Pulling internet into another structure

[NeuroTypical]

I'm hoping there are some techie folks with a good solution to my problem.

We have a wireless router in our house, that runs up to 9 or 10 of our phones/laptops/pcs/etc.   We get a little wifi outside of the house, that of course diminishes the further we get.   Enter the new steel structure we're turning into an office:

 

We get a little wifi at the door end of the trailer, with one door opened.  When the weather is bad or cold, and that heavy steel door is closed, the wifi drops down to almost zilch.

I'm hoping there's a simple wireless solution that can boost the wifi into the office, even if the door is closed.  

Any ideas?  I am only a little technologically savvy, but can follow directions.

Is there such a thing as a wifi repeater, that we could plug into the top right end of the house, that picks up the router's signal and re-broadcasts it strongly, so the occupants of the office could pull from it?  It's about 50' from router to the corner of the house, and about 40' more from corner of house to the office doors.  Office is 40' long.

There's one cable in the house, between the dish and the router.  I'd like to keep it that way if at all possible, and not run any wires anywhere.

 

Edited November 6, 2021 by NeuroTypical

[Fether]

@NeuroTypical Better solution. Move your shipping container into your house. There is plenty of room

Edited November 6, 2021 by Fether

[mikbone]

What you have there is a Faraday cage.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cage

I have the same thing in my house, adobe walls on chickenwire. Mine is probably not as bad as yours though.  But bad enough to drop gig internet down to < 10 megs just going from a central location to the office. My spirit was crushed - then I did some research.

My solution: 

We put one unit in a central location and then purchased two CAT 7 outdoor 150’ lengths of ethernet cable.  Which we used to run a dedicated backhaul to two more satellite units at each end of the house.  I had a guy come in and install the ethernet cable thru the walls pretty like, but when we were done I did a speed test and pulled down 900 gigs in my office with 5 bars.  Worth!

The technician works putting in business ethernet / wifi systems and I had to convince him to come out to my residence. On the phone he was dismissive and just told me to get one of the mesh systems. When he did come out, he looked at the house and said “you do need my help”

I have to download MRI / CT images while on call and it made a massive change. We have probably 100 different wifi units in the house (lighting, thermostats, smart appliances, sonos sound systems, pool, 4K TVs, playstations, irrigation, etc) and they all work flawlessly.

Before, the 4K TVs could only play content in SD. Now I can stream 4K in multiple rooms while the kids are playing playstation online games or zoom video classes.  

Your internet is only as good as your weakest link. Every time I run a speedtest, I smile.

You can try it without the ethernet backhaul (The AUSU mesh routers are amazing).  But adding the cables in my house did the trick.

 

Its 3AM and everyone is asleep but me.  Solid green lines are the backhaul, we put a repeater in the detached garage without the backhaul and it did ok. But we dont need gig internet in the garage (just monitoring lighting, irrigation, and solar array out there).

Edited November 7, 2021 by mikbone

[NeuroTypical]

Daaaaannngg @mikbone, that is a Cadillac of a solution there!  The whole “run outdoor cat seven cable” thing is a real bummer. But the “weakest link“ thing certainly makes sense.  (As does pointing out that the trailer is a faraday cage.) 😞 

Imma hafta run another cable out to that thing, aren’t I?

[estradling75]

As been pointed out the trailer being a faraday cage is a big factor limiting wifi (and cell service too).  Running a cable is something is something you need to do to get past it.  Now if running the cable through your house is an issue and your wifi outside the house is good..  Then you could put a wifi node outside to take it back to cable and route it into the trailer.  Once inside you could continue the cable or do another wifi node on the inside.   You would have to do some looking to see if that kind of thing would make sense for you (Cost wise and making sure you still have enough speed.)

[NeuroTypical]

Cool! What is a “Wi-Fi node“?  Do you have links to some examples on Amazon?  Like I say, I’m not bright, but I can follow instructions.

 

[mikbone]

24 minutes ago, NeuroTypical said:

Cool! What is a “Wi-Fi node“?  Do you have links to some examples on Amazon?  Like I say, I’m not bright, but I can follow instructions.

 

Mount this on the outside of the container and drill a hole for passage of power and ethernet cable into the office.

There are many options

[estradling75]

23 hours ago, NeuroTypical said:

Cool! What is a “Wi-Fi node“?  Do you have links to some examples on Amazon?  Like I say, I’m not bright, but I can follow instructions.

 

Wi-Fi node is a generic term for Wi-FI hardware.  @mikbone has posted some good examples.   (And he did the weather protection which I hadn't been thinking about.  That is important too)