J.D. Hodges

Recently I setup a wifi bridge between our old house and our new house. This setup is surprisingly difficult since there is considerable foliage in between the two houses. Also, once the signal gets to the new house I wanted to rebroadcast it so we had nice full home coverage.

Thankfully, TP-Link has some very nice (and inexpensive) wireless access point/bridges available. Two of them made quick work of the problem and now we are enjoying our old internet at our new house. 🙂

However, along the way I had a couple scenarios in play:
#1 Internet -> Bridge with AP -> Bridge with AP
Specifically, this plays out as a totally wireless scenario:
Wifi from router -> Wifi from TPLink (A) -> Wifi from TPLink (B)
Or, get the wifi internet connection and rebroadcast it on a new AP SSID, then get that wifi and repeat it on another AP SSID.
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time=136ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time=340ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time=1886ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time=572ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time=2399ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time=1632ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time=185ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time=67ms TTL=64

#2 Internet -> Access Point -> Bridge with AP
Ethernet from router -> WiFi from TPLink (A) -> Wifi from TPLink (B)
Or, in other words, get the wired internet connection and broadcast it via wifi from the old house to the new house, then get that wifi and rebroadcast it at the new house.

Pinging 192.168.1.1 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time=4ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time=11ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time=6ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time=7ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time=4ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time=6ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time=3ms TTL=64

As you can see, cutting out that first wifi connection to the home router and putting the AP’s in more appropriate modes really cuts down on ping times! The second scenarios is by far the preferred method.

The connection is rock solid and we are loving it!

*note: I used POE to place the first TPLink access point in a prime location for reaching the new house, then I positioned the second TPLink access point in a optimal location for covering the new house with good signal.