[SOLVED] New POE Access Point weak signal

[DAG93]

Good Evening Everyone,

I was reaching out as I am running into an issue that I am having a hard time solving. I am trying to help a friend get signal to his LG tv in his detached garage which is about 60feet from his actual access point. The kicker is his whole house and garage is made of concrete. We got a POE access point which I will link below but the signal in the garage is still incredibly weak which is odd as we got the access point outside of the home which I figured would be good enough mounted up about 7ft and only about 40ft from the garage itself. I have a 100ft run of cat 5e to power this. I did a test run on my pc prior and all seemed well. Think it’s not getting enough power? Would adding another help? This device is set to work in mesh, if I added another could a cable be run directly to the tv from the injector on the receiving access point? Please advise! Thank you!

TP-Link EAP225-Outdoor | Omada AC1200 Wireless Gigabit Outdoor Access Point | Business WiFi Solution w/ Mesh Support, Seamless Roaming & MU-MIMO | PoE Powered | SDN Integrated | Cloud Access & App https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07953S2F...abc_EHXPP5CP3XD12ZZTV6J6?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

 

[kanewolf]

Good Evening Everyone,

I was reaching out as I am running into an issue that I am having a hard time solving. I am trying to help a friend get signal to his LG tv in his detached garage which is about 60feet from his actual access point. The kicker is his whole house and garage is made of concrete. We got a POE access point which I will link below but the signal in the garage is still incredibly weak which is odd as we got the access point outside of the home which I figured would be good enough mounted up about 7ft and only about 40ft from the garage itself. I have a 100ft run of cat 5e to power this. I did a test run on my pc prior and all seemed well. Think it’s not getting enough power? Would adding another help? This device is set to work in mesh, if I added another could a cable be run directly to the tv from the injector on the receiving access point? Please advise! Thank you!

TP-Link EAP225-Outdoor | Omada AC1200 Wireless Gigabit Outdoor Access Point | Business WiFi Solution w/ Mesh Support, Seamless Roaming & MU-MIMO | PoE Powered | SDN Integrated | Cloud Access & App https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07953S2F...abc_EHXPP5CP3XD12ZZTV6J6?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

It is probably the TV not being able to transmit back to the AP. Adding a second unit, on the outside of the garage and bringing the network to the TV might help. Your friend will need to verify that the TV has an ethernet port.
It is difficult to predict WIFI behavior accurately.

 

[bill001g]

Concrete does a excellent job blocking wifi and most other radio and even sound. I was surprised how little traffic noise was in a commercial poured concrete building that was next to a big highway. It also got no cellphone coverage

It actually takes almost nothing to block wifi signals. Your microwave over runs on the same 2.4g frequency. It puts out 1000 times the maximum power of a router but the amount allowed by law to leak out is only a tiny fraction of what wifi devices are allowed to transmit at but you can still see though the glass door.

The only real solution to concrete is to run some kind of wire through it. A outdoor client-bridge (likely called a repeater now days) would be your best option as described above post.

 

[DAG93]

It is probably the TV not being able to transmit back to the AP. Adding a second unit, on the outside of the garage and bringing the network to the TV might help. Your friend will need to verify that the TV has an ethernet port.
It is difficult to predict WIFI behavior accurately.

Thank you for the response! Have you ever seen someone use the non POE port (typically used to connect to the switch) of the injector to run data to a device? The TV definitely has an Ethernet port.

 

[DAG93]

Concrete does a excellent job blocking wifi and most other radio and even sound. I was surprised how little traffic noise was in a commercial poured concrete building that was next to a big highway. It also got no cellphone coverage

It actually takes almost nothing to block wifi signals. Your microwave over runs on the same 2.4g frequency. It puts out 1000 times the maximum power of a router but the amount allowed by law to leak out is only a tiny fraction of what wifi devices are allowed to transmit at but you can still see though the glass door.

The only real solution to concrete is to run some kind of wire through it. A outdoor client-bridge (likely called a repeater now days) would be your best option as described above post.

Thank you for your feedback! The plan is to get the access point (attached in the link in my first post) mounted to the outside of the house and go from there. Trying to figure out if another access point is Necessary or not? I’ve never used POE so I was also wondering if the 100foot cable might be dropping the power?

 

[bill001g]

This is where it would be nice if words actually had a meaning rather than whatever the marketing guys decide.

802.3at/af is the official standard for PoE. It is designed to function at maximum ethernet length of 100 METERS. The downside is because it uses 48 volts to get that distance it is a active protocol that only provides power when requested.

Other forms of PoE are proprietary and tend to have different limitations on distance. Most these run at lower voltages so can not deliver the same amount of power at the same distance.

 

[DAG93]

This is where it would be nice if words actually had a meaning rather than whatever the marketing guys decide.

802.3at/af is the official standard for PoE. It is designed to function at maximum ethernet length of 100 METERS. The downside is because it uses 48 volts to get that distance it is a active protocol that only provides power when requested.

Other forms of PoE are proprietary and tend to have different limitations on distance. Most these run at lower voltages so can not deliver the same amount of power at the same distance.

Im going to try a shorter cable first before I get to deep into this to see if that improves quality. In case I need to add another access point (most likely will). If I add another access point (which will be mounted to the garage and plugged in on the inside) could I hardwire it to the tv? The injector will have the Ethernet jack empty since it will not be connected to the router. Would that send data if I plugged it into the TV? Might be a dumb question but I have had extenders that worked that way.

 

[Ralston18]

Is MoCA viable?

https://www.lifewire.com/what-is-a-moca-network-5181043

https://www.techreviewer.com/learn-about-tech/ethernet-over-coax-a-complete-guide-to-moca-adapters/

https://us.hitrontech.com/learn/how-fast-is-ethernet-over-coaxial/

 

[bill001g]

The device you want to mount on the garage it not a AP. A AP like a router is considered a "server". End device say like a cell phone or wifi in a tv are "client" and connect to the "server". In general a server can not connect to another server.

What you need is a device that can act as a client. Although a tv likely doesn't support it you could use a USB wifi nic card and run a USB cable outside.

So it all depends on what the so called "ap" you are buying can do. It appears it might be able to run as a client device. This is made even more messy because it also support "MESH" stuff which is always proprietary.

 

[gggplaya]

I have an garage that's about 20 yards from my house. But Power is wired from my main breaker in my house to a subpanel in my garage. If his garage is set up the same way with a subpanel, he should get a powerline adapter. If his garage is wired separately to the power pole with it's own meter, then this won't work.

I used a powerline adapter and a ubiquiti outdoor capable(necessary for temperature range) access point to install inside my garage. I needed it for a security camera and for wifi inside my garage. Works great and I get a solid 50-60mbps inside while I work on my car or whatever.

If it doesn't work, or you're getting slow speeds. You may need to move the breaker to the other pole inside the breaker box.

I'm currently using ZyZel units, but I had 1 die already due to the temperatures in my garage. If these units die, I'll try out the Mikrotik https://mikrotik.com/product/pl7510gi#fndtn-downloads powerline unit because it's outdoor temperature rated for -40c to 60c, but not outdoor dust or water rated. What's nice is this also has a POE output. It's also AV2 as well.