How to extend wifi 300 ft?

[tinsletown]

Hi all, I live next to my sister and pick up her wifi on my laptop. I just bought an ASUS dual band AC3100 network card for my PC but it isn't picking up the signal. I am looking at an ASUS range extender model # RP-AC68U. You guys think this will help if I set it up at my house or try it at her house. Any other thought and ideas will be helpful. Thanks for reading

 

[vmfantom]

So, you've got a PCE-AC88 card, and its antennas has 1.86-1.96 dBi of gain according to https://fccid.io/MSQ-PCIE0U00/Test-Report/Test-Report-2-4GHz-3637535 . And you're thinking of getting the RP-AC68U extender, which has 3.42-4.31 dBi of Tx/Rx gain. This isn't going to work, my friend.

Extenders are for sending duplicate transmissions (at half the throughput), but what you need is to improve your Rx gain to 'hear' your sister's SSID in the first place. You could look on eBay for dual band antennas that could improve the PCE-AC88's gain by threading onto the NIC itself. For instance, you can find some 9 dBi dual band antennas there that would be a huge improvement. Or you could book-end parabolic or panel antennas outdoors between her house and yours, and have 30 dBi of gain or more depending on the band, polarization, line of sight, etc.

Or you could bury some hardline cable between your houses and extend wifi over that. It would improve your signal strength even more. At 300 feet, you have 79-87 dB of loss to overcome. If you can't pick up her SSID, then the RSSI may be weaker than -95 dBm at your house (which means the total loss from attenuation is probably greater than 115 dB!), and you'd want to keep the RSSI above -65 (via a 30 dBi improvement) to avoid packet loss. So unless you have line of sight between two outdoor parabolic antennas covering that distance, or cabling, then it's a pretty tall order.

 

[kanewolf]

My recommendation is to use a directional wireless bridge like an Engenius ENS202 in the window of your house facing your sisters. Then you can run ethernet cable to a switch and/or WIFI access point. You run the ENS202 in router mode so that your sister doesn't have access to your network.
IF a single ENS202 is not sufficient, then you add the same thing to her network pointing at your house. You configure her unit as an access point.

 

[nigelivey]

Point to point link, Ubiquiti LocoM2s (2 of).

 

[tinsletown]

Thanks for the help guys. Going to go with the ubiquiti point to point link. Two of them, will it work if I put one in my window and one in my sisters window? Like I said, its 300 ft with a clear line of sight.

I'm not very tech savvy but my brother in law and I can get them up and running I think.

 

[vmfantom]

Thanks for the help guys. Going to go with the ubiquiti point to point link. Two of them, will it work if I put one in my window and one in my sisters window? Like I said, its 300 ft with a clear line of sight.

I'm not very tech savvy but my brother in law and I can get them up and running I think.

Each Loco M2 gives you only 8.5 dBi of gain, so since the RSSI at your location is already -95 to -105 dBm or weaker, and you'd need to hit -65 dBm for reliable packet delivery on wifi, they won't give you enough gain. The math doesn't work out. Have fun anyway, though.

 

[tinsletown]

Thanks for the help guys. Going to go with the ubiquiti point to point link. Two of them, will it work if I put one in my window and one in my sisters window? Like I said, its 300 ft with a clear line of sight.

I'm not very tech savvy but my brother in law and I can get them up and running I think.

Each Loco M2 gives you only 8.5 dBi of gain, so since the RSSI at your location is already -95 to -105 dBm or weaker, and you'd need to hit -65 dBm for reliable packet delivery on wifi, they won't give you enough gain. The math doesn't work out. Have fun anyway, though.

Thanks for the help guy. We have an account with amazon and they're prime so we can basically try this for free.

 

[vmfantom]

Ah, that's a different story Post your results if you have a chance, you can use an app like WiFi Analyser to measure your RSSI before and after. It would be good to know where in the yard the SSID falls below the noise floor and can't be detected. So if it doesn't work, you could calculate the amount of gain that it falls short by. And if it does work, it would be interesting to know if you needed to line up the Loco pair with a laser, or if they can stand being a few degrees apart.

 

[kanewolf]

Ah, that's a different story Post your results if you have a chance, you can use an app like WiFi Analyser to measure your RSSI before and after. It would be good to know where in the yard the SSID falls below the noise floor and can't be detected. So if it doesn't work, you could calculate the amount of gain that it falls short by. And if it does work, it would be interesting to know if you needed to line up the Loco pair with a laser, or if they can stand being a few degrees apart.

Your assumptions on the signal level are without a dedicated, directional AP pointed at the house. There is no easy way to predict what the signal between the two buildings will be with dedicated, directional point-to-point hardware.

 

[vmfantom]

Ah, that's a different story Post your results if you have a chance, you can use an app like WiFi Analyser to measure your RSSI before and after. It would be good to know where in the yard the SSID falls below the noise floor and can't be detected. So if it doesn't work, you could calculate the amount of gain that it falls short by. And if it does work, it would be interesting to know if you needed to line up the Loco pair with a laser, or if they can stand being a few degrees apart.

Your assumptions on the signal level are without a dedicated, directional AP pointed at the house. There is no easy way to predict what the signal between the two buildings will be with dedicated, directional point-to-point hardware.

http://www.radiolabs.com/stations/wifi_calc.html

Rounding up to 0.1 km and holding target RSSI at a healthy -35 dBm at the upper range for 5 GHz, a 200 mW Tx radio chain would need to be paired with 19 dBi antennas at a 30% SAD factor. That doesn't take into account cable assembly loss or anything other than pure outdoor free space propagation. But to your point, that calculator is probably assuming isotropic radiation.

