Connecting Virgin Media to an outbuilding

[craggybuk]

We have Virgin broadband coming into the house. What I want to do is connect to a workshop about 25 metres away from the main house. I think ideally I'd like this to be a wired connection, possibly coming into a mini hub so I can have several connections coming off it.

What are my options and do you think this is a feasible exercise?

Thanks in advance.

[gary_dexter]

Run a long length of ethernet from the hub in suitable ducting./trunking and add either a switch and/or a wireless access point in the outbuilding to provide the internet

[dannylau]

You could also consider a catenary wire, providing you can get the required hight

[shaunwhatling]

I too have an outbuilding, i have run a cat6 cable to a wifi extender and connected to the hub3 but the wfi then drops in the house and still i don`t get internet in the outbuilding.

I would like to use the outbuilding as an office, but need to know how to get a wifi down there and still be able to use it in the house. 

[asim18]

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@shaunwhatling wrote:

I too have an outbuilding, i have run a cat6 cable to a wifi extender and connected to the hub3 but the wfi then drops in the house and still i don`t get internet in the outbuilding.

I would like to use the outbuilding as an office, but need to know how to get a wifi down there and still be able to use it in the house. 

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Which Wi-Fi extender is it? Wi-Fi extenders sometimes can't do the same thing as a Wireless Access Point.

[SpacePhoenix]

What about using armoured Cat 6 cable between the house and the outbuilding, then have a local network switch in the outbuilding if you're going to need more than 1 device connected to the internet/your home network

[Steve1701]

You could use this to bridge the gap, just lay it along the wall or it can be buried. Fully waterproof:

30 meter CAT7 outdoor ethernet cable 

There are cheaper ones but it doesn't hurt to pay a little more.

[craggybuk]

I finally got round to doing this in April.

Had an engineer round who said that to lay cable was unnecessary and expensive. He installed a Ubiquiti Nanobeam solution for a few hundred quid. This works on line of sight. My home office is 25 metres away from the house and I am getting the same speeds here as I do in home (over 200mb) . He installed a mini hub as well as an access point so I have ethernet and wifi.

All this was about £600 but you can do it cheaper if you install it yourself.

Ubiquiti Nanobeam 

[Timwilky]

My office is the garden room about 50 yards from home. I am an IT professional who works with some very large data sets and needs to move them between the office and servers (NAS / ESXi etc) in the house loft. Over the years I struggled and had to work in the house due to poor network performance between home/garden office room.

History of solutions.

Powerlines :- a waste of effort, even though they claimed 1.2Gb, I would be lucky to get 30Mb. Consigned to bin.

A pair of Mikrotik SXT 5 AC wireless routers configured as a wireless network bridge. Whilst not the easiest device to configure gave me about  750-800Mb throughput. Rain did tend to reduce that slightly.

Outdoor cat5e suspended of a catenary wire, rock solid, reliable. Because of heights I had to fit the anchors under the eaves either end, measure and cut the catenary, then whilst on the ground clip the 5e lift and attach either end with 10m of 5e hanging to route through the lofts either end. Caterary is about 6m high so impossible to attach the 5e whilst suspended. BTW, make sure clips are UV resistant, catenary wire is stainless.

I got concerned about lightening as my father had lost 3 TVs / Hifi and a small fire after a strike hit the catenery between his house and the aerial 50 yard away. So replaced the 5e with pre terminated OM3 outdoor fibre.

Obviously what is placed either end of the fibre is down to choice/budget

[asim18]

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@craggybuk wrote:

I finally got round to doing this in April.

Had an engineer round who said that to lay cable was unnecessary and expensive. He installed a Ubiquiti Nanobeam solution for a few hundred quid. This works on line of sight. My home office is 25 metres away from the house and I am getting the same speeds here as I do in home (over 200mb) . He installed a mini hub as well as an access point so I have ethernet and wifi.

All this was about £600 but you can do it cheaper if you install it yourself.

Ubiquiti Nanobeam 

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Personally I would disagree with the engineer. The nanobeams are specced for kilometres range, Id say that £600 setup is unnecessary and expensive compared to a £30 wired setup.

A 25m Ethernet cable would have cost £15 and to run it along the garden fence would cost about a fiver. Personally I'd have just run a cable and saved £550 quid and had a much faster 1GB/s full duplex link, futureproof to 10Gb. The nanobeams top out at 450Mb/s so if you ever upgrade your internet to 400Mb or faster you will end up having to lay a cable anyway.