Extending broadband to a garden office

[Robert74]

I have an outhouse in my garden (about 40 meters from the house)　 that I would like to be able to work in sometimes.
　
I currently just stick my wifi unit on the windowsill　in the house as near to the garden as possible but the connection drops　in and out.
　
What's the best thing to do?
　
Just run a 50 meter cable along the fence in the Garden and into the outhouse?　 If so what type of cable　do I need?
　
　
Thanks　

 

[pcproblems]

Hi, if there's an electricity supply to the outhouse fed from your house then you could look at something like a homeplug. You would have one close to your router and run an ethernet cable from your router to it. In the outhouse you would run another ethernet cable from the homeplug into your computer.

 

[DesignerNick]

If you wanted to run a cable which would always be the best bet you can run a cat5 (network cable) as they are good for up to 100m.

You could use something like this and depending on how your garden is you could bury it (in some weatherproof protection) or tack it on to the bottom of the fence.

It might be a bit harder work than using Wireless but you will reap the benefits speed / reliability wise

 

[Jim2k]

A nice length of Cat5 would do the job. Homeplugs could work if the house and office are on the same ring. Cat5 would be my recommendation though.

 

[Xelp]

Nothing beats the stability of a wired connection but for a quick fix you could try making a dish shape out of some aluminium kitchen foil and put it behind the wifi router (or dongle) pointing towards the other.

I actually used this myself to provide a temporary fix until a permanent solution was put in place.

Haris

Here's a video demonstrating this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqnHz75dmQY

 

[reggiemental]

Hi, if there's an electricity supply to the outhouse fed from your house then you could look at something like a homeplug.

Another vote from me for the homeplug system. Apart from the short cable from the homeplug to your PC/Laptop, you can forget about having cables all over the place. Even the PS3 connects 1st time without any effort, which is great for picking up BBC's i-Player.

Been using it for around 3 months, and wish I'd discovered it sooner.

 

[leemason]

As mentioned Homeplug is great as long as the house and outhouse are on the same ring. Also don't use an extension lead to plug the homeplug into as this case cause speed issues (it can easily reduce speed by 50%+ and affect stability).

Another possibility is to use a wifi repeater in the outhouse. This will provide a more solid wireless connection that just using the access point/router in the house and wifi on your laptop.

 

[paultnl]

Run external CAT5 cable such as this http://www.cablemonkey.co.uk/acatalog/UTP_Solid_Cable.html

It is not too expensive and gives the most reliable connection.

Homeplug systems work but have a tendancy to die for no reason (enegy spikes?) I gave up after loosing 5 of them.

 

[leemason]

You need to be careful running cat.5 cable outside and to another building. 9 times out of 10 it's fine but due to differences in earthing between buildings it can cause issues and could possibly damage router ports that it's plugged into. I've been working with UTP since it was introduced and have only had a couple of occurrences of such problem but in a professional network installation fibre would normally be used between buildings for this (amongst other) reasons.

 

[RedEvo]

Another vote for homeplug type devices, they work well.

d

 

[leemason]

Run external CAT5 cable such as this http://www.cablemonkey.co.uk/acatalog/UTP_Solid_Cable.html

It is not too expensive and gives the most reliable connection.

Homeplug systems work but have a tendancy to die for no reason (enegy spikes?) I gave up after loosing 5 of them.

I have to say that I have had some homeplug devices fail on me (3 or 4 I think). They were the early 11Mb versions though. If you buy the newer 85Mb (or faster) version it should be a lot more reliable.

 

[KM-Tiger]

I have to say that I have had some homeplug devices fail on me (3 or 4 I think). They were the early 11Mb versions though. If you buy the newer 85Mb (or faster) version it should be a lot more reliable.

Still got some early Devolo ones going strong - would not be posting this otherwise!

The rules seem to be:

• No extensions leads, splitters or adaptors - plug straight into a wall socket
• Must be the same side of any electricity meter
• Preferably all on the same MCB. (I have got them to work across different MCBs, but slowly.)

 

[DotNetWebs]

I have a garden office with 3 x ~100ft runs of CAT6 cable buried in conduit - would you believe I recently had to replace them because a rat managed to get into the conduit and eat through them disconnecting my network

Regards

Dotty