Wireless bridge between two wired networks

[tucansam]

I have posted this on several other forums, but the signal-to-noise ratio here is much higher than any other forum I read, so I figured I'd give you guys a project

 

I have a wired lan segment downstairs, and a wired lan segment upstairs.  I need to bridge both connections, and I need to do it wirelessly.  I can't run CAT6, the POE adapters I have now are horrible, and I don't have coax so I can't use that.

 

I have an old cheap Linksys running dd-wrt that will bridge to an existing access point, and it works, but its slow (b/g).  I'd like to do AC speeds.  N is a minimum, AC is ideal.

 

I tried a pair of Ubiquity Unifi APs, and they do not have this functionality from what I have learned.  Too bad, they are hands down the best APs I have ever used, and make all consumer-grade stuff look like a kid's LEGOs set. 

 

I've read that dd-wrt's implementation of what I want to do is buggy and requires frequent resets.  As you can imagine, this bridged network needs to stay up 99.999% of the time.  I've looked at a point-to-point wireless setup.  Ubiquity's Nanos would work but are too slow.  Actual tower-grade professional point-to-point stuff in the 60 and 80GHz range is awesome but extremely expensive, and I can't have 15 watt satellite dishes in two rooms pointing at each other in my house

 

I presently serve all my wireless clients in the house with a Ubiquity Unifi AP in the N range.  Its awesome.  I have 99% signal in 75% of the house, and 70% signal everywhere else.  I blast it with all kinds of traffic and it never skips a beat.  I need to keep the AP functionality.  I do not need routers.

 

I've considered a pair of Netgear Nighthawks, one acting as an AP/bridge and the other as a bridge endpoint.  Never used them before and have no idea how mature the dd-wrt build is on this, and at >$400 for the pair, I can't afford to find out.

 

I've considered lesser (Linksys, Asus, Buffalo, other Netgear, Trendnet) AC routers/bridges in the same config, same concerns about dd-wrt.

 

I've considered a single AC AP with a "wireless extender" (something meant to allow a TV or other wired device wifi access, but with the ability to be plugged into a switch to serve multiple clients) but reviews of said devices are very hit-or-miss in terms of reliability (daily or weekly reboots needed etc).

 

Frankly, the Ubiquity product I have been using has me spoiled, I set it up a year ago and haven't touched it since.  I don't want something that I need to reset once a week; the POE adapter I am using now already needs that, and is very slow on this house's wiring.

 

I may just pull the trigger on an AC wireless extender and roll the dice; if it bridges with my Ubiquity, then I at least have 300mbps speed until I buy an AC Unifi AP.  I'd have to cross my fingers that I end up as one of the reviewers that loves it, vs one that reboots it once a day.

 

Any comments or suggestions welcome. 

[unevent]

Two wireless routers running Tomato in WDS mode.  Might want to poke around http://www.linksysinfo.org/index.php?forums/tomato-firmware.33/.  Firmware by Toastman, Teaman, or Shibby on a supported router will get you what you are after.  A search of that site or via google will get specific cases that should cover your app.

[tucansam]

Thanks for this, will definitely be researching this tonight. 

[garycase]

Don't forget to change one of your routers to act as a bridge on the same subnet -- otherwise you'll just bridge two different subnets and they won't be able to access each other's resources.

 

As for a bridge between them -- assuming upstairs and downstairs are on the same main power distribution panel, I'd use a pair of power-line adapters ... something like these:  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833122464

 

[c3]

Yes, powerline adapters would be a good starting point. You are going to have a lot of lag, so do not expect top performance.

[tucansam]

I am using powerline ethernet now, and performance is dismal.

[c3]

powerline adapters might need some trial to determine which outlets to use. They operate best along the same phase or leg depending if you have split phase or multiphase power. Powerline adapters should be used without surge protection as many surge protectors filter their signals (mostly by accident). Also the newer generation are much better than the original 100Mb versions.

 

With either wireless bridge or powerline, you want to be familiar with things like tcp window scaling, rtt, and packet loss. It is rarely about speed. http://www.wand.net.nz/~perry/max_download.php

 

 

[tucansam]

powerline adapters might need some trial to determine which outlets to use. They operate best along the same phase or leg depending if you have split phase or multiphase power. Powerline adapters should be used without surge protection as many surge protectors filter their signals (mostly by accident). Also the newer generation are much better than the original 100Mb versions.

