I guess I'm basically looking for an OpenWrt supported device where I can screw on a single directional antenna to the 5GHz Wi-Fi, preferably around the 50 € mark, so I can get two for about 100 €.
Here's the reason:
My brother is currently building his house right next to mine. My driveway goes to the west, his driveway goes to the east. Our respective rear side windows are literally 10m apart.
Because of some dispute about who's going to dig the 200m trench from the street to his house through his driveway to run the fiber in (the local phone company claims they did that 20 years ago, and it's not their fault the empty pipe seams to be blocked somewhere at the halfway mark, hence they're not going to pay, although "digging right to the concrete wall of the basement" is part of their fiber offer), we're assuming his fiber connection will come at the of the year the earliest. He wants to move in a couple of weeks.
So I'm looking for a way to cover the distance between our houses.
Thing's I'm trying to achieve:
no digging of trenches between our house
no wires over the ground since the lawnmower will pick them up and destroy them
weather resistant for both, up to 40°C in the summer and -20°C in the winter
no electric wire at all to cover for different house potentials
hence, basically no wire
preferably 1GBit effective speed
at least 500MBit effective speed
preferably all indoor mounts to not having to drill holes through the outside walls of our houses
We can put our equipment within the houses at the walls facing the respective other house
We can put our equipment within the houses at the roof facing the respective other house, but both roofs have living space grade insulation and have proper European roof tiles
I'd really like to have all OpenWrt devices, but as for pricing, this needs to compete with something like this:
So my ideal was to find two routers
that are supported by OpenWrt
have 5GHz Wi-Fi,
have external 5GHz antennas,
support swapping the antennas to directional ones and
are not more than twice the price compared to the non-OpenWrt ones I just linked.
In intend for 5GHz Wi-Fi to travel through two exterior walls and a total amount of exactly 15 meters (50 feet) of entirely personally owned airspace. That alone is "almost" possible with any regular router I own, except the performance isn't the best.
My upstream internet connection is 500MBit, and I'm aiming for the Wi-Fi building-to-building link to at least match that, double that if possible.
That's why I thought about replacing omni-directional antennas with single-directional ones.
I'm not trying to cover a campground-size distance.
Are you drunk? Why do you keep recommending an up to 10MBit low power protocol for IoT devices designed for long distance connections with literally no relation to and no support by OpenWRT as a substitute to a GBit connection of a distance I can literally throw my router?
And as I made it clear I will not put any holes in any walls, posting images to drills and shovels isn't a proper response either. That's why this thread is called "wireless bridge on 5GHz".
Please both, sober up and refrain from comments towards the directions your previous comments here went so far.
You are not going to get effective 500-1000 MBit/s wireless throughput[*] through two exterior walls plus 15m, that is not going to happen.
Therefore the strong hints towards drills and shovels are spot on. Just to extend on this, using pre-confectioned fibre cables would make most sense, not because of the better speed, but to avoid all funny aspects of electrical potential differences, lightning or electric shock. Simply feed it through a garden hose (or better) and dig it below regional freezing depth and you're done, 15m through entirely privately owned property isn't an issue for two men with shovels (should be done in an afternoon) - even less for the heavier kind of equipment that tends to come with building a house.
--
[*] that is hard enough using wifi7 and MLO 5+6 GHz within a single room and direct/ unobstructed line of sight already
I would try a CPE pointed at the existing router in the other house (move it close to the wall / window). This may not reach 500 Mb but it will be quite fast. The Nanostation ac loco is decent for this, though the small RAM is becoming a problem, and there is a bug in version 24 for it, you must use version 23. Dish type CPEs like the TP Link CPE710 could also be used-- probably overkill for 50 meters and two walls-- also they are harder to physically mount up. If you try to go through a window make sure it is not metallic coated "low E" glass common in newer buildings.
You could also string fiber overhead. It needs to be supported with rope or wire or be the kind with an integral "messenger" support wire.
Earthworks are to consider too, ask local cable installer, nowadays there are techniques to get short (100m) cable runs without digging trenches for weeks.
Next is putting 2x2 directional antenna outside, with a router with detachable antennas, depends on climate whats best.
Or whole AP, this really needs to consider climate like condensing humidity, long frost, long periods of tropical sun etc.
I think you’re better off with a dedicated wireless bridge. There will be some software to help with pointing and maximizing the signal strength.
I’ve had luck with Unifi equipment, even pointing through windows and jury-rigging with zip-ties. Not through walls though. But of course outdoor mounting on a wall or pole is much more likely to provide a good connection even in bad weather. And the cat won’t knock down the antenna.
Hey all. Sorry that it took me so long to respond, but things were a little busy the last week.
As I tried to explain, using cables is literally no option. If that was what it takes to do it sufficiently, we'd rather blow the whole thing off.
Luckily, a colleague of mine offered me to test out his pair of TP-Link CPE710 devices, which work "kind of nicely".
Putting one antenna in my house and the other one in my brothers' only gets me to 100 MBit. I'd call that "just enough" even though I'd hoped for more.
My brother has a cable tube from his basement to an old barn, where he intends to run a cable and add another access point to have good Wi-Fi coverage in his garden.
This way, we can:
Put a TP-Link 710 in my attic.
Put another TP-Link 710 in the attic of my brothers' barn (which means both antennas are inside).
Cover in total about 30m of Wi-Fi distance.
at least max out my 250MBit internet connection
To my surprise, the TP-Link 710 devices are supported by OpenWRT. That's exactly what I was looking for.
But to be honest, since the link from one 710 to the other is only considered a "cable through the air" and the management interface of the 710 devices can be bound to a VLAN, I'd not even do that but use those with factory firmwares.
Thank you all for pointing me in any direction. Even everyone telling me fibers would be the way to go was probably right if it was any kind of long-term installation. But since we're hoping of getting rid of the setup once my brother's WAN fiber gets connected (we're expecting between 3 and 6 months from now) we agreed upon not doing anything at all if it wasn't achievable with Wi-Fi.
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