Tech News and Commentary

Chris discusses the Fastly outage, and more.

Our guest this hour:

Sonja Nijhuis, Founder - Breath In Balanz

Clark in Ocean Springs, Mississippi listens on SuperTalk Mississippi and asked: "Would like to find an economical way to pickup my home Internet in a cottage that is next door to our home - probably 40 yards away."

https://media.blubrry.com/into_tomorrow/content.blubrry.com/into_tomorrow/06-11-2021-H2S1.mp3

Clark, technically any WiFi access point should cover 40 yards, but the reality is that depending on walls, trees and whatever else is in the way, that may not work in the real world.

A good solution for you may be an RV long range WiFi antenna. You can think of them as just large antennas that plug into your computer to act as an additional wireless network card.

In the past weve had success with the C. Crane Super USB WiFi Antenna 3 which you can buy for around $60. There really isnt much to using it, just plug in the USB cable and make sure your computer is using that antenna rather than the built in WiFi.

If you want WiFi for multiple devices you may be in the market for either a repeater or a mesh network. The mesh network will work if you get WiFi somewhere in the cottage that it can repeat, otherwise it probably wont be an option. And the most popular options right now are probably Google WiFi, Netgears Orbi, and the Eero. For two stations youre probably already looking at a cost in the low hundreds.

The repeater generally has the same restriction as the mesh networks and theyre harder to set up and use, but theyll cost you significantly less.

At 40 yards you do have the option of running a network cable from your home to the cottage and just plugging in an access point on that end. Thats also a pretty inexpensive solution, it will probably cost you under $100, but it does require laying down 40 yards of cable and somehow getting it inside the buildings at both ends of the run, so its definitely not the easiest way to go.

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