Question Best way to bring internet into my large garage?

[Marplot]

I have a metal building about 200 feet from my home. I have an AT&T fiber modem. Wifi extenders? Booster? or just Cat8 Cable to a router?

 

[white.a.drew]

I have a metal building about 200 feet from my home. I have an AT&T fiber modem. Wifi extenders? Booster? or just Cat8 Cable to a router?

You best option for maximum results is to run a cat8 cable to a new modem/router set to bridge mode.

 

[bill001g]

First real cat8 cable I do not think is rated to run that far. Anything you find being sold as cat8 is likely fake cable. Cat8 cable is only used in data centers where they need 60g or 100gbit connection. It is extremely expensive.

Pretty much nobody need better than cat5e. It is rated to 1gbit at 100 meters. If you run faster you use cat6a which can run 10gbit at 100 meters. Almost all other types of cable you pay more and get no addition benefit. If cat6 cable is cheaper just because it is more popular then buy that but it will not perform any differently than cat5e.

Key for cable is the quality. The wire must be pure copper (no CCA) and have wire size 22-24 (no flat or thin cables). In addition in your application you want outdoor direct bury cable. It just has plastic that is designed to resist the sun and damage from soil and water. Be careful a lot of this cable is CCA so read your descriptions carefully. If you plan to use plastic conduit you can run normal indoor cable through that.

In any case your very best option is always to run ethernet cable even if it is a lot of work. Nothing will compare to the quality and speed you get.

When you can't do this the next best thing is point to point outdoor bridge units. If you are willing to spend thousands of dollars you can get gigabit speeds but the ones most people but will get maybe 150mbps if they are lucky.

 

[white.a.drew]

First real cat8 cable I do not think is rated to run that far. Anything you find being sold as cat8 is likely fake cable. Cat8 cable is only used in data centers where they need 60g or 100gbit connection. It is extremely expensive.

Pretty much nobody need better than cat5e. It is rated to 1gbit at 100 meters. If you run faster you use cat6a which can run 10gbit at 100 meters. Almost all other types of cable you pay more and get no addition benefit. If cat6 cable is cheaper just because it is more popular then buy that but it will not perform any differently than cat5e.

Key for cable is the quality. The wire must be pure copper (no CCA) and have wire size 22-24 (no flat or thin cables). In addition in your application you want outdoor direct bury cable. It just has plastic that is designed to resist the sun and damage from soil and water. Be careful a lot of this cable is CCA so read your descriptions carefully. If you plan to use plastic conduit you can run normal indoor cable through that.

In any case your very best option is always to run ethernet cable even if it is a lot of work. Nothing will compare to the quality and speed you get.

When you can't do this the next best thing is point to point outdoor bridge units. If you are willing to spend thousands of dollars you can get gigabit speeds but the ones most people but will get maybe 150mbps if they are lucky.

You are right on a lot of what your saying I'm not arguing that, however cat8 has been made more open to the public as mesh is becoming more and more of a thing. Cat 8 will be expensive for him to run but well worth it I the end. Like you said cat5e is only good at a 1gig connection at 100m, cat8 4xs that.... What's the point of only running a cat5e cable and destroying the purpose of having mesh.

 

[white.a.drew]

First real cat8 cable I do not think is rated to run that far. Anything you find being sold as cat8 is likely fake cable. Cat8 cable is only used in data centers where they need 60g or 100gbit connection. It is extremely expensive.

Pretty much nobody need better than cat5e. It is rated to 1gbit at 100 meters. If you run faster you use cat6a which can run 10gbit at 100 meters. Almost all other types of cable you pay more and get no addition benefit. If cat6 cable is cheaper just because it is more popular then buy that but it will not perform any differently than cat5e.

Key for cable is the quality. The wire must be pure copper (no CCA) and have wire size 22-24 (no flat or thin cables). In addition in your application you want outdoor direct bury cable. It just has plastic that is designed to resist the sun and damage from soil and water. Be careful a lot of this cable is CCA so read your descriptions carefully. If you plan to use plastic conduit you can run normal indoor cable through that.

In any case your very best option is always to run ethernet cable even if it is a lot of work. Nothing will compare to the quality and speed you get.

When you can't do this the next best thing is point to point outdoor bridge units. If you are willing to spend thousands of dollars you can get gigabit speeds but the ones most people but will get maybe 150mbps if they are lucky.

