Network setup advice for stucco house and yard

[Giraffe.GB]

I could use some advice on the best way to get wifi out of my Faraday cage of a stucco house. I'm not opposed to spending money and/or replacing my current routers if it will get me a better overall setup, so don't feel constrained in what advice you offer. Here's a diagram of my current setup:

I've got cat6 running through the house (black lines), and two Dlink DIR-655 Xtreme N routers on the top shelf of two closets which give me pretty decent wifi coverage throughout with a single SSID. Outside of the house, though, there's almost no signal, which I would like to change so I can sit in the yard on nice days with my iPad. I tried a couple of different wireless repeaters/extenders (ZyXel repeater, Dlink DAP-1320) in the house right up against the exterior wall, but they made virtually no difference in the signal strength in the yard.

So unless someone knows of a better way to get a signal through stucco, I'm thinking of running some cat6 outside and mounting an outdoor PoE access point. Running ethernet is doable, running power would be much harder. I thought about the Hawking HOWABN1, but the reviews have enough stories of the things dying or requiring frequent reboots to make me hesitant. Ubiquiti products look pretty solid, but I'm not sure exactly what I'd need. (Would something like the Ubiquiti UniFI AP Outdoor 2x2 MIMO work with my current routers, or would I need Ubiquiti routers as well?) Is there something else I should consider that I haven't thought of? I think something omnidirectional would be best, but I could live with a directional antenna if it fully covered the area marked with the X.

My current network has grown fairly organically and I wouldn't be surprised at all if it was poorly designed in terms of throughput, so if starting over and designing it properly makes more sense than tacking one more device onto, please don't hesitate to say so. Thanks!

 

[coxhaus]

You know when I added a second wireless unit to the back of my house using an AV500 power plug. It is very close to the back outside wall of my house pointing out a big window. My wife now picks up a wifi signal in the garden using her iPhone. The garden is probably 70 feet away. You might try draping a cat5e cable with one of your current units in a window close to the empty corner of your house in the diagram maybe behind a curtain and see if you get a good signal in the yard. If this works then you could get by with another wireless unit and a power plug unit. This would save money installing an outside unit. The outside unit would probably work better in the long run.

The problem with antennas is you only end up with an antennas on one side of the hand shake. The laptop or iPad does not have an antenna to send the signal back with.

 

[Giraffe.GB]

Thanks for the idea, but there's only our bedroom window and a sliding glass door on that side of the house and my wife doesn't want electronics up against either one. And once you move the device away from the window, the stucco kills the signal.

 

[coxhaus]

I think maybe you have answered your own question. Sounds like you are going to need an outside wireless unit and all the stuff which goes with making it happen.

 

[stevech]

A frequent suggestion is an outdoor AP connecting to the router's LAN port via cat5 in attic or under house, or via HomePlug type of devices. An outdoor AP costs under $100. Look on newegg, e.g., for Engenious and other brands.

 

[CaptainSTX]

Powering Outdoor AP

Some outdoor APs are powered using the Ethernet cable.

I use an Engenius outdoor AP and it comes with a power inserter. Simply plug an Ethernet cable into a LAN port on your router and run this cable to the power inserter, plug the power inserter into a nearby AC outlet and then run a standard Ethernet cable from the power inserter to the AP mounted on the outside of your house aimed in the direction you want to cover.

Depending on the strength of the Wifi radios in the devices you want to use outdoors you could have 100' of usable range. If you need more ranges you may need to set up a bridge or repeater.

 

[Giraffe.GB]

Thanks, everyone. I'll try an Engenius outdoor AP and see how it goes.

One more question: is it possible to set it up to share an SSID with my two routers, so that the network is seamless and devices just choose the strongest signal, or does it need to have a unique SSID?

 

[CaptainSTX]

Ssid

With consumer WiFi equipment there isn't any seamless WiFi hand off or hand off for that matter.

For most the best solution is to put each AP on a separate channel with its own unique SSID. Make it easy for people to pick which one to connect to. In your case InsideNet and OutsideNet would fill this bill.

You can use the same paraphrase for both so password challenged people only have one to remember,

If the firmware on your outside AP allows you may want to set automatic timers to shut off the outside radio when you aren't likely to be sitting in the backyard. This will make it more inconvenient for the local network nerd/ hacker to try and hack into outdoor WiFi. The SSID could be visible for up to a 1000'. If you have the knowledge you could also setup the outside AP to assign private IPs on its own subnet to further protect your primary network.

 

[Fraoch]

Ubiquiti products look pretty solid, but I'm not sure exactly what I'd need. (Would something like the Ubiquiti UniFI AP Outdoor 2x2 MIMO work with my current routers, or would I need Ubiquiti routers as well?)

Any AP will work with any router - it just needs to be connected via Cat5/5e/6 to one of the router's LAN ports (or through a switch), then it either gets its IP from the router or you can assign it a static IP.

 

[stevech]

Any AP will work with any router - it just needs to be connected via Cat5/5e/6 to one of the router's LAN ports (or through a switch), then it either gets its IP from the router or you can assign it a static IP.

the AP's IP address is needed only for administration- it doesn't affect traffic flow from clients.