wired to wireless networking

Jay N1AV

Hey all, 

I am trying to figure out how I can make this all work.   My router is in the house.  Radio room is in the garage, 300' away from the house.   I use a wireless extender from the home network to reach out to the garage for the computers in the shack. The 6600 is currently connected via network cable directly to the 1 computer in the shack and works fine.  That computer is connected via wireless back to the internet.   However, I cannot use any of the software to remotely connect to the flex, as the flex isn't "online".   

So I am thinking, I need to connect my 6600 and computer(s) to ports a network switch located in the shack and then ... what device do I need to connect to the switch to wirelessly connect back to the wireless internet from the house?

Running a cable from the house 300' out to the garage isn't an option.

Thoughts?

Ken Hansen

Ask five hams a question you'll get six answers! LOL My Flex is in the garage, and I have computers and flex on a WiFi bridge. It acts like a client to the WIFI signal and gives me an RJ45 Jack. I hook that RJ45 to a small switch, and the shack PCs and Flex all hang off that. The wireless bridge does not change data traveling thru it, my PCs and the Flex all get their IP addresses via DHCP from the cable company router in the family room, about 100' away. These bridges are sometimes called gaming adapters, and some inexpensive Access Points/routers can be put in 'client mode'. Hope that helps, Ken, N2VIP

Stu Holzer

Try POWERLINE ETHERNET ADAPTERS .. It use the house wiring to make a lan connection ..

Jim Gilliam

There is a not so new but ever becoming popular wireless networking configuration called mesh networks. It has been popularized by Asus and Linksys has jumped on the band wagon recently.

I have a 2800 sq. ft. house with lots of walls and extenders just couldn't do the trick. I tried the Asus mesh networking scheme and using three strategically placed mesh nodes completely cured my problem of poor coverage and throughput.


It is a technology that is worth looking into before you go to the added expense of adding cables all over the premises.

Jim, K6QE

Jay N1AV

power for the garage and house are on separate service panels from the street... but love the idea.

K5CG

A simpler solution might be to turn on Windows Internet Connection Sharing. Then the Flex will be able to see the wireless network through your PC.

Jay N1AV

Thanks Danny,
If I went this route, the ip for the flex on the shared connection would be different that that of the ips on the current wireless network - yes?

Jay N1AV

Ken, 
Thanks for the reply, this is what I was looking for.  Wifi bridge.  Excellent.  I will look that all over.  thanks

K5CG

Yes, Windows would assign something in the 192.168.137.0 subnet and you would be NATting through the PC to the Wireless network. You can setup port forwarding through the PC to the Flex for SmartLink too.

It's not the very best solution but it won't cost you anything to try.

K5CG

If it were me, I would probably use the WiFi bridge approach that Ken N2VIP has suggested below. I have such a device, a D-Link DAP-1522 and it works well.

Hi Ken!

K5CG

Ken, I invited you to our local Flex Radio group.

Patrick

WiFi can get complicated, first it is a simplex type of service.  Normal Ethernet can be full duplex.  Greatly improving throughput.  So for WiFi you need 2+ times for equivalence with wired ethernet.  Placement of the extender is important and may require some experimentation.  A point to point extender using directional antennas would help extending to the garage without wire.  If you have to resort to wire, you can use Ethernet over coax, this is an easy way to wire between two points at a distance.  My own particular problem was the number of neighbors on WiFi and their strong signals causing degradation of my own network.  Placement of my extenders was dictated by those strong signals, to increase my own to compensate.  And in this situation, I changed to manual control of the WiFi channels, in order to go where they, my neighbors, were not.  My station is it’s own wired net work connected to  my main network via the extender.  My connected speed to the main network is 1.3 Gbs,  more then enough for the ham station and all my internet programs.  My internet speed is 200 Mbs via Spectrum cable.  It is important to know that when testing from the remote location via the extenders, you will need at least 400+ Mbs in order to achieve the rated internet speed of 200 Mbs in my case.  To solve your problem having observation tools to look at your WiFi performance is important to have.  Allows you to check the signal paths and help with extender placement and overall WiFi performance.  The other thing I do is, if all the equipment has Ethernet capability, then all those devices go to an Ethernet switch.  This method is to reduce the number of WiFi devices to improve my local efficiency of the WiFi network.  Good luck....

K1VL

Something is suppressing broadcast packets. Is your network extender operating in bridged mode or as an access point with a different IP range. I would strongly suggest you look into Ubiquiti Unifi and create a 5 GHz point to point bridge between the two locations. I can give you guidance on this. This is the way I operate my Flex. DO NOT use Powerline over Ethernet! It will cause QRM to your HF reception. 

