Wireless, etc., from house to garage, part deux

If you have a coax run pulled out the garage you could use a MoCa device (motorola NIM-100). It's a converter from coax to 100BaseT ethernet. Put one of them on an APPROPRIATE splitter (fios needs higher freqs) and it should be able to connect to the Actiontec router they'll provide. That's how the settop boxes get their Video On Demand connectivity. They've got a MoCa ethernet over coax device built into them. Then you'd just hang an access point off the NIM-100.

-Bill Kearney

Thank you.

I can't just plug a WAP (or something?) into a Cat5 jack in the garage and mess w/some settings for it to just broadcast the signal wirelessly? (sp?)

Piggybacking my own reply, sorry....

Just did some research on the Nim100, seems pretty straight forward, I'll look on the auction sites for one since they don't seem to sell them via retail outlets.

Looks like I'll have garage-cable out to a "good" splitter (suggestions?), then the splitter out 1 to TV and 1 to Nim100, then I suppose there is a simple RJ45 jack on the NIM100 that I'll plug my WAP or wireless router into (does it matter? I have both). Then I should be good to go wirelessly?

And, even though this is a separate building, the COAX is all tied into the same ActionTec in the main house so the NIM in the garage and the ATec will be chatting away?

Thanks

Not sure where you are, what package you have, or what they provide for you at your location, but here in the baltimore md area the fios comes to the utility room, where the actiontec is, and goes into that, and the outputs from that are cable (goes to the cable in the house), and the phone goes to the phone box and therefore the house.. while we can get non on demand stuff/less than channel 100 at all the outlets (so the old TV's and Tivo's still work), at each HDTV we have scientific atlanta boxes that give us the digital channels, and another modem (hooked to the cable and a wap/router, we in effect have two wireless networks, one from the actiontec and the second from when we had cable) for the internet stuff.... we just don't use the one from the actiontec at all... We did have to change the splitters on our existing cable to the one that do the 1ghz (same as sat) to allow the digital/HD/on demand stuff to pass (not sure if you need it for HD or not, but HD only works from the digital channels/boxes, and they are needed for the digital boxes)....

From some of the words in your description above, it sounds like you may have something similar (ie theres coax to the garage, rather than fiber) and the actiontecs wireless comes before the fios signal is converted to cable and phone, therefore needing an additional cable modem/boxes for the digital/hd signal.....

I am north of Boston, two non-HD boxes and TV's and one HD Box & TV in the main house. The garage will, most likely have 2 HD boxes and TV's.

Fiber comes to main house box, then is coax w/in house (of course) ActionTec is what is providing both my wired (2 pc's) and wireless in the house when I have my laptop home. I'm sure it's doing other bits of communicating between itself and Verizon for programming and such too.

I guess I never thought of what they were going to run between the house and garage, coax or fiber? Hmm, guess I'll find out. I'm not buying anything until I know what's up! :-)

Probably cable, and then you'll have boxes in the garage for the TV's... They do have/sell cable modems that connect right to the cable (have a moto surfboard modem on my cable jacked into a linksys wap/router via ethernet cable to do my wireless stuff, but it's totally seperate from the wireless they provide (they charge me 5.99 a month for a second modem in my shop/outbuilding, cuz wireless wouldn't reach, but they had cable to the outbuilding for TV - have 3 TV's and three tivo's out there)...

Just an aside, I would have done it differently now (stuff wasn't available back then when I installed it the hard way)... I assume you have power to your outbuilding? (you have to have power for the TV'S!)... at any rate, I would have used a powerline ethernet bridge

about $130) lets you bridge the stuff from one building (house) to the other on the same electric, and then in the outbuilding I would have just used a wap/router (about $50, bridge plugged into the router part - not the wan), and had full wired and wireless in the outbuilding, for less than I have been paying in monthly fees for the last two years....

PS I know I used the terms outbuilding and garage interchangebly, our garage has no cars in it anymore, is about 500 ft from the house, so it was a garage, but now it's converted into my outbuilding/playroom (no wives or kids allowed!)

Are you pulling a CAT5 out there too? If so then, well, yeah you could use that of course. But I thought you were just having coax pulled.

The idea is you get fiber from the street to a box on the wall of the house. This is the ONT (optical network terminal, iirc). From there it's typical to run a coax line to the router and any set top boxes installed in the house. In your situation it's likely they'll just pull a coax branch off the ONT and run it over to the garage. That is unless you're paying for a whole other FIOS account for it.

Once you've got coax out there it's a simple matter of using a NIM-100 to connect your access point. The NIM has two ports: one coax, the other ethernet. The limitation of the NIM, and the coax setup in general, is eight devices on it. So unless you're putting a boatload of set top boxes in the house you should have no trouble.

-Bill Kearney

Oh, I'm having Cat5 run too. Sorry if I don't make sense when I type :-) And, not I'm not paying for a whole other account that's why I'm doing it this way w/the underground from house to garage so I don't have to pay. I pay them enough gad dern dough! For sure.

Yes, plug a wireless access point or a wireless router into your ethernet jack in the garage. If it's a wireless router, then it's generally best to connect to the LAN port, not the WAN. The other end should be connected to a LAN port on your house router.

You may have to change a few settings on the new garage wireless, and you should set up the wireless with security as well.

Here's a run-down of the set-up procedure in this thread from yesterday:

Or perhaps simpler are instructions from the wireless wiki.

steve

Then if that's the case (and it's under 330' of wire) then just hang an access point off it to provide wifi at that end.