Extending Wifi to my garden, 50 metres away

[Skynexer]

Stupidly stupid question. But I've got a normal Bt homehub setup in my house, from socket to router within a metre. However my garden is around 40 - 50 metres from my house and I'm trying to figure the best way to get wifi out there.
Cheers

 

[capt_taco]

Is there electricity out in/near the garden? If so, you should be able to set up an outdoor directional range extender and access point (the kind that go together in a pair, like this: http://www.ampedwireless.com/products/sr600ex.html), or even powerline to an outdoor access point.

... if there is no electricity it will be more difficult. Then I would try running a powerline adapter to the outlet in your house closest to the garden, and a range extender from there. The limiting factor may be the ability of your phone, laptop, etc to "shout back" to the network over that distance. So it's always best to get the wireless access point as close to where the wifi devices will be as possible.

 

[Skynexer]

We've got electric all through the field yeah. So the simplest way would be to run an Ethernet cable from the house router to (older/spare) router in the garden ? I would love the extender but it's all on a budget ha

 

[Skynexer]

We've got electric all through the field yeah. So the simplest way would be to run an Ethernet cable from the house router to (older/spare) router in the garden ? I would love the extender but it's all on a budget ha

 

[bill001g]

The ethernet cable will be the simplest you can either buy outdoor direct bury cable or you can run normal cat5e cable though anything that will keep it dry.

I have used cheap plastic drip irrigation tubing because its very cheap but you can use plastic water pipe if you want some protection from a something like a shovel. You can bury it just a couple of inches. The main issue with normal cable is the soil reacts with the plastic coating and destroys it over time. The direct bury stuff has a coating that is waterproof and soil does not effect

The cable is pretty resistant my brother has normal cable stapled to a fence for a outdoor camera and its been there over 3 years, he figured he could replace the cable every year for the effort digging a trench would take.

 

[Pooneil]

Once you get the ethernet out there, you will need an access point. For non climate controlled environments, an outdoor AP will be the most durable. The Engenius brand gets good reviews around here and in my personal experience.

 

[capt_taco]

We've got electric all through the field yeah. So the simplest way would be to run an Ethernet cable from the house router to (older/spare) router in the garden ? I would love the extender but it's all on a budget ha

Running an Ethernet cable would be the most direct method and probably most reliable, but also a pain. Weatherproofing of the cable would be an issue, as well as making sure it was where nobody would trip over it, break it with a shovel, etc.

It would be simpler (and probably just as cheap) to use a powerline adapter from your main router to an outlet in/near the garden, then attach an outdoor wireless access point there. There, the main issue would be making sure the outlet at the far end, where the other powerline adapter would go, is weatherproofed.

Note that this is only going to work if the house and the garden outlets are using the same circuitry. If you have a separate breaker box for the garden, for example, then powerline may not work. Then you'd be back to either direct ethernet cable or an outdoor range extender.

If the price on outdoor range extenders is a bit much, shop around. I've seen sets on sale for $60 or so sometimes. Over the distance you're talking about, you do not necessarily need a top-end system capable of covering half a mile.

 

[Skynexer]

It's all on the same circuitry actually so that would make total sense to do it that way! The Ap in the garden end would be inside a weather proofed Bar so no problems that way either.
Thanks for the help !