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Ask Slashdot: Can You Install a Wifi Mesh Network in a Barn? (slashdot.org)
Long-time Slashdot reader pikester has a friend running a museum "looking to make it more interactive for visitors."
To make this happen, the museum is going to need to have good WiFi connectivity throughout the premises. The good news is that the museum is pretty small. The bad news is that it is located in an old horse barn with many metal walls. I'm hoping to put in a mesh network for him, but most solutions I've seen are pretty bulky. I'm looking for recommendations for a solution that is easily mountable in the building.
Long-time Slashdot reader Spazmania suggests it's "not terribly complicated." After setting access points to same SSID but different channels (and with the transmit power down), "walk around with a piece of free software such as Wifi Analyzer and tweak the positions and transmit power on the access points until the signal levels look good in wifi analyzer." But are there other solutions? Leave your own best answers in the comments.
Can you install a wifi mesh network in a barn?
Can you install a wifi mesh network in a barn?
Yes.
> Can you install a wifi mesh network in a barn?
Yes.
This HAS the be the dumbest question I've ever seen on slashdot.
Check out Ubiquiti networks. They have great mesh networks that are small and unobtrusive, and with a controller each new adopted device with automatically gain the settings from the controller. Makes adding new Hotspots a breeze when you find a dead zone.
phew ... although I wonder how long before someone tries something like that.
Rajant has some serious wireless mesh technology you might want to check out, though it may be overkill for this application. https://www.rajant.com/
plan & attend unblock wifi parties. like the old days the whole neighborhood rocks anonymously..
There are a ton of companies that make simple wifi solutions with a single centralized controller. Installing a bunch of separatly standalone APs is acceptable only for very, very small networks.
I like ruckus unleashed. Ubiquity also makes a product.
Mesh is only when the aps need to talk to eash other via wireless, normally you do mesh when running a network cable to the AP location is impossible.
This is the best advice.
Ubiquiti isn't cheap like used APs, but it isn't expensive like all their competition.
It has a centralized management solution that can be hosted anywhere with connectivity, even Amazon EC2. You can put a raspberry pi in the location and have management run on it too or any other existing Windows/Linux/OSX system there. It is java (eew), but it is java (runs everywhere) too.
It understands "grid" and will setup power output to limit overlap in a good way.
So, if your time is free, get a bunch of used APs, find power for each location, get wired ethernet to each location and fight for about a week to get things working.
Or
Install PoE Ubuiquiti APs, have the management system set the needed power for each node, and be done in a day.
Not sure one your budget but - You will need access points that will seamlessly move clients to one another (Aruba IAP105's are cheap - forget the fancy newer HT80+ stuff) or something similar from a competitor. Checkout Aruba, Aerohive, Ubiquit, Rukus, etc. Do a search for Aruba HAT - "home agent table" to get an idea of the idea of how a user is moved around between nodes. Mikrotik also has some cool stuff. Havent check them in a while. Think DD-WRT just does relay which is pretty nasty.
If it were me, i'd grab a bunch of ebayed IAP105's, or 205's if they had the cash, and link them via EoP (ethernet over power) so no backhaul wireless needed. You can stick em anywhere on that phase of the power. (check if three phase power and design accordingly)
Those who can, do. Those who cannot, sue.
The answer is that yes you can, or if not, someone can do it for you. Whether it'll work well, IOW whether it's a good idea? Probably not.
"Mesh" is, next to the latest in marketeering buzz, a fancied-up repeater network. Not what you want if you like performance.
I just dropped a ubiquiti m2 into my metal roofed barn, connected 200 yards away to my house, point to point directionally.
The ubiquiti in the barn I connected to a cheap linksys wrt54g. It acts as a Lan extension, putting the barn on the same routable network as the house. I've got another metal roofed outbuilding and set up another ubiquiti pair to it.
If you needed to extend inside the barn, you could either throw (shielded) cat5, or hook up another m2 pair and leap frog.
Mesh seems like fun. But. I just wanted internet. I'm so lazy that the 2nd ubiquiti pair I ordered pre configured from Amazon. Was like throwing a really long cat 5 to the remote houses.
Let us know what you end up installing. Sounds more like a hobby than just getting connectivity.
FWIW, I run zoom and slack voice and video over the ubiquitis. Work just fine.
Similar project
A relative with an old brick-factory / barn used as a WW1 museum in Italy. All kinds of metal objects inside (huge tank shells, etc.), extremely thick and solid brick walls, attached to their house/farm.
