Internet/WiFi for new house

atyourlasthourrr

atyourlasthourrr

Inspired
I'm in the process of moving into a new house. This house comes with a "bonus" house which is basically a detached garage that has been converted into a small living space. This will be where I'll move my studio into.

My current house has a pretty standard router into modem setup that has been serving me well since I purchased them over 5 years ago.

I have very little experience setting up anything more complicated than what I have. My research has introduced me to more business grade options that can be more robust and provide adequate coverage to the new house and detached studio space.

Specifically the UniFi offerings have caught my eye.

Any tips/suggestions are definitely welcome! Thanks!
 
Without knowing more I’ll say it depends on the distance from your house to your future studio. I’d probably have an all-weather Ethernet (Cat5e or Cat6) line run under the ground between the two with a small Wi-Fi router at the end for the studio.

Wi-Fi is convenient but isn’t as robust. Trees, rocks, walls, and weather can hamper a Wi-Fi signal and reduce throughput. I’m in a house with adobe walls built in the late 30s and I could only get reasonably stable Wi-Fi indoors after adding a 3 station mesh system, and it still drops out in one corner of the house and in several areas of the back yard.

In the studio you could use Wi-Fi or Ethernet or a combination of both depending on the needs of the gear in the studio. You might need a small switch if you have a lot of Ethernet-only devices.
 
I was a professional network engineer in a former life (ok, not really dead and come back, but several years ago). Runs between buildings that don't share a common ground wire with copper ethernet is a bad idea - you can fry equipment that way if you're just plain unlucky, as the ground can shift. Better to use SFP modules and SM or MM fiber depending on length for that run between buildings. You could pretty easily put a UniFi switch and access point at the other end of that fiber run, even their smaller switches have options with SFP ports.
 
I have an outer building 35' from the main house and have no problem with wifi access in the outer building. I have a mesh access point in the main house about 45' from the outer building. The line of site is through framed walls. I do have trouble in other places outside when the nearest access point is on the other side of glass with metallic coating for sun protection.
 
Sorry for the newbie questions about all this. I've seen mesh get referenced a few times here.. I was considering putting a high coverage weather proof access point out on the wall facing the adjacent structure to provide coverage.

Would multiple mesh nodes be a superior solution to this?
 
Mesh is never superior to hardwired, but it's convenient when you can't run cable. The issue I have with mesh is that a radio can talk to one thing at a time, and it's uncommon to see mesh with dedicated backhaul on a separate channel, so you end up with everything on one channel and a lot of interference. Sure you see a full signal but behind the scenes, ugh.
 
atyourlasthourrr said:
I'm in the process of moving into a new house. This house comes with a "bonus" house which is basically a detached garage that has been converted into a small living space. This will be where I'll move my studio into.

My current house has a pretty standard router into modem setup that has been serving me well since I purchased them over 5 years ago.

I have very little experience setting up anything more complicated than what I have. My research has introduced me to more business grade options that can be more robust and provide adequate coverage to the new house and detached studio space.

Specifically the UniFi offerings have caught my eye.

Any tips/suggestions are definitely welcome! Thanks!
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Before buying anything, I would check to see how your current setup is working. Just run a speed test from the studio to see how fast or slow the wifi is. Most ISP's will sell or rent you a new router which may be much more capable.
 
chrisjnyc said:
Before buying anything, I would check to see how your current setup is working. Just run a speed test from the studio to see how fast or slow the wifi is. Most ISP's will sell or rent you a new router which may be much more capable.
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This is definitely something I plan to do.
 
The Ubiquiti / UniFi ecosystem is robust, has innate auto-mesh capabilities, and deep configuration options. My home network uses three of the flagship (ceiling mounted) access points, and it's blazingly fast. I also use their network switches and firewall. Good stuff, and super configurable. Also, the rack gear has blinky lights. Mmmm blinky lights.
 
Sleestak said:
The Ubiquiti / UniFi ecosystem is robust, has innate auto-mesh capabilities, and deep configuration options. My home network uses three of the flagship (ceiling mounted) access points, and it's blazingly fast. I also use their network switches and firewall. Good stuff, and super configurable. Also, the rack gear has blinky lights. Mmmm blinky lights.
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Any tips for my use case?

Sounds like you're enjoying your network!
 
