Question Outbuilding networking - WIFI access points

[meerkatpc]

Hi there

We are are in the process of doing some outbuilding conversions made up of units for letting.
Because of thick, stone walls, a CAT-6 cable has been wired to each unit to provide a WIFI access point.

The CAT-6 cables from the units are wired to the same "control room".

Also wired to the "control room" is an ethernet CAT-7 cable from our house router.

We are looking to provide internet access to guests through the house router by linking to the "control room" and so to the access points.

The "control room" is about 30m from house, the farthest access point about another 40m.

Questions:

Is this a viable set-up?
If so, what equipment would we need to connect the CAT-7 cable arriving at the "control room" to the CAT-6 cables?

Are there alternative cheaper wifi solutions? - just that decent WIFI access point devices look pretty expensive.

Any help appreciated as always.

 

[bill001g]

Be careful cat7 was never finalized standard and provider no real benefit over cat6a. In addition you only need cat6a if you are going to run 10gbit. In many cases you just paid too much for cable but there are massive amounts of fake cable.

Key here is make sure the cable is pure copper and not CCA. In addition it can not be that flat or thin cable it must have wire size 22-24. You need nothing better than cat5e for gigabit ethernet.

All you would need is small switch in the control room. It mostly depends on how many ports you need.

There are 2 key things than make actual AP more expensive. Many have the ability to be centrally managed which is important if you have a lot of them. Much less so if you only have 2 or 3. The other common feature on real AP is they can be powered via ethernet. This allows them to be mounted where there is no AC power outlet.

So if you do not need either of those feature you can just as easily buy inexpensive routers and run them in AP mode. All depends on how fancy of wifi signal you need. Obviously you will pay more for a tri band wifi6e device but if your needs are simple there are many routers under $50 that will easily run as AP.

 

[meerkatpc]

Thanks for the advice bill001g.

Correction:
Just remembered that the cat7 I mentioned running from the house to the control room is actually a (outdoor shielded) cat6 (Kenable).
Not cat6a, but at least a good brand.
We had thought of using cat7, but decided not to as the cabling from the control room to the APs were cat6.

APs (wall-mounted) will be anything up to 7, so presumably that means an 8 port switch in the control room?
I'm thinking of getting a TP-Link 8-Port Gigabit Ethernet Switch and maybe try 1 AP at the farthest point first.

PoE not a must, as each AP next to power source.

My main concern is capacity.
Will cat6 provide sufficient bandwidth if all 7 APs used at the same time?

As far as I'm aware, 10gbit only works in cat6 up to max 55m, compared to approx. 70m farthest AP from our router.

 

[bill001g]

The first thing to remember is you are talking about wifi nothing is going to even come close to 1gbit even if you were to spend big money on wifi6e stuff.

So even if we ignore the wifi what is the actual usage. Are you running some kind of local server in your house. What application do you have that will exceed 1gbit. The cables are only 1 small part. You would have to upgrade all your equipment to be able to use it. The switch much have 10gbit ports and your server would need 10gbit ports.

It would be a very rare case that you will ever exceed the 1gbit bandwidth going back to the house. The switch itself though is capable of running every port at 1gbit up and 1gbit down all at the same time......not that there is any realistic use case for actually doing that.

 

[meerkatpc]

Not running any server - I think I'm just getting ahead of myself (future proofing etc...) of what capacity is needed.

We're only talking about internet access for guests from the 7APs, which would be through our "shared" house router.
(House router is FTTP - up to 1gbit)

 

[bill001g]

They you will be fine.

In general there is no need to buy fancy patch cables since it is highly likely you will damage them in some way before you can actually use 10gbit.

If you were running cable say in a wall then it is a bit harder to say. There is not a huge difference in price between say cat5e or cat6a. Used to be more difference but lately the cost of the copper metal has increased the cost of all cables so much the extra manufacturing costs to make cat6a cable is less visible. Pretty much the cost of cat5e cable has been increased to almost the cost of cat6a is what has happened.

If you already have your wires I would just use them you will have no issue running at 1gbit....likely you will not get more than about 300mbps max from a AP anyway.

 

[meerkatpc]

Many thanks ... will probably get someone in to do the work, but having some knowledge beforehand is a big plus.
best wishes