Do you stay near e.g. a café with public WiFi access, but its signal is weak inside your house? Here's a way to bring outdoor WiFi signal inside your apartment.
The equipment costs around $100. You'll need
-
A CPE outdoor antenna
-
A wireless router
-
An outdoor Ethernet cable
The Ethernet cable can be long, with a maximum around 100 meters.
I bought Netis E1+ to use it as a wireless router. But it can be used autonomously as a WiFi extender too. As an alternative, you may buy another travel router such as the TP-Link AC750.
Therefore, place it e.g. near your window and see if it can connect to the external (e.g. public) WiFi router. You only need to connect it to a power supply and follow the instructions.
If the connection can be performed and the speed is acceptable, then you can live just with it, without buying an outdoor antenna and cable.
I live in an upper floor, and there's a café with free WiFi on the ground floor. The solution of using solely a WiFi repeater cannot provide to me a reliable internet connection. Consequently, I decided to buy an outdoor antenna too.
I had to choose among the so-called CPE (customer premises equipment) outdoor antennas, and I ended up buying a Ubiquity NanoStation Loco M2 and a 15-meter outdoor Ethernet cable.
The “secret” behind connecting all these devices together is the PoE (Power over Ethernet) technology. As illustrated in the figure below, it is the long Ethernet cable that carries the needed power supply from your apartment to the outdoor antenna.
Actually, this is all the information you need before investing to bring an outdoor WiFi signal into your apartment. The rest of this text will be some more technical information. It won't be detailed on purpose, because it depends on the specific equipment that you'll decide to buy.
-
According to the instructions of Ubiquity NanoStation Loco M2, you must first connect it to a PC/laptop via an Ethernet cable.
-
You must configure the IP of the PC temporarily to be static.
-
Use your browser to access the IP of the antenna. In this way, a configuration webpage will be available.
-
Set Wireless Mode to “Station”.
-
Select the name of the public WiFi network (SSID) and enter its password.
-
You may disconnect the PC and connect the wireless router as illustrated in the figure.
-
According to the instructions, you may connect to the wireless router setup page wirelessly.
-
In Netis E1+, select “Travel Router” mode.
-
Give a name and a password to your private network, and that's all folks!