I actually just bought 700 feet of cat8 for $700 usd, a dollar a foot and yes it is properly rated cat8

 

[bill001g]

Maybe you need to explain what you think mesh is and why it makes any difference at all when you are connected via ethernet of any kind. Maybe I am missing some use.

Mesh is primarily a wireless repeater system for when you can't connect the device with wires. Since the begin of wifi running wired connections to AP has been a thing. The network always has been a single network and the roaming is controlled by the end device not the network. Corporate install still use this model none use silly mesh wifi repeaters. Mesh is a marketing thing being sold to customers.

Well if you paid that much it could be cat8, most people will not pay that kind of money for cable when you could get cat6a direct bury cable for well less than 1/2 that price. I don't know what you think it will help. If you hook it to 1gbit ports it will still run 1gbit. You could I guess run 10gbit over it like cat6a. You are over the distance limit to run 40gbit which is 30 meters.

 

[white.a.drew]

Maybe you need to explain what you think mesh is and why it makes any difference at all when you are connected via ethernet of any kind. Maybe I am missing some use.

Mesh is primarily a wireless repeater system for when you can't connect the device with wires. Since the begin of wifi running wired connections to AP has been a thing. The network always has been a single network and the roaming is controlled by the end device not the network. Corporate install still use this model none use silly mesh wifi repeaters. Mesh is a marketing thing being sold to customers.

Well if you paid that much it could be cat8, most people will not pay that kind of money for cable when you could get cat6a direct bury cable for well less than 1/2 that price. I don't know what you think it will help. If you hook it to 1gbit ports it will still run 1gbit. You could I guess run 10gbit over it like cat6a. You are over the distance limit to run 40gbit which is 30 meters.

I said mesh meaning fiber optic I'm sorry I have had a long few days.....
Love people being so literal especially when I know for a fact you knew what I meant

 

[white.a.drew]

Maybe you need to explain what you think mesh is and why it makes any difference at all when you are connected via ethernet of any kind. Maybe I am missing some use.

Mesh is primarily a wireless repeater system for when you can't connect the device with wires. Since the begin of wifi running wired connections to AP has been a thing. The network always has been a single network and the roaming is controlled by the end device not the network. Corporate install still use this model none use silly mesh wifi repeaters. Mesh is a marketing thing being sold to customers.

Well if you paid that much it could be cat8, most people will not pay that kind of money for cable when you could get cat6a direct bury cable for well less than 1/2 that price. I don't know what you think it will help. If you hook it to 1gbit ports it will still run 1gbit. You could I guess run 10gbit over it like cat6a. You are over the distance limit to run 40gbit which is 30 meters.

Depending on the system you have in your home the fiber optic modem in my din has an output of 5gigs, so no it won't use the full 10gig down that I pay for.... However still strong enough to run my whole house with zero interface unlike I was having before. I have a Asus fiber optic modem/router in my din broadcasting to 4 extensions and a router in the garage in bridge mode

 

[bill001g]

Sorry i actually thought you ment mesh, did notice you have been around this forum for a while. The term mesh has been hijacked by marketing guys trying to con home users into buying lots of fancy boxes to scatter though their house. Using the more generic form of the word I now see.
Most people asking about mesh stuff think it is some magic thing they can not live without.

Although I have not seen the document I was told the ethernet standard now allows normal cat6 to run 2.5 and 5g ports. The price of cat6a has come down so far...or actually the price of all cable has gone up so much..that there is little difference in the price between cat6 and cat6a.

In any case you should not have any issue running even 10g if you were to get equipment in the future. The only way to go that distance with more than 10gbit is to run fiber.

 

[Marplot]

I just ran cat7 cable. 26awg copper couldn't find any 22-24. OK hooked into my ATT Fiber modem. Hooked a TP Link in the garage, but not getting internet. I think something is wrong. I did have right password for the TP Link. No Internet connection. Should I run the Cat 7 into one of the T Link ports or the blue one?

Wore myself out running 2 cables one is 250 foot and the other at 150. Now I get to get them talking to each other.


Here is my Cat 7 from Amazon.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08B4M1878/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

[white.a.drew]

I just ran cat7 cable. 26awg copper couldn't find any 22-24. OK hooked into my ATT Fiber modem. Hooked a TP Link in the garage, but not getting internet. I think something is wrong. I did have right password for the TP Link. No Internet connection. Should I run the Cat 7 into one of the T Link ports or the blue one?

