagining - does it exist?

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated, hoping I can get 'good enough' signal throughout the lodge for a relatively low cost, just utilising consumer products from pbtech and the like.

Kind regards,

Matt

trig42

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#3162738 23-Nov-2023 10:19

If you have cat5 to every room, then that's what I'd be using.

Just a switch by your cabling cabinet and a small AP in each room then, and you're away.

You would want to make sure, however, that the Wireless network is not able to communicate with your 'office' network etc.

I don't think $4k was a horrible price, but 7 APs and a switch will be pretty cheap (assuming the Cat-5 works).

richms

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#3162740 23-Nov-2023 10:20

wireless bridge.

Unifi - https://www.gowifi.co.nz/preconfigured-kits/ubb.html

Otherwise if performance isnt that important you can get cheap 5GHz ones off aliexpress for about $50 an end. - just search wireless bridge 5Ghz and check you're not looking at a product with low-spec options -

Richard rich.ms

michaelmurfy

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#3162743 23-Nov-2023 10:26

richms:

wireless bridge.

I use this - https://www.gowifi.co.nz/mikrotik/rblhgg-60adkitr2.html for linking to another building and it has been solid for 2 years now.

Michael Murphy | https://murfy.nz
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richms

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#3162745 23-Nov-2023 10:34

Also keep in mind with a bridge that you will have the hassle of mounting them where drunks will not swing on them, running cables to the locations, etc etc, which may make using the existing cabling worth the hassle of actually getting someone who knows what they're doing to slap a tester on them and check they are performing well still.

$4000 doesnt seem unreasonable at all for getting it all done, IMO almost sounds a little too cheap.

Richard rich.ms

raytaylor

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#3162989 23-Nov-2023 18:15

Mikrotik Wireless Wire Bridge Model RBwAPG-60adkit is what you want.

Its simple - you just mount them on a wall or pole, point them perfectly at each other with 100% clear line of sight and maximum 100 metres distance, then they will form a "virtual cable" between two points.

Never use "Meshed" anything. Make use of the cat5 as others have suggested.

If its two pair telephone cat5 then thats great - 100mbit.
If its standard 4 pair cat5 then thats even better - 1gbit

Ray Taylor

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rhy7s

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#3163060 23-Nov-2023 21:50

Do you have a picture of the network cabinet? Is your fibre router close by? If you do have ethernet cable already patched to a switch, you could just plug your router in to the switch or an ethernet jack on the network and go around plugging a laptop in to the various other ethernet jacks to see if they are connected and what sort of throughput you're getting. If you want a no-hassle way of segmenting of your guest network, you could put them behind one of the monitored ports on a Zappie router.

Is there power close to the jacks? If not, you could use a PoE switch that will provide power to the APs in the rooms over the ethernet cabling. Grandstream units are handy in that you can nominate one of the units to be a controller for the others, an example entry level AP from them here.

lxsw20

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#3163067 23-Nov-2023 22:46

4k is an absolute bargain if its being done right.

Use the cabled setup that's already there if its to standard.

While you'll get away with Prosumer gear (Aruba Instant-On/Unifi/Grandstream etc) consumer gear isn't the way.

How are you planning to segregate guest devices from each other and from business devices? It only takes one tech savvy guest to be doing nasty stuff if you don't set this up properly.

Do it once do it right and probably don't try and just wing it.