lte with ap's?

[orkid1989]

a friends parents live on a farm and recently got a lte router. its a netgear m1 (MR1100). so far it works ok but he mentioned that they move it around to get wifi signal where they are. so between 3 buildings (house, garage, and barn) which are 75ft apart in a triangle. so i was thinking about making a "dock" for the lte router where it gets the best cellar signal and then scattering a few unifi mesh ap's around the property to make a mesh network. any suggestions?

[jaslion]

It has a ethernet port so run a cable from it to a cheap switch then run cable from said switch to the buildings, put an access point where needed and call it a day. That is if running cable is possible.

[orkid1989]

4 minutes ago, jaslion said:

It has a ethernet port so run a cable from it to a cheap switch then run cable from said switch to the buildings, put an access point where needed and call it a day. That is if running cable is possible.

not a good idea with farm equipment running around. would have to bury it and that would cost significantly more then setting up a mesh network

[Falcon1986]

7 minutes ago, orkid1989 said:

not a good idea with farm equipment running around. would have to bury it and that would cost significantly more then setting up a mesh network

Mesh networks work best when mesh points aren't very far apart because they need to communicate with each other and with client WiFi devices.

 

If you absolutely can't run ethernet between buildings (understood if you're on a farm) and you have good line-of-sight to all buildings (i.e. no trees, buildings, etc. at roof level), you can look into a Ubiquiti point-to-multipoint setup.

[orkid1989]

2 minutes ago, Falcon1986 said:

Mesh networks work best when mesh points aren't very far apart because they need to communicate with each other and with client WiFi devices.

 

If you absolutely can't run ethernet between buildings (understood if you're on a farm) and you have good line-of-sight to all buildings (i.e. no trees, buildings, etc. at roof level), you can look into a Ubiquiti point-to-multipoint setup.

why cant i use these instead? 

https://store.ui.com/collections/unifi-network-access-points/products/unifi-ac-mesh-ap

ptmp setup required much more hardware and is designed for higher throughput at longer distances

 

also the mesh ap's will be about 75ft apart with clear line of sight

[Falcon1986]

10 minutes ago, orkid1989 said:

why cant i use these instead? 

https://store.ui.com/collections/unifi-network-access-points/products/unifi-ac-mesh-ap

ptmp setup required much more hardware and is designed for higher throughput at longer distances

 

also the mesh ap's will be about 75ft apart with clear line of sight

I suppose that is another way of doing it. Good find!

[orkid1989]

this is the possible deployment using unifi mesh ap's

[brwainer]

Any Unifi AP can "mesh" (use Wireless Uplink to another Unifi AP), the Mesh and Mesh Pro just have the Wireless Uplink enabled by default so they can be adopted wirelessly. Another thing specific about the Mesh and Mesh Pro is they are the only fully weatherproof APs. The UAP-AP-AC-Pro is weather-resistant, it is meant to be put under an awning or other protection from direct rain.

 

I recommend using the Mesh Pro as your central unit of the three (bottom right of the image shown) and make sure that the other two (regular Mesh units) are connecting to it (easiest way to do this is to connect your gateway, in this case the LTE unit, at that location, but another option is to change the IP address that the connectivity monitor uses to be something that is in that location - if you're going to have the controller running 24/7, then place it there, and set the connectivity monitor to use the controller's IP)