So I want to add an internet router out in my new garage. There was conduit laid down when I had the electrical hooked up to run wires out there. Can I just plug in CAT5 to my existing router and put it out there or do I need to do anything special? I have a router/modem combo for my AT&T fiber. Could I attach a better router in the house to my modem cause it doesn't always cover the whole house? Do I need anything special to run internet cable out to the garage or is there someone who I could talk to to have them do all of this cause I have no idea what I am doing?
You can run cat5 if you want. There might be a signal degrade running it alongside AC wiring. It should also be the right cat5, I'm not sure if plenum-rated will cut it. Just go from one of the yellow plugs to the "in" plug on the second router.
You can also (depending on the second box) configure it as a repeater and put it in a window on the garage side of the house. It will pick up your house wifi and re-broadcast within range of your garage. Basically the same end result, but you're broadcasting wifi to the second box instead of a cat5.
Some boxes are easy to convert in the settings. Other boxes need to be hacked with some free software. Some boxes won't accept the software and can't be converted.
Looks like your modem is in a cabinet. First thing I'd do is move it outside the cabinet and place it as high as possible. You might find that helps enough that you don't need to do anything else.
If you want to run a cable, run cat6 (ideally 10gig rated), not cat5, that's legacy tech now.
The super-easy way to set up a multi-AP network is to disable DHCP on the new (secondary) router and connect it to your original (primary) router with a cable in one of the LAN ports on both ends, give the secondary router a static LAN address with the same gateway as the primary, and set identical wifi settings on both routers. Devices will reconnect to whatever has the stronger signal.
What GameboyRMH said is my favorite answer. I did this a while back, and after being inundated with mesh network hype finally decided to just update the same layout.
I'm not an expert, and I'm just doing this over because my primary and access point router are both ancient and I need to add a second AP for the new garage (first is other end of the house currently).
It's not at the top of my to do list yet, but I've been trying to research routers and remind myself of the details and will try to find a summary and link it here if it doesn't go too rabbit-hole too quickly.
GameboyRMH said:
If you want to run a cable, run cat6 (ideally 10gig rated), not cat5, that's legacy tech now.
The super-easy way to set up a multi-AP network is to disable DHCP on the new (secondary) router and connect it to your original (primary) router with a cable in one of the LAN ports on both ends, give the secondary router a static LAN address with the same gateway as the primary, and set identical wifi settings on both routers. Devices will reconnect to whatever has the stronger signal.
I am sure that make sense but I have no idea what any of that means. I am pretty useless when it comes to working on computers/internet stuff. Could you break it down a bit more?
Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) said:
You can run cat5 if you want. There might be a signal degrade running it alongside AC wiring. It should also be the right cat5, I'm not sure if plenum-rated will cut it. Just go from one of the yellow plugs to the "in" plug on the second router.
You can also (depending on the second box) configure it as a repeater and put it in a window on the garage side of the house. It will pick up your house wifi and re-broadcast within range of your garage. Basically the same end result, but you're broadcasting wifi to the second box instead of a cat5.
Some boxes are easy to convert in the settings. Other boxes need to be hacked with some free software. Some boxes won't accept the software and can't be converted.
It would be in a second conduit not in the same.
What is the range on a repeater setup? It is probably at least 100 ft to the back corner of the garage possibly a bit more and that is going to be office so good internet coverage is vital.
In reply to 93EXCivic :
1. Access the new router's web interface, find an option to disable the DHCP server function. It will probably be under LAN settings.
2. Set a static/fixed IP on the new router, this is likely in the same area the DHCP setting was. Here you can copy settings from the original router but move the device IP off by one. So if your primary router has an address of 192.168.1.254, you can use an address of 192.168.1.253. This should keep it away from the DHCP range (usually this can be adjusted as well on the original router). Note that after these two steps you won't be able to connect to the router so easily until it's connected to the rest of the network so make sure you get them right.
3. Run cat6 cable, plug the ends of it into each router on one of the ports labelled LAN. Usually the ports are color-coded, yellow for LAN is common.
4. Access the two router's web interfaces, make the new router's wifi settings (SSID, password, security type, etc) match the original's.
93EXCivic said:
What is the range on a repeater setup? It is probably at least 100 ft to the back corner of the garage possibly a bit more and that is going to be office so good internet coverage is vital.
Depends on a lot of things but if you can run a cable it's a vastly better option. I think 100ft would be pushing the limits of an average home router. Remember that a repeater setup effectively halves the available wifi bandwidth for devices connecting to the main wifi network through the repeater.
GameboyRMH said:
93EXCivic said:
What is the range on a repeater setup? It is probably at least 100 ft to the back corner of the garage possibly a bit more and that is going to be office so good internet coverage is vital.
Depends on a lot of things but if you can run a cable it's a vastly better option. I think 100ft would be pushing the limits of an average home router. Remember that a repeater setup effectively halves the available wifi bandwidth for devices connecting to the main wifi network through the repeater.
It's my understanding that Mesh systems don't have this problem, so why would anyone use an older repeater setup?
I'm currently sitting outside on my patio and still pull 140mb down with very low latency.
