Router to AP bridge to Router?

[Akane]

Hi guys, long time lurker, first time poster.

I have a question that I can't seem to find an answer to, we need to extend our existing network to a house that's 30 meters down the road, we have a clear line of sight.

Most of the solutions that I have found is that people buy bridges in PAIRS to extend their network. But does a bridge work if it's connecting to an existing wireless router, and will I be able to "surf the internet" on the new location.

Below is a picture of my proposed setup. I'm thinking it should work, I don't see a reason why not, as it's like adding another switch, except it's by wireless, then ethernet, then back to wireless.

Any feedback would be great, thanks!

 

[Akane]

Looks like IMG tags are not working...

 

[stevech]

You can use a client bridge on the far end and use the existing WiFi router. But usually, a bridge-pair is needed to cure too-weak signal strength when the WiFi router is inside the home, esp. when the distance is 100' or more and even more so if clear line of sight is not possible. Bridge pairs are normally elevated to at least eaves height, and are outdoor-weatherproof.

 

[Akane]

Thanks very much, hopefully I can 1 shot this and not have to go back to the drawing board.

 

[stevech]

Best to use a bridge pair, e.g., a pair of $70 Engenious bridges with integral antenna. They just work.

 

[WMConey]

I've done this over short distances to link an office network to my main internet-connected net when I didn't want to run cable or drill.

I used an Engenius bridge which worked well until it burned out. I switched to a Netgear bridge which had an unresolvable compatibility issue. Essentially, I saw my throughput drop by 60%. Lots of trouble shooting until I gave up and ran cable.

So I note that in addition to being careful about range and signal strength, be aware that you can also have other problems with this type of configuration.

 

[stevech]

I used an Engenius bridge which worked well until it burned out.

It Smoked?

 

[sfx2000]

Hi guys, long time lurker, first time poster.

I have a question that I can't seem to find an answer to, we need to extend our existing network to a house that's 30 meters down the road, we have a clear line of sight.

Most of the solutions that I have found is that people buy bridges in PAIRS to extend their network. But does a bridge work if it's connecting to an existing wireless router, and will I be able to "surf the internet" on the new location.

Below is a picture of my proposed setup. I'm thinking it should work, I don't see a reason why not, as it's like adding another switch, except it's by wireless, then ethernet, then back to wireless.

Any feedback would be great, thanks!

30 meters is a long hop for most consumer grade routers, esp. at 5Ghz on an omni antenna.

as Stevech suggested, a pair of bridges is your best bet - outdoor mount with panel/patch antenna's to keep signal strength up and minimize interference is a key here.

Might have to settle with 2.4Ghz on the bridge pair, but run them on a different channel from your other 2.4Ghz pair, and you should be ok.

Somethings to consider - the other site, is this going to be a common network, or are you extending to a different WLAN - goes into the routing aspects and addressing, along with SSID and WPA2 settings.

Did a project with my neighbour almost exactly like this, except the span was across the street and kitty-corner, so about 150 feet.

modem__wired__router/ap___bridge<---wifi---->bridge__wired__switch__wired___AP

Used a switch to the remote bridge as they had both Desktops on ethernet and set up an AP for the wifi WLAN clients.

Router in the first house was the DHCP server for all, and common SSID/WPA2, kept all on same subnets as this was a family - his parents were the other house.

Set it up a couple of years ago, and works great - ended up in 2.4GHz, but with patch antennas for directivity, it was fine - the bridge pair used a unique SSID/WPA2, so this is something to keep in mind - you do not want clients on the bridge, you want them on the AP's

If the other site is "less" trusted, swap out the switch with another router, and dispense with the AP, and subnet them out, and let the remote router/ap manage their own traffic - some impact here for some remote apps, and you could find yourself in a double-NAT configuration.

takes some tinkering and planning, but totally doable - sounds like a fun project.

 

[WMConey]

It Smoked?

It ran very hot [like unpleasant to touch hot] which Engenius tech support insisted was normal. After 18 months or so, the transmit side failed. Maybe "died from continuous overheating" is more accurate....

 

[stevech]

I had a hot/hot gigE switch from D-link. It self-melted in a few weeks.
Then I got one from Linksys. It did as well.
Those were gen-1 gigE consumer switches. Probably used the same chip.

Gen-2 seems to run cool - perhaps because they "greened" them. No problems with them. The Netgear GS108 I have is same vintage as the gen-1 consumer switches, but the GS108 never was hot.

 

[Akane]

30 meters is a long hop for most consumer grade routers, esp. at 5Ghz on an omni antenna.

Somethings to consider - the other site, is this going to be a common network, or are you extending to a different WLAN - goes into the routing aspects and addressing, along with SSID and WPA2 settings.

The other site is trusted, the 2.4Ghz is going to be out of the question, as it's like a warzone here, I used a TP-Link TL-WN822N high gain and picked up 22 wireless AP's. I have to go 5Ghz.

The good thing is that if I stand on the very edge of the new site, I can pick up 1 bar of 2.4Ghz on my Nexus 4 mobile phone, wifi analyzer does show the 5Ghz signal but intermittent.

Running cat5e is out of the question, as this is across the road, that will involve approval from the local government and mega bucks.

I'm trying to avoid putting up a CPE at the source site, as I don't have unrestricted access to the eaves / roof mount.

but if a push comes to a shove, I'll think about getting a patch outdoor directional antenna that's actually mounted indoors, still better than an omni-directional from the EA4500.

 

[stevech]

It's common to have lots of SSIDs detected. It is not the number of SSIDs that matters. It's whether one that's near the channel you select is heavily used (and you can change channels as you know).

Common survey tools in WiFi don't show how heavily used each SSID is used - and that would have to run for a long time- to get usage stats.

I live in a dense urban area too. Not an issue as very few stream heavily, if any. Even streaming Netflix over WiFi doesn't heavily burden all 3 non-overlapping channel numbers in 2.4GHz.

 

[Akane]

Just want to report back, I had great success!

Firstly the item arrived from Amazon 5 days earlier than they expected.
Secondly for some reason Amazon don't ship electronics outside of the US, but this CPE is not considered "Electronic".

Anyways. The EA4500 is going through 3 internal wooden house walls, actually travelling MORE THAN 60 METRES, and my CPE is mounted onto a pole, not even at the proper height, not fully aimed. I'm getting a "Good" signal LED on the CPE.

ping times are +1ms with the extra Hop from my newly purchased TP-LINK WDR-4300. No packet loss, good speed test to the interwebs.

EnGenius has blown me away, to everyone else who's thinking of doing this, don't be put off by wooden walls or obstacles, the signal might be stronger than you think!