Mike-VA3MW

I never depend on what the RF link shows on the status field. 

If you really want to know  your end point to end point flow through, I highly recommend using LAN Speed test.

https://totusoft.com/lanspeed

It is worth spending the time actually measuring the data you are moving from Point A to Point B.

I did  a LOT of testing with it a few years back and I documented it all here in the Community.

Jay, try some tests and see what you get.

Mike

JohnSweeney

Connect your 6600 direct to your internet connection using a $20 Ethernet to WiFi adaptor.

cyril

I am thinking about buying a 6400 specifically to access over the internet AND local network. So this post worries me a little.. Does Flexradio use some proprietary protocols? I the OP has a wireless LAN between the house and the shack, why would he need to do something different to get the Flex Radio working? 

K5CG

Because all he has in the garage is WiFi. Flex Radios don't have WiFi built in.

JohnSweeney

No special protocols.  Accessing a Flex remotely is quite easy - just forward two ports in your router.  Never had any problems accessing my Flex from many places in the world.  If you do not have Ethernet for your radio, but a $20 Ethernet to Wifi adaptor.

cyril

OK. Great. I am going to be replacing a RemoteRig setup connected to an iCOM 7100. It sounded like the OP had the 6600 in the house and was trying to access it over Wifi from the "shack" using some kind of software. 

He said "However, I cannot use any of the software to remotely connect to the flex, as the flex isn't "online". 

Maybe he has connected his 6600 to his PC in the house using a cable (usb or something) and has not plugged the 6600 into the router. 

Since I plan on using SmartSDR on an iPad and Parallels under MacOS I wanted to be sure all I need is to find my Flex radio connected to my network from anywhere in the world. 

Mike-VA3MW

Hi Cyril

No special communications stuff at all.  It is all standard TCP/IP.

However, there is a big difference between streaming NetFlix and wanting low latency for HF Radio communications. 

I've written this up lots (I guess I should do a script on it).  WiFi as we know it today is busted.  We don't care if we drop a few frames of a  movie we are watching.  In fact it happens all the time.  Your brain fills in the gaps.  

But, WiFi is impacted by so many things.  Mostly it is radio spectrum conflicts and just  being close to your Access Point doesn't solve it.  By design, WiFi Access Points have to by nice RF neighbours and leave time for everyone to move some data.  Not does that include your house, but every AP point your AP hears.  And, sadly this can delay data getting from your radio to your ear.

So, I highly recommend to everyone that asks.  Wire anything you can that streams.  it will make for a much better experience including Apple TV's, Android boxes, etc.  

I want to show something here and how big a concern it is.

This is a screen shot from one of my AP's. 

My nearest neighbour is 400M to my west.  One of these is him.  The ones you can't read are mine (that I fuzzed out).  The rest are over 800M away.  And some of them aren't even configured correctly since on 2.4Ghz, you should only use channels 1, 6 or 11 due to the actually 20Mhz channel bandwidth.

I can only imagine how bad this would be in a urban area.

Some are on channel 2 (ok, 1 is mine, and I need to fix that as it is wrong - and that explains a wifi performance issue I have--glad I caught that) but others are on 5 and another 2 so that is actually causing more interference to multiple channels.  

Don't trust WiFi to be 100% efficient if you have an option to cable it, even if it is with AC PowerLine as some are doing.  Your latency will improve and you will have much better performance.  

I hope that helps a bit, Mike va3mw

Andrew - G0RVM

 Jay B, I understand that the shack, the 6600 and computer on which you run SSDR is in the garage and that the Internet connection is provided from the house using WiFi. Is your definition of ‘...software to remotely connect...’ software that is either in the house or on the Internet?

If so, and the shack computer is successfully connected to the Internet, can browse the web etc, the WiFi network connection is good/working.  Are you sure that incoming connections and data from the Internet are not being blocked by your firewall/router and that the router is forwarding them to the shack computer?  Your problem may not be related to WiFi.

Andrew
G0RVM

Mike Webb KC0YHM

Did anyone mention Ubiquity products?

Ted VE3TRQ

If you need to set up a point-to-point WiFi bridge, you can't do much better the using a pair of Ubiquiti WiFi nodes. Great thruput and solid connectivity. I use them for creating mesh networks, but they also make great extenders, either one remote node, or a pair talking to each other.

Mike Webb KC0YHM

I agree...simple setup...not expensive...durable.