Wore myself out running 2 cables one is 250 foot and the other at 150. Now I get to get them talking to each other.


Here is my Cat 7 from Amazon.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08B4M1878/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Have you placed the secondary router into bridge mode if not most of the time it's searching it's own ips. Bridge tells it to run off of the main modems I'd portals

 

[bill001g]

I would first test with a pc plugged into the cable and make sure it works and you get full gigabit speeds.

I assume you have a second tplink router you are doing this with or did you buy another device.

You want the device in the remote building run as a AP/bridge. The router likely has a setting that let you put it into AP mode. Not sure what you mean a blue port but when you use a option to set it in the router to AP you want to plug into the wan port.

You can run any router as a AP even if it does not have the feature or if you are say using a old DSL router that does not have a wan port. When you use a router that does not have a setting to run as AP you would then connect to a LAN port.

The other steps you need to take of and some of this might be done by setting it to AP mode is.
Make sure the DHCP server is disabled, you main router will give out the IP.
Make sure the LAN ip does not conflict with your main router. If the main router uses say 192.168.1.1 set the AP to something like 192.168.1.250

 

[Marplot]

I have two of these. One for each garage. Cat7 cable from my fiber modem and terminate at each of these and have wifi.


https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07N1L5HX1/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Not sure where to go with this? Not familiar in networking. I have built a few computers and am good at following directions.

I plan to use these as wifi for lighting, streaming video from Netflix, don't really need a lot of bandwidth, but good to have.

These TP Links are about two years old. I could get newer and faster. I like good stuff


Thank you for your help.

 

[white.a.drew]

I have two of these. One for each garage. Cat7 cable from my fiber modem and terminate at each of these and have wifi.


https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07N1L5HX1/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Not sure where to go with this? Not familiar in networking. I have built a few computers and am good at following directions.

I plan to use these as wifi for lighting, streaming video from Netflix, don't really need a lot of bandwidth, but good to have.

These TP Links are about two years old. I could get newer and faster. I like good stuff


Thank you for your help.

You need to sign into the routers and set them to ap mode and allow them to duplicate the main modem/routers id's

 

[white.a.drew]

I have two of these. One for each garage. Cat7 cable from my fiber modem and terminate at each of these and have wifi.


https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07N1L5HX1/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Not sure where to go with this? Not familiar in networking. I have built a few computers and am good at following directions.

I plan to use these as wifi for lighting, streaming video from Netflix, don't really need a lot of bandwidth, but good to have.

These TP Links are about two years old. I could get newer and faster. I like good stuff


Thank you for your help.

Plug the cat7 cables into the blue port

 

[bill001g]

Yes set it to AP mode and use the blue port.

There is nothing wrong with that router in general your end device likely only have 2 antenna which is means it can only run 2x2 mimo. Most end device would have the 1200 number if you look at the rates they support. Buying a router with better wifi only benefit devices that can support it. For example you could buy a wifi6e router but if none of your devices have a radio chip that can use 6ghz then this feature will go unused and you basically wasted your money.

Most people see about 300mbps using that running on the 5g radio. It is more than enough for the common devices. If you need to download large files you are better off using a ethernet cable to one of the lan ports.

 

[white.a.drew]

Yes set it to AP mode and use the blue port.

There is nothing wrong with that router in general your end device likely only have 2 antenna which is means it can only run 2x2 mimo. Most end device would have the 1200 number if you look at the rates they support. Buying a router with better wifi only benefit devices that can support it. For example you could buy a wifi6e router but if none of your devices have a radio chip that can use 6ghz then this feature will go unused and you basically wasted your money.

Most people see about 300mbps using that running on the 5g radio. It is more than enough for the common devices. If you need to download large files you are better off using a ethernet cable to one of the lan ports.

Agreed

 

[Marplot]

Agreed

Somehow I cannot connect with the TP Link router. I connected it to my modem, but doesn't work. I see that I should "TPLINKWIFI.net" But when I do it can't find the router.

I thought about connecting to the Internet, but I don't have an Ethernet cable to my Fiber modem that connects to the internet. Something weird that does this, but no way I can directly connect from the Internet. I tried to connect a short ethernet cable from the modem to the TP Link but no joy.

Somehow I can't connect to the TP Link router.

There is a procedure where I can open Explorer and add "additional network.." But this is in the Ribbon on the Explorer. But when I am using Windows 11, I can't seem to find the ribbon bar. Something eludes me.