 

Right now I have a pair of three-year-old Zyxels of the "200mb" variety.  They cross two breakers in a standard 200-amp domestic panel.  No surge suppressors.  In the old house I had better speeds, in this house my upstairs Zyxel gives me a red LED.  Green is best, yellow is better, red is good, according the to the mfg.  In other words, green is great, yellow is OK, and red is horrible.  This house is several years newer than the other one, as are the household appliances, so I'm not sure what is causing the connection trouble.  I am getting 24mb/s tops out of the link.  Transferring a couple of movies from my PC upstairs to my unraid server downstairs is something I do overnight.  And while the transfer is occurring, all other network use on the PC is essentially useless.

 

I have looked at the new 500mb and 600mb devices from various manufactures, but am not sold on the idea just yet.  If my wiring has an issue, or there is an appliance or flourescent ballast generating interference, newer/faster devices may not get beyond 24mb/s either, and I'd rather spend the money on a wireless solution (God knows how long it would take for me to track down the errant wire/appliance dirtying the line), I just can't find anything that would fit.  Speed, reliability, price... based on my research I can pick one, maybe two at best.  A legit wireless solution in the 6-23GHz range offering 622Mbps actual throughput is $2000 per side, and those devices belong on towers linking buildings or communities... Seems there is no mature consumer-grade, or even "enthusiast-grade" wireless backbone system that is both speedy and reliable.  I either get 802.11g speeds (Ubiquity Pico), 1st gen 802.11n speeds (Ubiquity Nano), or 300/450/1300/1750mbps speeds but the latter mentioned are terrible from the reliability standpoint, based on the hundreds of reviews I've read in the past week.

 

I did find that dd-wrt is available for Ubiquity UAPs, which is awesome, but there are various issues between WDS, client-bridge, and client-repeater.  Some can't forward MACs other than the AP's (pfsense is my dhcp server, static arp pairings, so that would break), some halve the bandwidth by necessity, etc.  The UAP-AC at 1300mbps, even with its bandwidth halved, would be fantastic running dd-wrt, but they are $300 ea and still very much in beta, as many things on the devices are broken.

 

At the moment the house is a rental, and even when we buy it, having an electrician run a bunch of wires and then patch/paint the walls is gonna cost more than a bit.  At that point I could almost build two four-port linux-based routers, buy 8 Ubiquity Nano stations, and set up a 4/4 load balancer/interface bonded backbone link   Trouble with that is we'll all have cancer in a year.

[doron]

I have looked at the new 500mb and 600mb devices from various manufactures, but am not sold on the idea just yet. 

Very good. Don't. 

 

If you need performance, and it sounds as if you do, look elsewhere. The 500Mb/s variety of powerline (case in point: Zyxel "HD" boxes) would deliver perhaps 1/10 (one tenth!) of that as sustained rate, and typically even less. The 500Mb/s figure is a nominal signaling rate value, good primarily for marketing, and certainly not an effective rate. I tested mine (PLA4205) on two adjacent power outlets (3 inches apart), just to get a baseline. Could not get more than 50Mb/s. I thought I had a faulty set so I contacted support. They were very friendly and helpful, and the tech guy actually responded with something like "50Mb/s? That's actually very cool; in our tests we didn't get more than 30-40".

 

This is not about Zyxel being bad - they're actually pretty good, relatively - it's about that technology and the overhyped numbers used.

 

(this is all bits-per-second).

[tucansam]

I just learned OpenWRT supports the UAP-AC.  Perhaps there is yet hope.

[garycase]

I've found that Powerline adapters work VERY well IF you have "clean" electrical transmission (e.g. typically newer homes) but very poorly if you have wiring issues; "noisy" breakers (or fuses); etc.

 

Sounds like you've already confirmed that your home is in the latter state -- so that's not a good option here.

 

[Chris Pollard]

My old converted Victorian flat with wiring from the 1960's was perfect for my powerline adaptors,  I moved to a brand new place and they became totally useless.... so ymmv

 

Now I moved again to a flat built in the 80's and they are fine again.....

