Cheap Router as Wireless Repeater?

[NateCordova]

Hello

I am looking for a solution to extend my house’s wifi into my girlfriend’s house across the street which has no Internet Subscription.

Currently, you can get Wifi on her room, but obviously it’s a weak signal.

In order to improve the signal I want to add a Cheap Router in Her house, close to the window, to act as a Wireless Repeater. My home router works at 2.4ghz bands.

Would this be a decent/cheap solution to at least have a better coverage on her room? If so, which router should I get or what should I look for?

Thanks in advance.

 

[bill001g]

A wireless repeater function is not something you commonly find on a router even fairly expensive ones. You would have to buy a wireless repeater/extender.

Not sure how well it will work. A repeater to work well needs a fairly strong signal. The repeater degrades the signal just because of how it works so if you have a poor signal to start with it will make it even worse. You might get a strong signal on the remote end but the actual data transfer rate may be very bad because of all the damage to the data.

You can get outdoor bridge equipment that might help from companies like ubiquiti or engenius. It is not really expensive but it is far more than some cheap router.

Now if all you care about is cheap you can load dd-wrt on some routers and get a repeater function. It does not fix the poor signal level it just gets you a repeater for less money.

 

[NateCordova]

A wireless repeater function is not something you commonly find on a router even fairly expensive ones. You would have to buy a wireless repeater/extender.

Not sure how well it will work. A repeater to work well needs a fairly strong signal. The repeater degrades the signal just because of how it works so if you have a poor signal to start with it will make it even worse. You might get a strong signal on the remote end but the actual data transfer rate may be very bad because of all the damage to the data.

You can get outdoor bridge equipment that might help from companies like ubiquiti or engenius. It is not really expensive but it is far more than some cheap router.

Now if all you care about is cheap you can load dd-wrt on some routers and get a repeater function. It does not fix the poor signal level it just gets you a repeater for less money.

What kind of equipment would we be talking about here from Ubiquiti or Engenius?
I live in Portugal, europe, the cheapest ubiquiti product i can find is the UAP:
https://www.senetic.pt/product/UAP

Would this work okay as a indoor solution? (I really can't place anything on the outside of her house.)

 

[bill001g]

Actually I was thinking of 2 units 1 outside to receive the signal and a second inside to transmit the signal.

Outside you need a client-bridge and inside a AP. Now any cheap router can be used as a AP but not a bridge....again the client-bridge function is the hard part to get.

What you could use since you are on 2.4g bands is the older LOCOM2 device. They have others this is the only one I have personally used in that line though. This would work indoors if you could put in in a window. If you could connect the other device via ethernet you are done. Otherwise you need a AP connected to the ethernet to provide wifi in the remote house.

I have never done it but there are settings in ubiquiti airos software that allow you to set it to bridge repeater mode. Since they use the same software on all their stuff I am unsure what this would do on a outdoor bridge.

Your largest issue is you are trying to do this on the cheap. If you were to place outdoor bridge on both house and a indoor AP in the remote house you are looking at $150 or so plus what ever costs to mount the equipment. Since these device are designed to go many kilometers accross the street is nothing so it would work.

The standard wifi is not really designed to go between houses. In some ways it would be nice if it didn't even go through the outside walls. Most the problems now days are all the garbage signals coming into your house from outside. This is part of your issue trying to use the signal as it is. You likely have many other signals overlapping the one you want so it means very weak signals that would work if nobody else was around no longer do and you need even more signal. This is why people in some apartments can not even use wifi in other rooms. The signal is very strong but there are also very strong signals from the neighbors.

 

[doolittle]

Since it is only across the street consider this - improve the signal build a directional wifi adapter like a WokFi to get her computer full wifi strength, just point it at your house through a window. Enable ICS on her computer, use her ethernet port as the WAN to her router.

Full strength tested over a mile in rural area. I use an AC600 with a 4" strainer, 6' usb extension cable and a gooseneck lamp with the bulb fixture removed.