Tag: wireless bridge

March 25, 2025 – You Bast**d

March 25, 2025 / / 0 Comments

This project has become way too complicated considering my starting point. I already had the wire on both ends of the wireless bridge. One of them was already terminated and powered. It should have been as simple as pointing the two devices at each other, terminate the other and… go.

After I got the one wire terminated (see last week), it was dead. I rebooted and reset each unit and then they connected. So, I plugged my computer in with ethernet cable and things were great. I was done. Two hours later, the router was flashing red. I rebooted them multiple times and no connection.

I moved the wireless router back into the original position and then I spent an evening wiring up the outside router again to try and bridge the lack of reliable connection of mesh routers between buildings. My operating theory was that the overhead, yard light strings were enough of an obstruction that maybe I would need to raise the wireless bridge on my house to clear all of the things in the way.

My Life Below Zero watching has influenced me quite a bit. I realized that I put off a lot of things because of weather. So I went outside and raised one wireless bridge in the rain. I aimed a laser to make sure that they were pointing to each other. Even though I had to re-wire the basement because I stole all the length of the cable to raise it, all the ladder work was done.

The next day, I finished the wiring. I went outside to check the power indicator lights and the hose clamp that was holding the wireless bridge unit to the mounting fixture was snapped. The wireless bridge was dangling by the ethernet cable. Back out came the extension ladder. I had to go to the store to get more hose clamps because I didn’t have any replacements. But, that was OK because my remaining length of cable was 12 feet too short to finish the run as well.

I had to take the significantly longer trip to Home Depot because my local hardware store does not carry bulk Category 6 cable. When I got back, I quickly ginned up the remaining cable and tested for connection. The two bridge units were talking. But, I had committed to making Ramen that night and I needed the time so I had to stop there. I had nothing left after cooking for three hours.

I know the question that you are asking, has this effort been worth it? As of right now, the units have been up for over a week and they are still not working. I have tried to check all the things on my side and am waiting for a response from customer service for various technical reasons. From the reviews I have read, I am suspecting that they will send replacement units.

The manufacturer claims that these units are paired from the factory. Like all things of ignorance, I used the wrong units for each side and so I had to re-program them. All of the issues that have happened made this project much more difficult than it should have been and are possibly part of the connection problem. I doubt it, but I cannot rule it out.

Based on my knowledge and experience, I possibly mis-judged the complexity of the job. While it is a 50/50 probability that you will put up the wrong units like I did, somebody without my experience would be stuck. I could have just as easily picked the right unit with line of sight. This all presupposes that there is nothing wrong with the units (which I highly suspect).

What I am trying to say is that if your networking and troubleshooting skills are low, it very well might work on the first go. If I would have read the user manual more carefully before I started, I would have tested them on the ground before I started. I would have installed the units in the right order. I probably would have placed them where I originally did but I would have eliminated a lot of the noise that is frustrating me. But if they are not, it could be very difficult to do successfully. In that situation, I would recommend professional installation.

I think that I have eliminated all of the wireless complaining in my house now. Aside from getting this wireless bridge working, there are additional touches to add. Are there dead spots that we frequent outside to place the outdoor unit? Does that take the place of another unit indoors? Each ripple causes another smaller one.

End Your Programming Routine: As you can see, this project is probably never done. The range extender I didn’t talk about could be utilized, I am thinking my shop area. Eventually, my wife is going to want another camera in the driveway area where I have no coverage. And so it keeps going. Hopefully the next ones are not nearly as difficult as the one that is basically done.

March 18, 2025 – Resistance Is Futile

March 18, 2025 / / 0 Comments

I am working on a project that seems to be ever going. That is my network infrastructure. Probably for the past ten years, I have had plans to expand full network capability to the apartment. Various tenants have paid for their own service over the years but ultimately, I want to prepare it for an Air B&B or office or guest house. I don’t want to pay two bills for internet.

I have a box on the outside of the house that I planned to run conduit. I still might but we will get to that later. Back when I had a tenant that had a real phone, the phone company would only run service to my house. It was my responsibility to get the service over to the apartment. I quickly sprang into action and ran a Cat5e cable to the apartment on a cable that had had been run between the two buildings for that purpose.

After the tenant moved out and we started residing the house (2015), the phone line was no longer in use and the hardware was in the way. I cut the line telling myself that I would implement a better solution. I have done all of the easy work but the time never came where I wanted to rent a trencher and dig up the yard. I haven’t given up on the idea though.