 

[tinsletown]

Like I said in my original post, my laptop picks up the signal, I'm on it right now, so I don't think I need much to get it working on my PC.

 

[tinsletown]

vmfantom, you said in your original post that I could try some dual band antennas with 9dBi gain, I found some on newegg.com, are these what you are talking about?

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA3M32BA4568&cm_re=dual_band_antennas-_-9SIA3M32BA4568-_-Product

 

[vmfantom]

vmfantom, you said in your original post that I could try some dual band antennas with 9dBi gain, I found some on newegg.com, are these what you are talking about?

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA3M32BA4568&cm_re=dual_band_antennas-_-9SIA3M32BA4568-_-Product

Yep, something like that. eBay seems to have better prices in this category than Newegg or Amazon. You can search for "9 dbi dual band antenna", "12 dbi dual band antenna", "15 dbi dual band antenna", etc. The really tall ones do better with a base mount (like the https://store.rokland.com/products/alfa-ars-as01-magnetic-base-mount-dock-for-rp-sma-antenna) to avoid rotating.

 

[tinsletown]

k, thanks, the NIC card comes with a nice base mount

I already ordered the point to point from Ubiquiti, should be here tomorrow but my brother in law is on nights and I have to work all week, gonna go ahead and order some antennas as well, I keep this post updated with my results

I searched for 15 dBi, gain and some came up, what is the highest they make if you know off of the top of your head, if not I will keep searching

 

[tinsletown]

The modem we currently have is just a cheap one with no antennas, gonna order a new modem with two antennas, and 6 new 15 dBi gain antennas, two for the modem and 4 for my NIC card.

I'll try that first, if it don't work, I'll try the point to point since I already ordered it. I'll post my results as soon as I can. Thanks again everybody!

 

[tinsletown]

Ok, so I starting hearing her SSID a few days ago but it is really slow. I ordered the 15dbi antennas and have 4 of them hooked up to my NIC. Download speed seem to be just a little faster and a little more reliable. I sent the point to point system back since we won't be able to run the cabling until spring.

Are you guys sure a range extender wont help to speed up my download speeds since I'm now getting a good signal? I'm now getting 2 out of 4 bars on windows 10.

 

[vmfantom]

That's not what a range extender does, unfortunately. It would cut throughput (Mbps) in half for the modulation/coding/RSSI at its specific location. The only benefit to an extender is if you somehow had it halfway in the yard between your two houses, so that its additional gain on the second leg could hopefully compensate for the 50%+ deduction in throughput. Otherwise, an extender would just repeat an already diminished signal at its already diminished throughput, and then cut that in half. It's like trying to clean up a polluted river too far downstream of the BP oil refinery, you'd need to be near the source of the problem to fix it. (Basically, if the source has decreased its modulation from 256-QAM to 16-QAM due to free space loss across the yards, your throughput is down by around 30% already. You can't increase the modulation once that's lost. An extender just increases the coverage without increasing Mbps.)

Not sure if this is much cheaper or if there are other property lines to consider, but if you want the highest signal strength and throughput, you could cable across the yards rather than just cable to directional antennas.

 

[tinsletown]

That's not what a range extender does, unfortunately. It would cut throughput (Mbps) in half for the modulation/coding/RSSI at its specific location. The only benefit to an extender is if you somehow had it halfway in the yard between your two houses, so that its additional gain on the second leg could hopefully compensate for the 50%+ deduction in throughput. Otherwise, an extender would just repeat an already diminished signal at its already diminished throughput, and then cut that in half. It's like trying to clean up a polluted river too far downstream of the BP oil refinery, you'd need to be near the source of the problem to fix it. (Basically, if the source has decreased its modulation from 256-QAM to 16-QAM due to free space loss across the yards, your throughput is down by around 30% already. You can't increase the modulation once that's lost. An extender just increases the coverage without increasing Mbps.)

Not sure if this is much cheaper or if there are other property lines to consider, but if you want the highest signal strength and throughput, you could cable across the yards rather than just cable to directional antennas.

Ya, its a clear line of sight with a small creek we could dig through. We are out in the country and have slow DSL at 300mbps i think, I was just downloading at like 220 so I think I might be good. Thanks for the idea about the antennas, they really helped.

 

[nigelivey]

Ah, that's a different story Post your results if you have a chance, you can use an app like WiFi Analyser to measure your RSSI before and after. It would be good to know where in the yard the SSID falls below the noise floor and can't be detected. So if it doesn't work, you could calculate the amount of gain that it falls short by. And if it does work, it would be interesting to know if you needed to line up the Loco pair with a laser, or if they can stand being a few degrees apart.

Your assumptions on the signal level are without a dedicated, directional AP pointed at the house. There is no easy way to predict what the signal between the two buildings will be with dedicated, directional point-to-point hardware.

http://www.radiolabs.com/stations/wifi_calc.html

Rounding up to 0.1 km and holding target RSSI at a healthy -35 dBm at the upper range for 5 GHz, a 200 mW Tx radio chain would need to be paired with 19 dBi antennas at a 30% SAD factor. That doesn't take into account cable assembly loss or anything other than pure outdoor free space propagation. But to your point, that calculator is probably assuming isotropic radiation.

Not quite sure of your point? A dedicated point to point link using directional radios such as the LocoM2 suggested have nothing to do with his current signal levels, they are hardwired each end to a router/WAP. At the distance hes talking about, and a clear LOS the P2P link will out perform his WAN connection.