[stevenc]

^ Correct. A mesh system isnt going to magically work over a long distance. You need 2 directional antennas point at each other to travel long distances.

I agree with Ubiquiti. I use their gear when ever possible.

https://www.ubnt.com/airmax/litebeam-ac-gen2/

[TS29849228]

Thank you all for your responses,

I tried, repeaters, powerline adaptors and mesh systems. None of them worked, I believe because the pool house is just too far. Not only is it about a 30 -50 foot walk, but there are concrete stairs and a pool pump and a lot of foliage in between. The pool house is also about 30 feet below sea level in comparison to our main house.

We then got a contractor from our internet company out here to see how easy it would be to install a router in the poolhouse: its hard. There is no wire in the poolhouse, nearest available input is 50 feet away on the other side of the main house.

We went with a secondary internet account for 30 dollar a month internet service w/ free installation. The free installation was a steal for us, because the guy had to drag a wire in from god knows where and it took him almost 3 hours to finish the job.

Summary:
Repeaters are for the people who just "want internet in my kitchen, gosh darn it"
Powerline adapters and mesh to me are pretty much the same thing. Our pool house has its own circuit breaker.
Pro installation w/ secondary router is for anyone who wants a long lasting system in a pool house that is more than 15ft away from main house.

Thank you again, this community gets questions answered faster than the f80 itself haha

[zx10guy]

Originally Posted by TS29849228

Thank you all for your responses,

I tried, repeaters, powerline adaptors and mesh systems. None of them worked, I believe because the pool house is just too far. Not only is it about a 30 -50 foot walk, but there are concrete stairs and a pool pump and a lot of foliage in between. The pool house is also about 30 feet below sea level in comparison to our main house.

We then got a contractor from our internet company out here to see how easy it would be to install a router in the poolhouse: its hard. There is no wire in the poolhouse, nearest available input is 50 feet away on the other side of the main house.

We went with a secondary internet account for 30 dollar a month internet service w/ free installation. The free installation was a steal for us, because the guy had to drag a wire in from god knows where and it took him almost 3 hours to finish the job.

Summary:
Repeaters are for the people who just "want internet in my kitchen, gosh darn it"
Powerline adapters and mesh to me are pretty much the same thing. Our pool house has its own circuit breaker.
Pro installation w/ secondary router is for anyone who wants a long lasting system in a pool house that is more than 15ft away from main house.

Thank you again, this community gets questions answered faster than the f80 itself haha

Without seeing actual pictures of your layout, it is probably still possible for a point to point wireless bridge to be set up. As many of us have stated, this is NOT the same as a wireless mesh system.

You missed the opportunity when you had that installer pull the cable needed to stand up a second Internet circuit to the pool house. You should have asked if he would pull some additional Cat6a cabling with the cable he is pulling anyway and slip him a $50 for his trouble.

On your summary points:

Repeaters/range extenders are just bad news in general and should be avoided at all costs. There are now other options out there which negate the need to use any of this crap. Unfortunately, the options do cost a bit more but how much is it worth it to you to have a proper system that works 100% of the time?

Powerline adapters should never be grouped with mesh wireless systems. They're not even in the same category. Powerline adapters are a technology which uses your existing power feed/Romex wiring as a transmission medium for data. The system uses a carrier frequency to send data over the copper power wiring. This is why Powerline adapters don't work across circuit breakers....as least those I've seen.

Mesh systems use a carrier frequency which is typically 5GHz to create a wireless backbone to link the APs in a mesh system together. As I stated mesh systems are designed to be point to point with any given AP and not to have multiple APs along the path to the wired gateway (which is the AP that is plugged into the LAN via Ethernet). As I noted above, mesh systems still have to adhere to basic WiFi/RF operating principles of only one device able to talk on the frequency/channel at a time and most of these systems are equipped with built in omnidirectional antennas which limit their range and placement.

On your last point, you didn't need to have a second Internet service installed if that installer was able to pull the cable to the pool house to stand up the second circuit. As I said above, you missed a golden opportunity to have Ethernet cables pulled for cheap. What this would have allowed you to do is run the new Internet service for what ever obligation period you are required and then kill the service. Or if there is no obligation to keep the service running for a set time frame, cancel whenever you feel like it. Now you have the Ethernet cables in place to stand up an AP that can use your existing Internet service along with being on the same network as your main house.

[zx10guy]

Something else I just thought of which might be an option for you. What type of Internet service do you have? Cable? If so, you might be good after all. There is a technology called MoCA (DirecTV has a similar one they call DECA). Just like Powerline adapters, MoCA uses RG6 coax cabling which is in a large number of homes as the data cable for networking. You need MoCA adapters on both ends to establish a network link. If you opt to use DirecTV's implementation, you can go on Fleabay and find DECA adapters there. I'm currently using DECA in my home for the 4 DirecTV HD DVRs I have. It's been for the most part trouble free. I think I had to power cycle the DECA adapter which is the LAN gateway for the system once. I seem to recall both systems support up to a 200 or so Mbps transmission rate. I know the system works well as HD content streams fine between DVRs in my home.

[WingZeroX5]

Originally Posted by zx10guy

Don't waste your time on that TP-Link. It's nothing more than another fancy repeater.

PS....I used to do consulting for Federal Agencies with wireless projects like this.

How is a repeater the same as an access point? They're two different things...