Internet AP alongside a mesh system?

[Mark Lewis]

My house has eero mesh all over and it works great (inside 1m thick stone walls) - I even have a couple of eeros mouted outside and hardwired to inside so I get wifi on the drive.

But....I need to get internet to my barn (alos 800mm walls) so option 1 is a wire but that is not as easy as it sounds....so would an AP do the job and then once the signal is in the barn use eero again? (its got multiple rooms)

My point is - does the AP ONLY talk to itself and wont confuse the wifi mesh system.....so basically the AP is just a wireless wire between to points and not transmitting any wifi signal itself that will confuse my devices outside that can see the mesh sent signal?

Have I understood AP units right - just operate in their own little bubble to replace a wire?

[miniman]

Is there power to the barn? Assuming so, power line would be a good option.

[Mark Lewis]

miniman said:

Is there power to the barn? Assuming so, power line would be a good option.

Does that actually work? Sounds a bit iffy sending the internet down a powerline????

There is power there, although it goes through a seperate consumer unit fuse box....but that is fed off the main unit in the house.....so its all one big single feed system.

[miniman]

Yes it works very well, I’ve done similar to send internet to the end of the garden, via 2 consumer units.

[Mr Pointy]

miniman said:

Yes it works very well, I’ve done similar to send internet to the end of the garden, via 2 consumer units.

It CAN work very well but it's by no means guaranteed. It was dismal in my house.

[TownIdiot]

If you are using an access point why can't you use an eero instead?

[Captain_Morgan]

Really it depends, some devices will as a wifi bridge meaning you need a pair of them one at each end and then add your chose mesh nodes.

Some work just as access points so will beam a accessible wifi signal between buildings meaning your garage is also covered but will likely still need access points in the remote location.

you need to expect to connect these via cable in each location too.

The questions are:

How far is the remote location from the house
Is there a direct line of sight where you can mount the point to point bridges
How much speed are you expecting to need in the remote location

if you needs are low (10-100Mb/s) then power line is a posable option, however you need to test it.

Meaning you need to relocate a test mesh system to the remote location and install the power line devices to test, id suggest buying from amazon as if the test fails you have a easy return path.
ideally you want sockets as close to the consumer units and not on the end of extensions.

[Captain_Morgan]

TownIdiot said:

If you are using an access point why can't you use an eero instead?

Perhaps each time you transition between nodes you will see a slow down do at minimum its three nodes to get the signal inside the barn, it could possibly be 4-5 nodes to reach there.

This could cause throughput issues.

[Baldchap]

I have a building to building bridge in use that works exceptionally well (900mbish), though I accept for many this is overkill.

I also mesh one specific AP to another specific AP for one camera where there is only power (and now a PoE switch running the AP and camera). In my infrastructure I can tell AP1 to mesh only upstream and AP2 only downstream, with everything else not meshed, and it all works brilliantly.

I'm sure you'll have a variation of this configuration available on your APs.

[Mark Lewis]

so to answer questions - I have line of sight, distance between walls where an AP could go is 10m ish. The reason I dont want to use eero is I need an eeror in the house....hard wire through the 1m wall, new eero on the outside wall to send the signal...repeat other end - 4 eeros.

I assumed switching two eeros mounted outside with two AP would be cheaper....better?? (also I have to put the eero outside in waterproof boxes as they arent made for external use.

[randlemarcus]

Mark Lewis said:

so to answer questions - I have line of sight, distance between walls where an AP could go is 10m ish. The reason I dont want to use eero is I need an eeror in the house....hard wire through the 1m wall, new eero on the outside wall to send the signal...repeat other end - 4 eeros.

I assumed switching two eeros mounted outside with two AP would be cheaper....better?? (also I have to put the eero outside in waterproof boxes as they arent made for external use.

Is the 10 meters outside subject to frequent hers of wildebeests, or pterodactyls? If you're drilling holes to the outside, probably better to run wire from inside the house to inside the barn?

[Captain_Morgan]

You haven’t said how much throughput your looking for but as said a cable is the cheapest route, if that doesn’t work then.

This is the next cheapest option powerlink.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/TL-PA4010PKIT-Passthrough...

Then your looking at point to point
https://www.amazon.co.uk/CPE467-Wireless-Ethernet-...

Or two of these
https://www.amazon.co.uk/TP-Link-MU-MIMO-Wireless-...

[thepritch]

We have a Google mesh setup in our house and have used a TP-Link powerlink to get an internet feed over to an annexe 30m away. There is a bit of speed loss, but we still get enough bandwidth to stream tv & video conferencing in that building whilst the main house is doing similar. Very usable. You connect to the same wifi network as you do in the main house so its seamless.

The electricity for the annexe is fed from main house consumer unit and has its own separate consumer unit inside.

They are cheap, so worth buying just to try and if they don’t work, you’ve only lost a few quid.