Need Help with Home Network Setup Involving Ubiquiti Antennas and Tenda Router

[madjb]

Hello everyone,

I'm relatively new to networking and have been setting up a network across two apartments, about 30 meters apart, one on the street level and the other on the fifth floor. I've managed to establish a connection using Ubiquiti antennas (ground floor in access point mode, fifth floor with NanoStation M5 in station mode), which I'm proud to have accomplished mostly on my own. The antennas seem to be working fine now, with signal strengths around 57 dBm and Transmit CCQ consistently above 95%.

My current challenge is with the internet connectivity that runs fine for a couple of hours but then drops, and I cannot figure out why. My setup includes a Tenda F3 router on the fifth floor, connected via LAN from the Ubiquiti NanoStation M5. I've set a static IP for the Tenda router and tried configuring DNS and default gateway settings pointing to my main router on the ground floor, but still face intermittent internet issues. I usually manage to temporarily fix the issue by rebooting the antenna on the ground floor.

I've enjoyed the learning process and overcoming various setup challenges, but I'm currently stuck and would appreciate any guidance or suggestions you might have.

Thank you in advance!

 

[tgl]

Hm, I know what a Nanostation M5 is, but what do you mean by an unspecified "antenna"? Antennas rarely do anything unless connected to a radio

Also, it's far from clear where you are seeing the problem. Do you have any devices directly wired to the main router, and if so are they seeing problems? Same question for the Tenda router. Also, I kind of wonder why you have a router on that side at all rather than just a dumb ethernet switch.

EDIT: oh, after looking up the Tenda I realize you're probably using it as a wifi AP for devices on the 5th floor, so scratch that question. But you need to lobotomize its router functionality and just run it as an AP. This will involve putting it into "bridge" or "access point" or some similarly-named mode.

 

[Tech9]

using Ubiquiti antennas

You are using correctly AirMAX for the bridge, but this DFS channel may be disrupted by detected radar communications. Stick to available non-DFS channels instead. You can also try 20MHz wide channel. At this small distance you can get 100% signal quality with maximum throughput. It can do kilometers distance as a bridge.