Re: Ubiquity wifi access point

Hi Rod Speed & Jeff Liebermann,

I just set up a spare Ubiquiti Rocket M2 radio & 28dBi dish antenna in station/bridge mode, which is what Rod Speed needs if he wants to use the radio at his neighbor's house, to pick up the weak signal from Rod's SOHO Wi-Fi router. We tested this configuration at about 200 feet and got perfectly acceptable signal strength.

I also set up a Ubiquiti Rocket M5 in Access Point mode, which is what Rod Speed is most likely to do, but this post is only about how easy it is to set up the Ubiquiti radios in station/bridge mode to *receive* signal from a SOHO router Wi-Fi access point.

I'm using the Ubiquiti Rocket M2 in station/bridge mode right now, connected to a desktop PC Ethernet port and then picking up the signal from my SOHO WiFi router, which is exactly what Rod's neighbor would be using if Rod opts to put a receiving dish and bucket router on the neighbor's property facing Rod's home.

Here is a photo of the radios that I'm playing with for this test.

Here is a photo of the radios set up in AP mode (where Rod Speed would broadcast his signal to his neighbor) and set up in station/bridge mode (where his neighbor would receive the weak signal from Rod Speed's SOHO WiFi router).

Up until today, I was using a Mikrotik RB411/R52n-M radio to pick up the weak signal from the SOHO WiFi router.

But we just got a set of spare Rocket M2 radios to play with so that's why I tested this out for Rod Speed.

For Rod Speed to test out what the neighbor would need to simply pick up the weak signal 300 feet away from Rod Speed's SOHO Wi-Fi router, here's all the neighbor needs to do.

1. Power up a Windows 10 PC (that's what I tested this on).
2. Connect the Ubiquiti Rocket M2 radio to the POE power "POE" port.
3. Reset the Ubiquiti radio to factory defaults (if needed).
4. Set the Windows 10 PC to a static IP address of 192.168.1.x (where x is anything not used, and not 20).
5. Connect the POE power supply LAN port to the Windows PC Ethernet port.
6. Log into the Ubiquiti radio at http://192.168.1.20 using the default login of "ubnt" and the password of "ubnt".
7. The radio will force you to set the country code & language and it will force you to accept the EULA checkbox.
8. The radio will force you to change the password, where it will take anything other than "ubnt" (e.g., "Ubnt" works just fine).
9. Go to the NETWORK tab and hit the "Select" button and select the SSID broadcast from the SOHO Wi-Fi router & enter the type of security and passphrase for that access point.
10. Hit "change" and "apply" and that's it. You're done!

The Windows 10 PC is now connected to the SOHO Wi-Fi router weak signal, and the Windows 10 PC is therefore instantly on the Internet.

In practice, the user can test this out at home, and then move the radio

300 feet away from the SOHO Wi-Fi router where the radio should still work pretty far out to connect to the weak SOHO router Wi-Fi signal.

Once the user establishes this works at 100 feet, 200 feet, 300 feet, etc., they can just put a router on the end of the radio, and they can wired or wirelessly connect any device they want to that router (such as a barn cam).

Here are screenshots of the relevant screens in the setup, but again, it's very simple because there is only one change that is required which is to set the radio to pick up the correct SOHO router Wi-Fi access point SSID, security type, and passphrase.

radio_001.jpg

radio_002.jpg

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radio_004.jpg

radio_005.jpg

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Here are the screenshots of the setup to set this Ubiquiti Rocket M5 in the mode that Rod Speed wants.

In this setup, the radio will hang off his SOHO router by cat5 cable and POE, and then this access point will paint the next few miles with his Internet signal such that a neighbor only a few hundred feet away should be able to connect to this powerful access point with small devices.

This happens to be a 5GHz 30 decibel rocket, but the procedure is exactly the same no matter what Ubiquiti radio Rod Speed chooses to make his access point that paints the neighbor's home (as per the calculations from Jeff).

ap_001 Security Certificate override at 192.168.1.20 (default)

ap_002 Log in to 192.168.1.20 port 80 as ubnt/ubnt

ap_003 Make sure AirMAX is not enabled

ap_004 You should be in Access Point/Bridge mode

ap_005 Choose the SSID & security & channel & width you want for the AP

ap_006 Choose any static IP address that you want for 192.168.1.whatever

ap_007 There's nothing to change on the Advanced tab

ap_008 There's nothing to change on the Services tab

ap_009 There's nothing to change on the System tab

As a more easily digested top-level summary, for Rod and the others: a. Station mode (the default) b. Access Point mode

1. Station mode means the access point locks on to any given SSID/passphrase, acting as a "station". For example, you can stand on the nearest hilltop and point the radio down into the city miles below, select the best signal strength open access point, and connect to the Internet (if you're lucky with signal strength both ways).
2. Access Point mode means the radio acts as an access point of your Internet to anyone (who can be miles away) who wants to connect to your access point. You can stick the radio on a hilltop, pointing at the city miles below, and everyone in the city can "see" your access point (if you're lucky with signal strength both ways).

More details for setup on Ubiquiti radios such as these in my basement:

1. The Ubiquiti radios, out of the box, default to "station" mode, where you can temporarily connect them by wire or WiFi to a mobile computing device to log in (192.168.1.20, ubnt/ubnt) and point them at any access point (even those that are miles away) and then lock on to either the SSID or the MAC address. That's it.

After that one-step setup of choosing the SSID to lock onto, you can plug

*anything* you want into the radio (e.g., a router, a camera, a computer, a mobile device, etc.) and it will be using the Internet of the SSID you're locked on to.

1. The Ubiquiti radios can easily be set up in Access Point mode, where you plug them into your router and then you can put this access point up to 300 feet away from the router, connected by that Ethernet cable.

This allows you to paint any part of your property, e.g., your pool or your barn or your front gate, etc., or even to paint an entire city miles away, with your access point.

In this photo below, you see that I have one powerful Rocket M2 (2.4GHz) which is set up in "station" mode, while the other powerful Rocket M5 (5GHz) is set up in "access point" mode.

Bear in mind that these radios can go for a dozen miles line of sight when connected to a similar radio, but the distance will be far less if the other radio is a cell phone, a router, or a less powerful access point.

The advantage, however, of these powerful Ubiquiti Rocket M2/M5 radios is that they have 24dBi and 30dBi antennas respectively, which, if you know how decibels work, is a huge increase in a weak noisy received signal strength.

However, even these two relatively weak 14dBi and 18dBi antennas can still go for miles line of sight under the right conditions on the other side.

None of those figures even counts the added power of at least 25 or so decibels (dbM) of power input into the antenna, so that gives you just an idea of how much more powerful, overall, these radios are compared to your typical SOHO router (which would be hard pressed to garner even 20dBm of EIRP overall).

Update for Jeff and Rod:

Using that bullet and planar antenna above, I finally got around to physically mounting the Ubiquiti Bullet M2HP connected to a 14dBi planar antenna outside on a pole stuck into the leftover hole from an ancient

15-foot wide satellite dish which was removed long ago.

Here are some LOS Android-based received-signal-strength measurements for Jeff Liebermann and Rod Speed where I set up *exactly* what Rod Speed wants to accomplish.

Those measurements are roughly at about 300 feet LOS (-50dBm to -60dBm) and at about 100 feet LOS (-35dBm to -40dBm) distance from the radio which is wired to the SOHO router and set up as an "access point" (which is what Rod wants to do).