[SOLVED] Long Range WLAN inside a building ?

[epiphron]

Hi everyone,
I'll be soon moving into a new appartment. It has a basement, which is 5 floors lower.
I need to find a solution to bring a LAN connection down there, mainly for my 3D printing server.

What would be my best bet ?
I've got a 21dBi 2.4GHz grid antenna laying around, will it be enough for Wifi ?
And what about a point-to-point wireless bridge like the Ubiquiti PowerBeam ? It seems super expensive, and I'm not sure about penetration...

I don't need a lot of bandwidth, I will only transfer some Gcodes and probably have some IoT stuff down there.

My dream would be to have something like a transparent Ethernet-over-LoRa connection, but that doesn't seem to exist.
Finally should I rather go with lower or higher frequencies ? The building is recent, made out of steel-reinforced concrete.

Thanks for helping out,
Regards,
Frédéric

 

[bill001g]

It doesn't work real well to try to blast signal though concrete. Point to point device have more allowed power and they concentrate the power. Problem is like most materials concrete will actually absorb at a higher rate as you increase the power. So you will get a little more though but it doesn't work to say double the transmit power and expect double the power to pass though.

Consider a microwave oven it runs on the same 2.4g at 1000 times the power. You can see though the glass but the amount of signal that is allowed to pass is only a tiny fraction of what you router is allowed to transmit. So it does not take much to block wifi. They put a energy film on the windows where I worked. The AP used to work outside but after you got no signal even though you could see the AP though the window.

Really this is a try it and hope but I seriously doubt it will work. It almost would be better to put the antenna outside the building and shoot it down the side.

Do you have any other options. How much control do you have over the building. Can you run any kind of wires.

There are not many options most recommendation for houses will not work. Those are moca via coax wires and powerline, but powerline likely will not work. There are uncommon things like a private dsl if a telephone wire would run between the locations.

 

[epiphron]

Thanks for your answer !

Okay, so if I understand right there's probably no point in investing into 2-3Watt wifi boosters (and I mean I don't want the neighbours to lose their signal because of me running an open-air microwave 😆)

I have about zero control over the building itself, so I really wouldn't want to conceal wifi repeaters all over the place 🙃

But I like your idea of getting to the outside... That might work, if I put an AP in a waterproof box on the balcony and try to shoot the signal down the side. A little sketchy but it might work.

I don't understand why there aren't any LR wlan options over 433MHz or 868MHz, even with low bandwidth... RC control links TBS Crossfire or ExpressLRS have crazy range and penetration, I don't know what their datarate is however.

Regards,

 

[bill001g]

Ubiquiti makes 900mhz equipment I think, been a while since I look for it.

I forget the actual limit. 1 watt is for omni directional stuff, directional equipment can go higher. In most cases the equipment already has the maximum legal amount of transmit power. Any kind of so called booster will be illegal. Since they are illegal they do not have FCC certification so there is no way to tell what it does. Since these companies are dishonest for making the device they would not care if they ripped off their customers either and sold a box that did not actually do what they say.

In the end concrete is very good at eating wifi so I can't say about 900mhz.

I would not try to build your own outdoor stuff. Ubiquiti has outdoor stuff for very cheap. They sell stuff like their nanostation loco for about $50 each. So for about $100 you would have a very solid solution.....the device have to have direct line of sight. These can go many miles in perfect conditions

 

[Ralston18]

Unrelated to "wireless"...

@epiphron

Wondering:

"I'll be soon moving into a new appartment. It has a basement, which is 5 floors lower.
I need to find a solution to bring a LAN connection down there, mainly for my 3D printing server. "

Is that basement solely under your control/lock & key with respect to access?

A 3D printer and server could sure be a tempting target....

 

[hang-the-9]

Hi everyone,
I'll be soon moving into a new appartment. It has a basement, which is 5 floors lower.
I need to find a solution to bring a LAN connection down there, mainly for my 3D printing server.

What would be my best bet ?
I've got a 21dBi 2.4GHz grid antenna laying around, will it be enough for Wifi ?
And what about a point-to-point wireless bridge like the Ubiquiti PowerBeam ? It seems super expensive, and I'm not sure about penetration...

I don't need a lot of bandwidth, I will only transfer some Gcodes and probably have some IoT stuff down there.

My dream would be to have something like a transparent Ethernet-over-LoRa connection, but that doesn't seem to exist.
Finally should I rather go with lower or higher frequencies ? The building is recent, made out of steel-reinforced concrete.

Thanks for helping out,
Regards,
Frédéric

You are not getting anything wireless networking through 5 floors into a basement. Need to run a cable or maybe powerline networking.