[garycase]

Very interesting.  Not sure what the discriminator is ... I had assumed it was aged wiring, since my experience has been they work better in newer homes [Personally, I don't use them, as I had my home completely wired with Cat-6;  but I've set them up for at least a dozen folks, and have noticed what I indicated earlier].

 

It likely has to do with which phase of the incoming line you're on ... if different outlets are on the other phase, then the signal may not be cleanly passed.  Also, if you're using them through kind of isolation transformer or filter, they either won't work or will work poorly.    All I know is when they DO work, they're very reliable (much more so than wireless).

 

[c3]

I used powerline adapters in my parent's home. I tried amping up wireless APs, but really did not get good coverage upstairs. After finding the correct outlets, the powerline adapters (200mbit), vastly exceeded the WDS performance. Finding the correct pair of outlets was a challenge. Since I could understand which breakers were the same leg, it was fairly easy. I just needed to find outlets on the same leg which were usage for source and destination of the link. I ended up going from my fathers desk downstairs to the sitting room upstairs. The floor had radiant heat with reflectors, which killed any RF transmission. This link has allowed the internet service to be reversed. Previously it came in downstairs, now it is upstairs.

 

All of this internet service is wireless, deep inside a national forest. So, even 1mbit/sec was wonderful to get, but getting ping times under 30mSec took years. Currently approaching 20mbit/sec and still over 20mSec rtt to regional resources.

[tucansam]

Unfortunately the adapters are installed where furniture is installed, ie, entertainment center (my "network closet") and my desk upstairs (which cannot be moved without upsetting the order of the house, ie, the wife). 

 

I'll make do until something better comes along.  May just relocate my second server downstairs and run an ASUS 802.11AC PCIe card in my desktop; I had hoped to run wired GigE between the second server and my desktop, but AC might provide "enough" bandwidth.

 

Sad state of affairs, frankly, dd-wrt and OpenWRT both support what I am trying to do, just not enough info on the web regarding modern AC APs/routers for me to pull the trigger on a pair without wondering if I'm throwing cash away.  Surely I'm not the only person wanting to do this, and from reading it seems common, just with lesser and slower hardware. 

[garycase]

Personally, I'd just bite the bullet and hire an electrician to pull some Cat-6 

... all you really need is ONE run between the floors -- surely there's some location where this can be done without any cosmetic disturbance.

 

 

[JonathanM]

At the moment the house is a rental,

Personally, I'd just bite the bullet and hire an electrician to pull some Cat-6

I agree with the sentiment, but as a landlord, I'd be pissed if someone took it upon themselves to modify the infrastructure of my house without permission, and I doubt the OP wants to spend the type of money required on property that isn't his to do the job to the landlord's standards.

[garycase]

I agree with the sentiment, but as a landlord, I'd be pissed if someone took it upon themselves to modify the infrastructure of my house without permission, and I doubt the OP wants to spend the type of money required on property that isn't his to do the job to the landlord's standards.

 

Except it seems they are only temporary tenants in a home they're working out a deal to buy ...

 

At the moment the house is a rental, and even when we buy it, having an electrician run a bunch of wires and then patch/paint the walls is gonna cost more than a bit.

 

Notwithstanding the cost, wired is ALWAYS better than wireless in terms of both speed and reliability.  And you don't have to wire the entire home if you don't want to -- you only need ONE run between the floors to do what you asked about here.    It's not cheap, but once you have the infrastructure in place you'll really like it    [i had 5 runs done for ~ $600 a few years ago ... how much yours would cost obviously depends on the characteristics of the house and just how difficult access is for pulling them -- but electricians have some pretty nifty gear these days that lets them run wires in places you may consider impossible.]

 

[tucansam]

I went with Ubiquiti Airware.  No longer made, unfortunately, but totally awesome, took 30 seconds to set up, and my network speeds are blazing now.

 

For sale: numerous powerline adapters that no longer are needed!  Ha!

 

Hopefully as 802.11ac tech improves and matures, Ubiquiti will release versions of their Pico and Nano stations in that flavor, and I can bring my entire network to a whole new level of speed without running wires.