The APs have great coverage. My home is 2 stories, so I have one AP upstairs on one end of the house, and one downstairs on the other end. The third AP is actually outside under our deck cover. Between those three, the entirety of the house and back / front / side yards are covered with a strong signal. I did set up multiple network segments: (1) trusted devices owned by us with regular security patches, such as smart phones, laptops, and desktops (2) smart(ish) devices / IOT gizmos, such as streaming boxes, game boxes, any other appliances that need internet access, but are firewalled off from everything in the house, and (3) the guest network for visitors, also firewalled off from everything else, but can access the printer. The primary network has priority for bandwidth.

My tips would be to follow the recommendations provided. Plug a computer directly into your modem and make sure you're getting the incoming wired internet speeds that you want. From there, just set up the mesh network. I happen to like the ceiling-mounted APs because they fit into my home's layout, but any of the form factors will work. Obviously, beaming through concrete / rebar / unobtanium will be detrimental to the signal, but you can experiment with the placement of the APs and measure the network speed in your studio. I have a 1 gig network coming into the house, and the wireless network can take advantage of it. Inside the house, the wired network is 10 gigs. That lets me transfer files to the NAS at higher speed.

If you don't mind getting your hands dirty, the ideal solution would be a wired network to the outbuilding. You can use outdoor-rated network cable, and put it in a shallow trench conduit. You can certainly start with the wireless setup and then determine whether you need actual copper wire.
 
Sleestak said:
If you don't mind getting your hands dirty, the ideal solution would be a wired network to the outbuilding. You can use outdoor-rated network cable, and put it in a shallow trench conduit. You can certainly start with the wireless setup and then determine whether you need actual copper wire.
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This was my plan precisely. Thanks for the additional info!

Are your AP's just WiFi signal boosters, or are they additional WiFi spots? You mentioned mesh, which is why I ask.

Just want to make sure I'm understanding everything clearly.
 
atyourlasthourrr said:
This was my plan precisely. Thanks for the additional info!

Are your AP's just WiFi signal boosters, or are they additional WiFi spots? You mentioned mesh, which is why I ask.

Just want to make sure I'm understanding everything clearly
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The Access Points are individual wifi spots, but when they're assigned to the same network, they auto-mesh and act together to provide coverage across the area.
 
Thalagyrt said:
Mesh is never superior to hardwired, but it's convenient when you can't run cable. The issue I have with mesh is that a radio can talk to one thing at a time, and it's uncommon to see mesh with dedicated backhaul on a separate channel, so you end up with everything on one channel and a lot of interference. Sure you see a full signal but behind the scenes, ugh.
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This person knows what they speak about.

Run cable. Deploy an AP on the cable in the shed. Future you will thank current you.
 
iaresee said:
This person knows what they speak about.

Run cable. Deploy an AP on the cable in the shed. Future you will thank current you.
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Thanks for the endorsement, haha.

Mesh is often misused as a term and I'm seeing that confusion here - meshing doesn't mean that all the access points are using the same network name and you can seamlessly hop from one to another. That's just client handoff and part of how WiFi's worked since the original 802.11b rev came out decades ago, and it's actually completely driven by the client's decision, so often you'll be scratching your head wondering why a client's talking to an AP clear across the building. Once a client passes around -74dB on their radio signal, they'll look for a new AP generally speaking, and if they find one with a better signal, they'll hop there.

Meshing specifically is when the wireless access point is connected upstream to another access point wirelessly. This usually (not always) uses the same radio for both clients and upstream, which means when you talk to it, it has to interrupt you, talk back upstream, then interrupt upstream, then talk back to you, repeat over and over very fast. This cuts your available throughput in half for each mesh hop you have to traverse, roughly. It can become awful very quickly, but for light usage, it can still be an improvement over one central AP.

Personally, I recommend 1 access point for roughly every 750 square feet you're covering, placed very strategically. This'll ensure optimal 5ghz coverage. People still think in terms of 2.4ghz coverage, which is much, much wider than 5ghz. But 5ghz and now 6ghz are really the future for lower latency and higher throughput.

Hope this helps at least one of you here! :)
 
Rock Chalk said:
Here is the system I have.....sure works well here, with our gigabit internet......very easy set up too.....View attachment 148826

https://www.netgear.com/home/wifi/mesh/rbk853/
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I can vouch for this. Exact same system I have. My outdoor studio building is 23' ft from my main house. This mesh system comes with three routers. Two are in my house and one is in my studio building. The distance between the main (wired) router in my house and the mesh router in my studio is approximately 30'. The main router is near a window in my house and has a decent line-of-sight to the studio (but not the third mesh router in there so it has to punch through the studio wall). I have cable internet service of 1Gbps and I average about 450 Mbps in my studio from the mesh router placed in there. It is a very good mesh router system. Hope that helps.
 
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