I just visited my friend Jen who owns a horse ranch in Washington state. She has 15 acres including the main house, horse barn, lower barn, extra auxiliary barn, workshop, tack room, arena, back cottage… you get the idea. She was just using the default wifi router that her ISP had provided, which only reached about 3 feet into the horse barn (the closest building to the house). And of course cell coverage is spotty there.
I did a bit of research and then purchased a TP Link directional outdoor wifi access point plus 100' of weatherproof ethernet cable. I was hoping to set it up as a wifi repeater, but since I couldn't get admin access to the DHCP server, I just gave it a static IP and set it up as a separate access point. It's a bit more hassle since people will have to join both networks separately. Warning: you will have to have access to a computer with an ethernet port to do the initial setup. We had to dig up an old-school MacBook Pro from 10 years ago since I forgot my ethernet adapter at home.
But boy does it work great! When I ran the first test by simply placing it facing out a first floor window, it easily reached over 100m down to the workshop and arena. Mounted outdoors and on the second story, I'm sure it will reach twice as far covering that whole side of the property. For less than $100, this setup is a super cost-effective way to extend wifi. You could get an omni-directional one, but the range will be reduced. It might even be better for some applications to simply get two of these and point them in different directions.
Comments