The good news is that when I cut the line, I still had the whole cable length. I was going to use that cable to install the wireless bridge. Most of the work was fairly easy, terminating the ends and hanging the units. You never know what you are going to find in the wall though. I wrestled and wrestled with getting the fish tape through the wall to my new jack location.

Sunday evening, I was beat. I could not fish the wire through the wall. You might ask why I couldn’t just re-terminate the phone line? Good question, I cheated the first time and ran the wire on the outside of the house and drilled a hole in the siding. When I redid the house in 2020, I pulled all of that into the attic space because I resided that house as well.

My only option was to cut the wall to get access. I really did not want to do it because it adds a week to the project for additional repair work of the drywall. But, at some point there is a tipping point. After spending two hours trying to fish the wire and only getting halfway through, I had no idea how this was really built.

Once I resigned myself to the extra work, I was done in about two hours. By done I mean I cut the hole, fished the wire, terminated, tested and hole filled again. The work of patching the drywall is only fifteen minutes a day for a week. Initial mud and tape, second coat, texture, prime and paint. My real concern is that the work is disruptive having to move furniture everyday and clean up as I wasn’t there.

I will write one more time about the wireless bridge when I am actually done with the project. It definitely seems temperamental, but that is for a later date. There is still cleanup work to be done in terms of tidying up and optimization. I continue to work on that while I am doing the wall repairs.

End Your Programming Routine: The trick is knowing the right time to change strategies. I don’t regret attempting to fish the wall before cutting. Maybe I should have given up sooner, but then again maybe I was just another attempt from succeeding. All I can really say is that sunk cost fallacy can cause you to give up or double down on a failing path. Be flexible and be willing to change course if things are not going the right way.

March 11, 2025 – Here We Go Again

March 11, 2025 / / 0 Comments

I have put a lot of effort into my network. It is not because this is my desire, but more out of what others want out of it. I did a lot of work in the fall to try and include the apartment into the Wi-Fi mesh and to try and get all of the cameras and things connected so that the batteries were not constantly drained trying to connect. Both of those I feel like I have generally solved.

The one thing that I have generally ignored is in the attempt to connect all of these ‘things’ is the user factor in all of this. My wife complains about it, my son has complained about it, my exchange student has complained about it and even my tenant has said that there are times it does not work well. Time to do something about it.

Against my knowledge, my wife hired an internet consultant. I am not complaining, I was just surprised that there was anyone out there locally doing that kind of work. So, I listened to what he had to say. He was angling to do the work as well, but I just paid the consulting fee. I am pretty sure that I am more than capable of implementing everything since I made it this far.

One area that I am really risk adverse is gambling. To me, spending $200 on something the might work seems like gambling. When the consultant recommended adding three more units of our existing T-P Link Deco network, that certainly seemed easy. I had the same thought but I didn’t want to spend the money to see if it was an improvement. For this reason, I bought a $20 range extender when I was trying to solve my doorbell connection.

The range extender worked, I should have guessed that adding more wifi mesh capability was the solution. Let me just say that I am a wired guy. In my day to day work, all of the items in my office are wired. I never see any issues related to bandwidth that a network reset doesn’t resolve. I think more of that has to do with whatever the Internet Service Provider is doing rather than my network.

I suspect that my wife and my tenant are experiencing the same problem because they are both in the same geo proximity to the network. But regardless, I talked with the consultant about this as well. It was his recommendation to move from trying to get that unit within the mesh to adding a wireless bridge. A wireless bridge is a device that sends a signal point to point.

The plan is to swap out my outside mesh device with this wireless bridge. Part of the reason is that I already have Power over Ethernet run to it. But, now I will have a spare unit to put somewhere else. That location is TBD at the moment. I haven’t had it installed long enough to enjoy Wi-Fi in the yard yet anyway.

I will have to do some antenna work on the apartment. Another recommendation is to retire my ten year old, gateway router. This means I will have to do some cable rework. What all this means is that this is a process. But it has been one that I have been wanting to do every since I started this mesh experiment.

I am finally going to retire old passwords and general network access in favor of a more secure and segregated network. Guests will get access to the guest network. IOT devices will be on the IOT network and neither will have access to my main network. Careless security or old hardware vulnerability will not have a tunnel into the more sensitive parts of my home network.

End Your Programming Routine: This is all recent developments as I just started last weekend. This means that not all of the work is complete and the user feedback is incomplete. It is funny how something like internet grows from a novelty to a necessity. I am moving units at a time so as not to take everything down for an extended period of time. Despite the fact that I really didn’t want to pay $175 for a consultant, I would not have known about the wireless bridge and I am happy to have a reassuring opinion on what I have already done.