Internet distribution - within our house and to detached garage/apartment

As referenced in this thread, we have a detached garage/apartment on our property. My dad lives in the apartment full time now. Aerial shot below shows the detail. The garage/apartment is the building on the western side of the property, with the apartment on the south end (the part with the offset roof line).

The main part of the main house was built in 1937 and is concrete block. Most of our interior walls are also concrete block/plaster. Our current internet set up is 1G fiber service from AT&T. Their modem is where the green star is. Next to that, I have an Orbi mesh router, which is a few years old. It has two satellites, shown by the orange triangles. The coverage on the east end of the house is not great, nor is it very good in the apartment. The red line is roughly 30'.

I work from home and do zoom calls constantly. My wife just took a new job that will include some WFH and zoom calls. My dad is now doing more zoom calls. And our 18 year son is a gamer. Generally speaking, everything works fine. The main issue is with my dad though. The wifi signal seems like it's not quite strong enough in his apartment. And the smart TV I have in the NW corner of the garage struggles for signal too. In the other thread, some folks referenced a few different ideas to improving wifi coverage from the router to the apartment. I would welcome everyone's advice on how to best do that!

For my 150' gap from my house to my shop, I used a Ubiquiti Nanobridge. Basically, a dedicated wireless bridge. I suspect the model is now obsolete and considered glacially slow, but it's been reliable. The house end is inside my stucco house, shooting out through the concrete and chicken wire. On the shop end, I have it mounted outside as the metal shop and mirrored windows are not kind to radio - they're weatherproof.

No messing around with trenching or wires or concerns about grounding. From a networking standpoint, it's just a wire. You'd still need an access point of some sort in the apartment but that wouldn't need to be very sexy for a small area. Alternately, put an access point outside the house by the modem and paint the side of the apartment with radiation :)

Or look into an improved mesh system. You may be able to do better than what you have. I run Ubiquiti for home networking stuff because it's better than usual consumer grade, with the configuration difficulty and price tag to match.

Open air is your friend.  An access point in a front window and a companion in an apartment window facing the first would work as the easy button. 

Sorry I didn't read the whole post so I deleted part of my last one.  How high is the components off the ground?   Can you move them slightly to get more open air line of sight between them?

Does the electrical run between both the house and garage? If so use the electrical wiring to connect. You plug an adapter into the outlet near the router and run an ethernet cable to it. Another one near dads computer. 
 

Like these

Steve_Jones said:

Does the electrical run between both the house and garage? If so use the electrical wiring to connect. You plug an adapter into the outlet near the router and run an ethernet cable to it. Another one near dads computer. 
 

Like these

Very interesting. I've never seen these. I'll look into it as an option!

https://store.ui.com/products/ubb-us

Not cheap but the best way to get things done. Quick connection and at 30' that is nothing. 

The less secure option: 

https://www.mbreviews.com/engenius-ews850ap-review/

Reason I say less secure is it basically floods the area with Wifi coverage. The plus side is that you would have it in the back yard, garage, etc. At 30', you can run a cable just outside the house and pole mount it or you can test it inside and see if that will be strong enough. 

My house and shop are similar. I use a TP-Link Deco Mesh WiFi System.

It works very well. The main router is in the room over the front garage. The mesh system is set up in the living room near the chimney and the shop. 

I'm using a NetGear powerline adapter with very little speed loss to my detached garage. I'd guess it is 100' total run via the power line, through my garage panel, and to my desk plug. I then ran a second wireless router in the corner of the garage as an access point, kind of a cheap mesh setup since the APN is the same. Works great.

With these powerline adapters, does it matter if the garage is on a subpanel (also in the house)? Does it matter where in the house you place the adapter other than close to the router to plug an ethernet cable into it? My router is just about as far as you can get from the garage. 

mtn said:

With these powerline adapters, does it matter if the garage is on a subpanel (also in the house)? Does it matter where in the house you place the adapter other than close to the router to plug an ethernet cable into it? My router is just about as far as you can get from the garage. 

We use them for an apartment over a barn, that is on a sub panel in the house. It's 3/4 of a mile away from the house, so at least for my application, the distance does not matter. 

In reply to Steve_Jones :

Thanks - I'll be adding that to the list of Amazon purchases once I free up some more discretionary funds. I have a similar issue in my garage. I get full bars on the phone, but the fire stick is as laggy as watching a realmedia video on dialup. 

In reply to mtn :

For what it's worth, I've also had good success buying used powerline components on eBay.

Do the satellites have an external antenna?  If not, how are your soldering skills?

I upped the ante on my repeater by soldering on an external antenna and ditching the internal.  I used a Yagi antenna because I was trying to reach about 600 feet, but you could use a simple directional antenna since you know where you're pointing.  Any windows on the west side of the house/east side of Dad's apartment?

You could also sneak a coax up and out through the soffit of the house to mount an external broadcast antenna so you're not firing through concrete.

You may already know this, but take a gander at this:

Think of it kinda like a Maglight that you can focus wide or tight.  The higher gain antenna at the top is good for a situation like trying to reach out to a long distance, but only works in a very narrow direction... much like the maglight on a narrow beam.  It condenses the light and makes it brighter, but on a very narrow beam.  The low-gain antenna is like putting a diffuser cup over the end of the mag light.  The light is diffused and much dimmer, but covers a larger area.  Most antennas in wifi stuff are omnidirectional (like the 2dbi antenna at the bottom).  Since you know which direction you need to point, having a low gain antenna is kind of wasting "light" in directions you don't need.  Switching to a higher gain antenna might be an easy solution... depending on the construction of the radios.