Internet Options for my Mom

[riptides]

I am using an eero mesh setup on our farm. I have a firestick in another building at 150 feet away picking up the network. That is going through two walls and into a concrete old style mesh parge wall and a wall mounted TV. I also pick up the network in there for browsing.
I would try a mesh system first.

So I ordered another beacon, to extend the mesh a little farther. I am looking at another 50 feet to the barn, so the current mesh services out to there, but of course the signal is weak. I am hoping this will give me a workable (stream, browse) network out to about 300 feet covering 2 houses and 3 out buildings (barn, milk house, pool house). Total coverage of living area should amount to just close to 10,000 square feet. That should make hiding from the wife more palatable.

 

[garry1p]

What I intended was to give Eddie an alternative to try for less than $50 before spending hundreds for what he said was a back-up.
He may have an old router that could be used as a repeater or access point and solve his problem at zero cost.

He asked for options and I gave him one.

 

[JasperFrank]

All these tech issues are well addressed. But what is missing from this conversation is that older people do not know how
Vicious and sneaky spammers are. So the first thing isn't a tech solution. Is is that you have to have a long conversion, of how scams work. I didn't have this conversation with my uncle that I set up for broadband internet. So the first thing that happened, was he got the fake Microsoft call and followed it. I had to do a face plant when I found out about it, and the credit card company made him whole again. But it was a close call. Gift Cards you don't get to recover from. I can easily say 70% of all my computer repairs were turning off Remote Access and wiping machines back to its updated OEM OS, after scanning all the personal info for backdoors. It made me feel sad in a way, cause I had to charge time for this, adding insult to injury. And then I would have to have the conversation with the client, to assure them that they were not stupid, but they needed to be aware of the tricks and how they work.

 

[ponytug]

All these tech issues are well addressed. But what is missing from this conversation is that older people do not know how viscous and sneaky spammers are. So the first thing isn't a tech solution. Is is that you have to have a long conversion, of how scams work. I didn't have this conversation with my uncle that I set up for broadband internet. So the first thing that happened, was he got the fake Microsoft call and followed it. I had to do a face plant when I found out about it, and the credit card company made him whole again. But it was a close call. Gift Cards you don't get to recover from. I can easily say 70% of all my computer repairs were turning off Remote Access and wiping machines back to its updated OEM OS, after scanning all the personal info for backdoors. It made me feel sad in a way, cause I had to charge time for this, adding insult to injury. And then I would have to have the conversation with the client, to assure them that they were not stupid, but they needed to be aware of the tricks and how they work.

I agree. Hence the earlier suggestion to get a better router and lock down her access...

 

[EarPlug]

Eddie, This just appeared in my news feed today,

Eero's Outdoor 7 long-distance mesh unit solved our yearslong Wi-Fi quandary in 10 minutes | TechCrunch

So far in life, I haven't needed be a "mesh guy." A well-chosen and carefully placed Wi-Fi router has worked fine in our modest abodes, but one particular

techcrunch.com

 

[EddieWalker]

Mom's internet has been really bad, and I feel that I need to do something right away. My wife is worse than my mom about informing me over and over again that it needs to be fixed!!!

I've clicked on every link, read each page, and watched dozens of Youtube Videos. I still feel out of water on this, but I think I understand the basics.

This morning, I ordered this Point to Point system from Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BZ7W4G1J?psc=1&smid=A1H9J6ER4P7CI1&ref_=chk_typ_imgToDp

They all seem so similar to each other, and I just had a happier feeling about this one from reading the reviews over the others.

I also ordered 100 and 50 feet of Cat 6 Ethernet Cables. My plan is to run the 100 foot cable from my Router to the other side of my house. Straight distance is 48 feet, so that gives me plenty of extra to hide it.

At my Mom's house, I'm going to run the 50 foot cable across her garage and connect it to our old wifi modem, which will be about 20 feet from where she sits with her tablet.

Right or wrong, I'll let everyone know how it turns out.

 

[LittleBill21]

hopefully they throttle back, those are too powerful for the distance your shooting. You created a lot of extra work for yourself. Hope it works out.

 

[ponytug]

hopefully they throttle back, those are too powerful for the distance your shooting. You created a lot of extra work for yourself. Hope it works out.

Yes, they throttle the gain back. Those are 5.8GHz units that do have some issues with heavy rain ("rain fade"). As this is Texas we are talking about, I suspect @EddieWalker's units will need the gain occasionally.

@EddieWalker I would still try to limit your mom's connections to just Facebook, and no international connections. Failing that, at least get her an Apple iPad, and turn on as many privacy options as you see. A fairly tech savvy elder relative was only saved from a malicious "Support Team" scammer because he wasn't running the type of computer that the scammer thought he was. It still left a fair amount to clean up.

All the best,

Peter

 

[LittleBill21]

Yes, they throttle the gain back. Those are 5.8GHz units that do have some issues with heavy rain ("rain fade"). As this is Texas we are talking about, I suspect @EddieWalker's units will need the gain occasionally.

I have units similar to this on a 1 MILE shot. there is a limit too how much they throttle back (about 50% is max pull back) on shorter runs we actually misalign the antenna's to get the power down more (-50db is about perfect). He's at 100 feet, these are massively overpowered. More is not remotely better in this case.

a mesh unit i recommended in each window would have been fastely superior, less hops, no wires minus 2 power cords, and probably better speeds and significantly less work, and not that it matters in this situation its going to either be either double nat or even triple nat and a lot more configuration and apparently cost.

 

[ponytug]

@LittleBill21 I get your general point, and time will tell.

I certainly have units able to turn down more than 50%, but I have no experience with his particular model. However, practically speaking, I can't recall if I have ever had an RF overload issue on a point to point system. The last time I had to deal with an amplifier overloaded by an RF input was long, long ago. If there is an overload issue, shifts in the antenna orientation are an easy fix. I've used multi-mile units a hundred feet apart, when there were other reasons to use the multi-mile devices, with no issues. YMMV.

All the best,

Peter