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Any long-range WiFi extender you would recommend? (piefed.social)

submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by ExtremeDullard@piefed.social to c/homenetworking@selfhosted.forum

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Hey all,

I have a BE9300 tri-band WiFi 7 router in the house, and an Asus RP-N12 WiFi range extender in our summer cottage 120 ft away. Both the house and the cottage are wooden buildings and contain zero metal.

I have a link and it's stable, but it's kind of at the edge of the range: the speed isn't great, and they must be renegotiating the speed all the time because it's stuttering all the time - to the point where SSHing into a machine in the cottage is seriously annoying. But it's okay for casual browsing in the cottage.

My problem is that we have an IP camera in the cottage, and I have to severely limit its resolution, FPS and allowed compression bitrate to make it somewhat usable over that link.

So I'm looking for a better range extender. I don't really want to change the router, I'd rather change the extender - something with more power, or better, with a directional antenna. I can install the antenna in the attic of the cottage, no problem.

Also, I'm not super-keen on the real solution, which is to dig a trench and run a CAT6 cable to the cottage, not because I mind digging a trench, but because I'd rather not punch holes in either building's walls.

Any speedy powerful range extender you would recommend?

I'm asking here for real human beings' opinions and recommendations because it's just about impossible to find actual, honest reviews that aren't AI-generated crap - or at least highly suspicious - anywhere for this sort of hardware nowadays.

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[–] lemmyng@piefed.ca 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Take a look at Mikrotik hardware. They have outdoor access points and wireless bridges that you can adapt to your scenario. Also check out their forums, the community is usually pretty good at suggesting reasonable solutions.

[–] ExtremeDullard@piefed.social 1 points 1 month ago

I'll check them out, thanks for the tip!

[–] Skyrmir@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I had good luck with IP over power lines from my camera box to my house years ago. You do need to get the end points on the same branch circuit. It was far superior to any of the wifi solutions I tried.

[–] ExtremeDullard@piefed.social 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Interesting... Last time I tried IP over power lines, I was really disappointed by the throughput. Having said that, maybe I didn't do it right, and also it was the late 90's, so maybe the technology wasn't quite there yet 🙂

Any brand / model in particular you would recommend?

[–] Skyrmir@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I went pretty cheap and had good results, I don't remember the brand, it was about a decade ago. Like I said, the only trick was to keep the two end points on the same circuit. If it had to go through the breaker box, there tended to be problems. Also any motors on that circuit will blast the signal. So there's definite caveats, but if it fits your situation they do work.

[–] ExtremeDullard@piefed.social 2 points 1 month ago

Well, you were right: I picked up some cheap TP-Link data-over-powerline things and they work quite well. Not ideal, but definitely an improvement over WiFi.

Thanks for the recommendation. Well worth it!

[–] k8sgremlin@geekroom.tech 1 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (1 children)

Do not buy another consumer-grade extender for that link, it's the wrong tool for a fixed 120ft point-to-point hop. What you actually want is a proper wireless bridge pair, Ubiquiti's airMAX line (NanoStation or PowerBeam) or MikroTik's wAP series will both wildly outperform any off-the-shelf extender at that range, especially through wood with no metal in the way.

Point one unit out from the house, one at the cottage, run them in bridge/station mode instead of repeater mode, and you'll get close to wired speeds since it's a dedicated directional link instead of a shared radio also serving normal WiFi clients. Should comfortably handle the camera at full resolution.

Costs more than a $40 extender, but a used NanoStation pair runs cheaper than trenching, and attic mounting like you're already planning is exactly the install these are made for.

[–] ExtremeDullard@piefed.social 1 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

Thanks! This is very good advice.

I might actually want to try this, but I heeded @skyrmir@lemmy.world 's advice and bought a IP-over-powerline thing, and it works very well. Not blisteringly fast, but plenty fast enough to get a decent camera image at medium resolution 1600x1200 at 15 fps in monitoring mode - and I only need the full speed / full FPS stream for local recording into the camera's internal memory card anyway.

So the powerline thing works well enough and, well, I've already paid for it 🙂