![]() TP-Link also offers a newer, fancier point-to-point AP. People in densely packed suburban areas may want to choose 5 GHz instead, specifically for its lower range and penetration-especially if other neighbors' houses are directly in line with the bridge being created. Most people in rural areas should use 2.4 GHz for its greater range and penetration. ![]() That means anything more than 100Mbps is effectively wasted. When it comes to this and many other cheap Wi-Fi bridges, the limiting factor usually isn't the Wi-Fi anyway-it's the wired Ethernet interface.īoth CPE210 and CPE510 have Fast Ethernet (100Mbps) wired interfaces, not gigabit. These are important factors if you need to punch through several walls or a small patch of woods. And while it's tempting to think, "Oh, 5 GHz will be faster," that's rarely going to be the case.Īlthough 5 GHz Wi-Fi is technically capable of higher throughput than 2.4 GHz, it offers less range and penetration. You can purchase either a 2.4 GHz version or a 5 GHz version. These two TP-Link kits-and many competing directional Wi-Fi bridges-run on the older 802.11n (Wi-Fi 4) protocol and use a single radio only. On the barn side, I just set the Client down on a utility shelf-and I deliberately aimed it a few degrees off-center from the unit in the house. Instead of mounting the house's Access Point device to the roofline, I zip-tied it to a "cat tree" in the living room and aimed it loosely at the barn through a picture window. I've deliberately kept things as sloppy and simple here as I could. But for shorter distances, you can get a whole lot sloppier. If you're trying to bridge a distance of several kilometers, this guidance is pretty reasonable. Phrases like "professional installation only," "tower mount," and "completely clear line of sight" crop up frequently. The marketing and documentation on these and other point-to-point kits is aimed squarely at professional installers, not homeowners. In fact, you can even enjoy more-than-acceptable results in the end. Instead, we're simply out to demonstrate that wirelessly connecting two buildings quickly, cheaply, and easily is possible for anyone. Our goal in this exercise is not to geek out as hard as possible by mounting and aiming everything with millimeter precision. And that made it an excellent test candidate for a little DIY networking experiment. Said tractor lives in a barn about 80 meters from the house, much of which is a moderately wooded grove. Their place is beautiful, but it's the kind of home where a riding lawn mower is optional-a tractor with a bush hog is a necessity. The good news is, with the right gear, you can connect your home to an outbuilding without either professional expertise or a ditch witch and a spool of burial-grade cable.Īlthough the Salter household (current generation) is planted firmly in suburbia, my parents stayed rural when they moved closer to their grandkids. This is a job that shouldn't involve range extenders or rely on standard Wi-Fi mesh pieces. The secret lies mostly in knowing the right tools for the job. If the antenna system's characteristic impedance doesn't match the transmitter, then you have an impedance mismatch which can, if the mismatch is too large, cause physical damage to the final transistors in the transmitter.Extending your Wi-Fi properly from one building to another is, unfortunately, a bit of a secret art-but it doesn't need to be either difficult or expensive. ![]() A transmitter is designed to use an antenna system that has a specific impedance. I'm not going to go into a treatise on antenna theory. A transmitter is designed for a specific impedance, measured in ohms. Working with antennas isn't just a simple matter of hooking it up. However, you're just as likely to ruin your adapter. Assuming you were able to identify where to solder the coax, and are skilled enough at working with surface mount boards, it MIGHT work. Find where it connects to the board and solder the center conductor of the coax where the antenna connects and the coax shield would need to connect to ground. You'd still need coax and you'd need to crack open the WiFi adapter and locate the antenna. If you're adapter lacks an external antenna connector then I'm not certain how you'd be able to do this. I've never built one of these before, but as to your question about the coax connector, if your USB WiFi adapter has an external antenna connector, you'll need a coax jumper with the same kind of connector as is on your WiFi adapter. ![]()
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