Wifi was unable to penetrate far. So I did what this says... a handful of old Wifi points, all set to the same SSID. Note that this is NOT proper mesh unless the points are on the same network, support meshing and can hand-off.
Guess what... it works. It's adequate. You couldn't get a thousand people online from it, but it's more than good enough for a school trip to walk around with an iPad or two and connect.
Why they needs an Ask Slashdot, I don't know.
P.S. Proper mesh with decent points would really show you up and likely network the entire place with only a couple of points. Slapping even a dozen points on the same SSID / different channels and then manually adjusting everything is just shit... it'll never get the performance and you have no idea whether or not you're making things worse (e.g. crowding out on channel, etc.). If you have something proper mesh-capable, more than likely it'll dial everything DOWN, not up.
so when people refer to wifi mesh their are two parts and the confuse the two...
1. The ability to have the SSID name the same "mywifiName"
2. the ability to have the nodes communicate to a central node via Wifi
The ability to all share the same wifi name and login to one SSID is a good honorable thing.
Using wifi as backhaul is frankly a hack its like the cell providers who use microwave to link sites together, yes it works but it has problems
Link your individual wifi points with string (fibre or Cat 6/5E) and your world will be a much better place
How will we monitor the animals with face recognition 24/7 otherwise?
Run along the ceiling, couple of AP's maybe, problem solved.
Checkout the eero systems their mesh system seems to work pretty well. All you need is power, wired connections are optional.
The IEEE 802.11 standards and RFC wifi protocols explicitly forbid usage of wifi in a "barn." They clearly state this and it's as if you didn't even read them.
Sorry, but you're fucked. If it were ANYWHERE but a barn, perhaps we could help but a barn, and especially one with metal isn't going to happen.
You'll have to get your luddite on, and get the CAT3 cabling out, a drill, a really nice half-duplex 10-base-t hub, and get some RJ45 jacks and patch panels and termination tools from Harbour Freight.
You can then place a stationary desktop computer with an EtherWebs connection in the room of the barn and a really nice SuperVGA 640x480 CRT on it for the end users. Hope you have power (electricity) in the barn already or this will be a short ride.
Do it for all the horses and clowns running your circus operation. The cargo cult will appreciate all your efforts.
I've been running OpenMesh units in greenhouses and barns for about 6 years now. I like them. I prefer running ethernet to each node but in a pinch I'll set them up as a wifi only unit. Total bandwidth performance cuts in half each time you make them do a wifi hop so I avoid them.
The management tools are all online and super easy. Support staff is also excellent if you ever need them. I've only had one need but boy I was impressed.
And they're like $100 per unit, kind of hard to beat that. If you can run PoE to them install is even easier.
And then the horses came over and take a shit on the access points. The heat from the access points causes the shit to begin to steam. A toxic cloud envelopes the barn. The visitors inside begin to choke and gag, short of breath, and collapse. The methane from cow farts then warts over the steaming horseshit, igniting it and turning the barn into a raging inferno. Talk about a barn burner!
I would not, could not in a barn. I would not, could not on a farm. Not on a train, not in the rain.
I wish I could grant you a point for Informative. You did a great job of explaining. I agree that PoE is superior, with the metal walls in the barn.
People visiting a museum can't just look around and enjoy themselves without stopping every 2 minutes to upload a selfie to crapchat or instafag.
No.
Note sure where you are in the choosing of wifi devices, but I'd take Openwrt-compliant (i.e. supported) routers. Openwrt usually offers more levels of configuration, and works usually faster than the factory firmware.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
You're welcome. Glad I could help.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Put plume superpods in every plug, you'll have excellent wifi in the barn, five bars everywhere.
You can run some cheap PoE routers in every location. I don't think that you'll have much of a problem in a barn with 1 or 2 APs, you probably have sufficient wide open gaps for signal to penetrate/propagate, it's unlikely you actually have multiple Faraday cages.
OpenMesh makes some decent quality low cost routers but there are others from all over China for even less that run OpenWRT on PoE
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
The new "Ask slashdot" css and its #037 background color will surely destroy a good number of your retina cells.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Meshes can only be be worn in the house.
Can you macrame it with yarn? Could you install it on a bridge? Could you would you next to your fridge?
Mikrotik has nice central administration and proper handover even with the cheapest access points and all is powered over Ethernet. Don't go the wireless mesh route. You need to power the access points anyway: Just use the network cable for both. The "cAP lite" access point comes with a wall case and a ceiling case (3.5" diameter) and is just $29: https://mikrotik.com/product/RBcAPL-2nD-307
TL;DR - buy proper mesh APs like Eeros. Run ethernet where you can between them. Let them figure the best allocation of channels and paths out.
