access point to repeater to ethernet client to ap good idea?

Currently my internet comes from a standard adsl wifi router which gets theinternet and organizes the local ip address's. Then to a repeater on the end of a barn. This allows the shed of on the far side of the barn to use the house's wifi via the repeater even though there is a barn in the way.

But you can only get wifi if you are in the window of the shed facing the end of the barn with the repeater on it. So first I though I would put a second repeater in the window of the shed filling the shed with internet. But I worried that two repeaters in a row might slow everything down. So I thought an access point in the shed with a wifi ethernet client adaptor pluggedinto it that would connect it to the repeater.

So if you were in the shed with a laptop you would go laptop -> wireless signal -> wifi access point -> network cable -> wireless ethernet client modeadaptor -> wireless signal -> universal repeater -> wireless signal -> adsl modem router which would give you a local ip address and internet access..

I worry though that in my ignorance there may be ramifications to this thatI have not realized. Does this sound like a viable solution, or will everything fail to route correctly? Will latency become a problem with the extrahops.

Thanks for any thoughts.

 

This is the kind of convoluted non-standard thing that someone can only
comment on if they've actually done it, or something very like it. With
luck someone in that category will be along shortly and will give you a
good answer. Personally I think it should "work" but for what values of
"work" remains to be seen. I doubt latency will be too much of a
problem, but you may get drop-outs, for example. Me I hate wireless
anyway; copper is more reliable

If nobody turns up who's done it then you'll have to become such a
person! See if you can acquire the necessary kit without too great an
expenditure (eBay, maybe), lash it up and try it. And post here about
how you got on, for the next person.

 

I presently support a similar setup.

We have the main router servicing the internet with it for our internal
LAN devices. We have an EnGenius ENH500 outdoor access point mounted on
the roof of a church with the antenna pointed at a remote building about
2 kilometers away.

The EnGenius uses power over Ethernet so no high voltage power was
needed up on the roof to power it. At the remote building we have an
identical unit on the roof pointed to the first building. The feed from
this box is going into a (dumb) bridge to feed the couple of PC's that
reside there.

The nice thing about using the EnGenius box is that they are directional
and have a range I believe of up to 15 Kilometers depending on what you
set the output and receive gain settings at. Set the power and receiver
too high and you get distortion if the distance between them is not too
large.

Thier cost is not too high and here is a link to a UK supplier, not that
I have ordered anything from them but it will give you an idea of what
is available.

The alternative is to just get one of these for your remote building and
put it on the roof or outdoors as long as you aim it at your current
barn mounted box. Set them to the same channel and such and you should
be good to go.

http://www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk/Shop/ShopDetail.asp?ProductID=13099

 

Are these actually legal in the UK?

 

With multiple venders in the UK selling them I'd suspect they should be
legal but might you might need a license of some kind.

Here is the info for contacting their UK support people. Give them a
ring or drop them an Email and see what they have to say. It would be
nice if you were to reply back here with what they have to say on the
subject in case others in the UK are interested in the product.

Technical support opening hours are 9.15 am - 5pm Monday to Friday.
Support is through EnGenius' UK Distribution Partners, Solwise
TELEPHONE 01482 644938
EMAIL

Ours are in use at USA locations and are legal there as long as we stay
off of channel 14 which strangely enough was not disabled when we choose
the USA radio specs in the menu. Fines can be quite high in the USA if
we use channel 14 as it can interfere with some fire and police radios.

 

Sorry should have replied earlier.

Anyway I cobbled together some old bits I had. A WAG54GS router with the dhcp turned off and connected by an ethernet cable to an Edimax EW-7206APg access point in client mode. The edimax has a small directional antenna plugged into it (one of these corner type ones). This points to my repeater on the corner of the barn and picks it up just fine across 75m of open farmyard.. The repeater can also see around the corner to our house and pick up the internet from there.

It all seems to work fine. No gotchas have appeared, skype and so forth allseem to work transparently. You lose about 10% of the internet speed goingfrom around 6mbps to 5 and a bit. Ping goes from 35 to 70. But not so you would notice in practice. I have not tried any internal network tests I'm afraid as I don't do much of that. I can still control both boxes setup pages wirelessly on their fixed ips even when in client mode which is nice.

I did try using just one edimax box on its own to repeat the repeater but it was too much and while it worked it cut the speed right down to half a mbor so. So a client box plugged into an access point it is.

I already had the bits as left overs from the past. I think I bought them on ebay over the years and so am probably using 25-30 of stuff or so and 10 pounds of electricity a year.

So success you can now connect to the WAG54GS in the distant shed and surf the internet just as if you were in the main house.

Thank you for your thoughts, which were largely out of my price range but interesting none the less.

 

I have a very similar setup router to AP to AP to cisco switch. I found
that the overall throughput of data was faster when I slowed the radio
set-up down i.e. 802.11 g rather than n

Slower radio speed but faster overall throughput (as tested with iperf)
,I presume it was down to fewer TCP retransmits due to wireless errors

Just a thought