Wifi through 4ft stone walls

I’d put an AP in each loft on the underside of the landing ceiling.

If there is mains in the loft they could be powered from there and only 1 cable run down to the router. If no mains then they will all need to be cabled back. The power could come from an appropriate PoE switch or the included power injectors. The PoE switch is the most elegant solution.

Shopping list:

N – 3 x Ubiquiti UniFi UAP £60 / Ubiquiti TS-5-POE TOUGHSwitch 5-Port Gigabit PoE Switch (60W) £85 or NETGEAR GS305 5-Port Desktop Gigabit Switch £15 and the power injectors.

AC – 3 x Ubiquiti UAP-AC-LITE GEN2 AC1200 £80 / Switch with PoE TP-LINK TL-SG1008P 8-Port (4x PoE Ports) Desktop Gigabit Switch (53W) £60 or NETGEAR GS305 5-Port Desktop Gigabit Switch £15 and the power injectors.

The reason for the different PoE switches is the N is 24v passive and the AC is 48v active (802.3 af).

You’ll also need Cat 5e cable and RJ45 plugs plus drill capable of going through the dividing wall(s) in the loft. You may get away with external cable and hopping outside to get around the walls, but you’ll need a ladder and head for heights.

Good luck with routing a cable (or three) into the middle of the house to get to the router.

Broadbandbuyer will set up the cloud controller for you. Free for 3 years then £15 a year.

EDIT As this is a business situation, just thinking about any potential GDPR issues if 3 different tenants can see each others devices, which they will be able to do.

The APs can run 4 SSIDs so it would be easy to give each house it’s own SSID but they’ll still be in the same IP subnet. You could set up Guest protocols what would isolate each device and only allow any device to only access the internet but that would knacker any wifi printers etc.

The way to do it would be with VLANs. I would only contemplate this with the AC as a managed 802.3 af PoE switch is available from Ubiquiti for £110

If the houses are older there is a good chance you won’t needed to drill through the attic, my nan lived in an old workers Terri e house and you could walk between the houses in the roof space.

My current home (1911) isn’t full sealed either. It’s mostly bricked up but towards the top you could early feed wire through.

We have a a cottage in the lower village, that has solid cobble stone walls and it destroys masonry bits. So figures crossed you can loop wire through gaps in the loft space.

Dave, from what Tippon said the connection between houses one and two and three is via a couple of external walls back to back so a very tricky drilling task. This would appear to make the external grade cable a prudent alternative.

Agreed, some modern technology really does deliver a choice of answers to flatten every problem.

Not that anyone will really check until you come to sell the properties, but it might not be wise drilling through a fire wall between the houses…

Welcome to the last week of my life. It’s the Navy job next week, in a building we’ve done before and know the major PM players, but we’ve been hit with new CPR Ethernet cable regulations and what the MoD have decided is the spec they want.

A new Euro wide specification came out last year, but that’s just to define what things like LSZH really mean, it’s up to each country to decide what spec will apply where. Westminster ducked the issue but the BSI have decided what a “standard” should be and the MoD have gone with that. They did go one level higher until they found that no-one was making fibre to that standard yet! We also have to use metal ties where cables aren’t in trays. Fair enough, I can see the sense, but don’t tell us with only days to go. Then there’s the haggling over who picks up the extra (not inconsiderable) cost.

I won’t go into the moving of the location of equipment due to another project’s impact that had just been noticed and the speccing, sourcing and more haggling over the cost and implications of the extra kit needed. Only to be told this morning just 2 hours before my drop dead time for getting that kit that we were back to Plan A. ?

I just remembered why we drink so heavily in the evenings when on M0D work ?

It’s not just the Govt, I was approached last week to see if I could do an urgent job at Wembley stadium today (and could I be available on Sunday if needed), putting in a wireless link to a trailer in one of the car parks. Drop dead date for that was Tuesday noon and the contractors I would have been working to had heard nothing from Wembley. On Friday it was all can you guarantee this and that, yes no problem, move work around to accommodate their dates, then nothing…

I also found out that the design I did for a large project had been given to another outfit to implement. Now I know how Wickes kitchen designers feel ?

Banging my own drum here, but you’re right, this is the job for a professional and needs a proper site survey. I’m sure the GDPR implications will be totally lost too. Probably a risk that could be taken, but for the modest extra cost must be worth getting yourself protected as modest doesn’t begin to describe the potential fines.

One thing I will tell you is that every similar one I’ve done so far costs less than 3 separate BB connections. You always need to look at costs of ownership vs upfront; there’s a reason why Wilkinson Sword does razors cheap and blades expensive ?

If he wants it done properly let me know.

Most landlords I know leave it to the tenants to get their own. Where I have done something similar is on shared sites, like the family farm in Cornwall, or where the buildings are all owned by the same business.

On the farm my cousin rents out her barn conversion in the summer so there is a Guest network that is isolated, no need to worry about emmets printing. Another cousin runs a motor repair shop from another barn, so I’ve made sure his business PC is properly firewalled. I could have provided him with a Ubiquiti airCube ACB-ISP AP to create his own isolated network in his office as coverage wouldn’t be an issue.