It's a solved problem if you know the right company to choose.
Total self-promotion here. Yes, we can!
http://www.mage-networks.com/
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
He meant EoP (networking over the 110V wires) though, not PoE (power over the network cable). The former is a relatively expensive and low quality connection, but can be useful if adding cables is prohibitively complicated and power sockets are already available. Otherwise PoE is the way to go. Access points should be mounted in high places, so powering them there is often a problem. PoE provides both network and power over a cable that doesn't require an electrician to install.
NO
attach a string and tin cans to the baby jesus making a mobil access point.
What about with yarn, inside the barn?
The internal structure of a barn makes it impossible for any electrical equipment (more sophisticated than a light bulb) to function in it. It is also a natural Faraday cage so no signals can enter it. Give up on it and do it in a stable instead!
ubiquiti mesh Amplifi HD Faster Whole-Home Wi-Fi System. You can add additional mesh extenders as needed and they all run off 1 controller. Be aware that Apple phones do NOT play that well with mesh. It works but they do not always hand off when you would want them too. The only thing that really kicks ass with Apple that I have found is Ruckus but it's big dollars.
Its called 802.11k, 802.11r, 802.11v standard for seamless fast switch AP assisted handoff between locations. Mesh or non-mesh gear makes no difference except having a back haul of wireless or wired.
The coverage will depend on the power of each unit and the quality of the antennas. If you want fewer units, they will generally be bulker and more expensive.
If you're looking for cheap, not totally DIY, and don't might not having heavy amounts of Enterprise features look at TP-links business line with a controller. Ubiquity is better in terms of management and tuning, but that costs a bit more.
"Were you raised in a barn?"
For a few guffaws you could consider the use of Leaky Feeder coaxial cable to handle network issues around metal walls. Would also save you a good deal of tweaking, unless you are into that kind of thing. If you are big enough to require amplifiers, auto calibrating amps are the way to go.
+1
You *can* do it the way suggested in the summary but there will always be an area where your device can see the old network when its signal is unusable when you're nearer to another. The device will prefer to stick to the BSSID it was on before so won't switch over for some time. That means half way between the access points the WiFi is not very usable. You can work around that by having different SSIDs so you can manually switch if it's a problem. But that can be a right pain.
Did the horses each had their own power lines?
Don't know if they sell in the US but Fritz!boxes have easy mesh addons that you just put in power sockets around the house^h^h^h^h^hbarn.
https://en.avm.de/mesh-network...
I see far too often people misusing the term "mesh" when it comes to a multi AP setup. The proper term for it is an ESS (extended service set) network. You take two or more APs on the same subnet, Give them the same BSSID/Password. The clients will automatically roam from one AP to the other as they loose connectivity with one AP and move into an area covered by another AP. There are no special "controllers" needed for this. This has pretty much been built into the wifi spec since it was created. The roaming between APs is handled by the client device itself not the APs or a controller.
A mesh network on the other hand is a self organizing network. a true "mesh" network you would take 20 APs out of the box, power them up and they would auto discover each other and auto configure connectivity between the AP nodes, If one of the mesh nodes had further network/internet connectivity the mesh would auto route traffic though the mesh out the node(s) with external connectivity.
...we need a lot more info if we have to give qualified answers.
"More interactive" does that require tracking where a subject is for delivering info about that spot ?
"Barn" is anything from 30x10 m to 300x100 m, what is the size ?
"Horse barn" is usually made of wood not iron, roof and outer walls may be of corrugated metal but not the inside.
How many guests are visiting on most busy day ?
I have a 40'x80'x16' metal barn. I put on good Netgear AP about 12' from the nearest wall and have excellent 2.4 and 5 reception throughout.
Ships are floating buildings with steel walls. Check out what is done on ships, cruise liners and ferries.
It's a BARN. Wire the APs.
I've been using Open-Mesh (openmesh.com) products for almost a decade in a downtown area in a small town. Prior to that I was using Meraki, before they were bought out by Cisco and the price went through the roof. They work great, are easy to manage, fairly inexpensive, and have a nice dashboard. I have mostly OM2P v2 units installed with a slightly bigger antenna to transmit across streets, but a handful of these would work.
As the power flows in, the screen grows warm, another day starts, I'm at work again...
Why would you need a Mesh network in a barn? Is this the world's biggest barn? A decently placed access point, with a quality antenna, can provide coverage for hundreds of feet in any direction.