Achieving 1000 feet of Outdoor WiFi Coverage

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Being an outdoor's man and avid walker, at times walking up to 10 miles per day and not always having 5G access, I decided it was time to extend my WiFi outdoors. This was actually fairly convenient for me as I am a licensed ham radio operator and already have a 50 ft tower already mounted and in place at my home.

Non Yagi Distance

With the standard antennas included with the access point I am able to achieve about 500 feet in any direction with some use-ability loss. That is with leaves on the trees. Most notably the WiFi is still use-able at either stop sign in Cambria, my small town.

The map below shows the maximum distance from the access point that I achieved. While I still have a wifi signal passed the stop sign, it gets less bandwidth.

Additionally there's a local park, the Cambria mil-pond park that I visit frequently and needed WiFi access. Now has 100% full WiFi coverage.

The tower is fairly easy to climb, the key to any outdoor wireless coverage is line of site. The height of the access point/antenna is the single most important element in achieving success with WiFi distance. Once you get to the top of the tower there's foot steps at the final 8 foot. Although at that height, things get a bit wobbly. LOL.

Any space of height would work, it does not have to be a tower. The outdoor EAP-225 could be mounted on top of a silo, apartment building, barn or tall house. It is equipped with POE and comes with 2 MIMO low gain antennas. The included antennas are kind of lousy but they get the job done. It has RP-SMA connectors so you could connect any antenna to it. Just be sure to keep the coax as short as humanly possible. 2.4 GHZ may have high enough bandwidth but it also has very high coaxial loss.

The mounting could be better on the TP-LINK EAP-225 however in my situation it worked just fine. Rather than using a u-bolt or metal or something of the likes.... the EAP225 relies solely on plastic, shipping with two large zip strips. I actually just zip stripped it to one of the sidebars on my tower.

For my installation I am just using the antennas included with EAP225, for now. However, I would eventually like to extend my coverage. I think up to 5,000 feet is possible -- with YAGI's. I have 17 dBI gain yagis to put up.

TP-LINK EAP-225

In my view the EAP-225 is the best way to achieve outdoor WiFi, having a favorable view of TP-LINK products in today's day and age. It offers 2.4 GHZ and 5 GHZ although I choose to only use the 2.4 GHZ option -- on all of my access points.

The EAP-225 offers TP-LINK strength in an outdoor case. It actually has a detachable panel to waterproof the ETHERNET port. The cable plugs in then the lid snaps over top of it.

POE Functionality

The POE (Power over Ethernet) is one of the most important features for an out door access point or any type of outdoor networking equipment. This allows you to place the access point in a remote location with one single cable, the Ethernet cable. The power AND networking is combined into one cable with the POE adapter. No external power cables needed. The EAP-225's POE adapter actually has the mickey mouse shaped power cable.

For my installation I chose to use outdoor grade Ethernet cable so that weather will not harm the cable as it will be outdoors, on the tower. In my case a 50 foot piece of cat 6 cable with ends already manufactured on was more than sufficient. Cat 6 is good for up to 1 GBPS. The POE adapter resides inside the house while the actually access point sits at the top of the tower.

Wireless Bands	2.4 GHZ / 5 GHZ
Waterproof	Yes
POE	Yes
Power Output Control	Yes
Antenna Gain	3 dbi
Number of Antennas	2
Antenna connectors	RP-SMA
Ethernet Port Bandwidth	1 GBPS / 1000 MBPS (cat 5e or better required)

RP-SMA Connectors

RP-SMA connectors are SMA connectors that are inverted. SMA and RP-SMA connectors likewise are very handy considering a lot of modern wireless devices don't even have external connectors. Thanks to having external connectors - you can choose your antenna.

Although small the SMA connectors have threads - which make them fine as opposed to a TS-9 connector.