 

[bill001g]

Can you describe more how you did this. It is highly likely the device you have from att is a modem/router. It tends to be impossible to get just a dumb modem from att for some reason.

In any case is this what you are trying to do

---fiber---att device---------long cable-----tplink in remote building.

You should be able to hook your pc to the long cable this will validate all your cabling is good and there is some issue with the tplink config that is causing your issue.

 

[Marplot]

Can you describe more how you did this. It is highly likely the device you have from att is a modem/router. It tends to be impossible to get just a dumb modem from att for some reason.

In any case is this what you are trying to do

---fiber---att device---------long cable-----tplink in remote building.

You should be able to hook your pc to the long cable this will validate all your cabling is good and there is some issue with the tplink config that is causing your issue.

From ATT I have a BGW320-500 --- from it I connected an ethernet cable (about 3 feet long on my bench) to yellow port on the BGW --- from there to the blue port TPlink on my bench. Hoping to get it into AP mode and then take it to remote.

BGW 320 which has a build in ONT plus the gateway functions.

The problem is that I can't connect with the TP link Network, so I can't access the software to make it into an access point. I would hope that when I get that to happen, I can take the configured TP Link to the remote.

for what its worth I got the tplink tether on my iphone. Working well and connected to one of the TP Link

 

[bill001g]

You generally must configure the tplink device completely separate from your network. You would have to read the instructions on how you do the initial configuration, most times you must use a pc with a ethernet port but some allow you to do the initial config over wifi.
I would factory reset the tplink so you are sure you are starting with the device that matches the instructions.

What might be happening is the tplink and the att are using the same ip address/network. The tplink by default will run as a router and it does not like if its wan IP (ie the blue port) and the lan IP are in the same network. Unlike many routers the att uses 192.168.1.254 but if the tplink is set to use 192.168.1.1 you will get this issue. Tplink is hard to say becuase most use 192.168.1.1 but some use 192.168.0.1.

Since att is strange I don't know what I would recommend you set the IP to in the tplink. You I guess could look at the DHCP pool in the att and assign it outside the pool. I normally just say 192.168.1.200, it will likely work but if you can check what range att dhcp is using.

 

[Marplot]

I think I am getting closer to an answer, but still cannot connect with TPLinkWifi.net. I keep getting this error msg.
"It looks like you aren't connected to your TP-Link network"

Also tried 192.168.0.1 and 192.168.1.1 and get

"This site can't be reached 192.168.1.1 took too long to respond."

The main building is 8,000sf, clear span, one large room. Will the TPLink Archer A6 will cover it? Or should I get something else?

 

[Marplot]

Could Defender getting in the way? I use Win 11.

 

[bill001g]

There will not be significant difference in coverage between quality routers. Almost all transmit at the full legal power. Most times coverage issues are related to end devices with low power radio....battery savings tends to be more important than performance in some portable devices.
Maybe you get 8000 ft coverage if it is completely open and you have the device placed well, like in the center of the building. The number you see for maximum wifi distance is 100ft which would be 10,000 sq ft but we know it can go farther since you see many neighbors. It is all trial and error with wifi. You would not get a different router you would add more and just daisy chain them via ethernet cable or if you put in a lot you would put in a switch and connect them all back their.

So your best way to find the IP of the router is with the IPCONFIG /all command. The gateway IP should be the ip you use to access the tplink. It should have been 192.168.1.1 or 192.168.0.1.
Make sure your pc is set to get IP from the router rather than being set to some fixed value

 

[Marplot]

Wolfgang Gawor

There will not be significant difference in coverage between quality routers. Almost all transmit at the full legal power. Most times coverage issues are related to end devices with low power radio....battery savings tends to be more important than performance in some portable devices.
Maybe you get 8000 ft coverage if it is completely open and you have the device placed well, like in the center of the building. The number you see for maximum wifi distance is 100ft which would be 10,000 sq ft but we know it can go farther since you see many neighbors. It is all trial and error with wifi. You would not get a different router you would add more and just daisy chain them via ethernet cable or if you put in a lot you would put in a switch and connect them all back their.

So your best way to find the IP of the router is with the IPCONFIG /all command. The gateway IP should be the ip you use to access the tplink. It should have been 192.168.1.1 or 192.168.0.1.
Make sure your pc is set to get IP from the router rather than being set to some fixed value

I have much more, but What next?