RT-N66U & USB WiFi adapter

[Mike Johnson]

So I have a seasonal camping site within a large RV park which offers fee WiFi. Unfortunately I don't have good wireless coverage in my area of the park. The wireless internet isn't guaranteed through out the park, just near the clubhouse. I was wondering if it would be possible to use my old asus router (upgraded with the latest Merlin firmware) in combination with a USB Wireless adapter plugged into the USB port and a high gain antenna pointed at the WiFi to pick up and redistribute the signal within my camper and the neighbors camper. I was hoping that the USB adapter and subsequent high gain antenna would be treated similar to 4G LTE dongle as far as the router is concerned, pick up the clubhouse wireless, feed it into the router over the USB port, and then the router could offer up the signal over it's own 2.4GHz. This setup would require a compatible USB wireless adapter, and so I was wondering if anyone here would have any suggestions for such an adapter.

Thoughts?

I was looking at the following items:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003CFATOW/?tag=snbforums-20

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00UZRVY12/?tag=snbforums-20

 

[Internet Man]

Wireless repeaters are usually a bad idea. If you repeat a low-quality signal, it's still low quality. Also, if the repeater only has a single radio, the bandwidth is halved because it must switch between communicating with the clients and with the main router that it is repeating.

That said, a wireless router, with its multiple large antennas and MIMO technology could pick up the signal from the clubhouse and communicate back to the main router in the clubhouse better than the wireless adapters that are typically built into devices like laptops and phones.

Your wireless router already has two wireless radios in it (simultaneous dual-band 802.11n) so you don't really need to add a USB wireless adapter to the router's USB port and I've never heard of anyone actually doing that.

If you flash your router with DD-WRT firmware you can configure it as a repeater bridge. Ideally you would use the 2.4GHz 802.11n radio to link with the clubhouse Wi-Fi then you would use the 5GHz radio for all of your local clients. This way, the 2.4GHz radio is not shared between the backhaul link and clients which would reduce its speed by at least half. You'd have to check whether or not your devices support 5GHz connections and if not, upgrade them.

 

[degrub]

If your trailers are all metal, you may have to put the 5ghz receiving antenna outside. A glass or plastic window is likely to void that need if it has line of sight to the broadcasting antenna.

 

[Mike Johnson]

I'm actually contemplating a different path now.
I was looking at this device here

https://www.engeniustech.com/engenius-products/outdoor-wireless-bridge-enstation2/

I'm thinking of mounting this antenna to the roof of my RV and pointing it at the wireless router in the clubhouse, then plug the RJ-45 Ethernet out of this antenna into the WAN port of my wireless router, and subsequently have WiFi inside the camper...

 

[Internet Man]

I'm actually contemplating a different path now.
I was looking at this device here

https://www.engeniustech.com/engenius-products/outdoor-wireless-bridge-enstation2/

I'm thinking of mounting this antenna to the roof of my RV and pointing it at the wireless router in the clubhouse, then plug the RJ-45 Ethernet out of this antenna into the WAN port of my wireless router, and subsequently have WiFi inside the camper...

That'd probably work but I don't think you'd plug the ethernet from the bridge into the WAN port of your router unless it has been configured as an access point with the WAN port has been assigned to the LAN switch (DD-WRT or other third-party firmware may be required).