Isolation Day 46: Getting Free Internet
Finally Rigging the Outdoor WiFi
Every since we lived in Beverley were been using 4G to get internet in the home as when we were living in Beverley the only internet provider was K-COM, who are ridiculously expensive. Even when we moved back to Bridlington we kept with the 4G but that was for one reason. I couldn’t get my WiFi receiver to work and provide us with internet.
I used to have a Ubiquiti Nano Station M2 on the top of my garage that gave us internet for music streaming and video tutorials on YouTube. Many years ago I supported a project by Fon that gave me unlimited internet when using their hotspots. Part of the agreement was that when I had broadband internet available I share it through the device I got as part of supporting them. I still do when I have broadband installed.
When we moved in I noticed there were a couple of BT WiFi with Fon hotspots around our home so thought I’d try and get a backup connection setup to the hotspot using my old Nano Station. Unfortunately this didn’t work out as whilst it was in storage it seemed have got some damage that stopped it working.
A couple of months ago I bought a new access point that also receives wifi too. The name of it escapes me at the moment and, as it’s attached to the exterior wall, it is a bit hard to get to at the moment. Again I came a bit stuck as the firmware provided on the device was dated and not very simple to use. I flashed it with OpenWRT and whilst things were a lot easier to setup I was still unable to get a connection through to the house. I gave it up as a bad job and put it away.
Today, I thought I would give it another shot. Though rather than having it attached to the front of the building I’ve attached it to a wall at the rear and that seems to have done the trick. The only problem I have now is that connection speeds are all over the place. This afternoon I was getting speeds of around 5Mb / second. I went away for a few hours so I could do a bit of work with Abi came back and ran another speed test and was getting less than 1Mb / second no matter the setting I have tried. this time I was running through my AirPort Extreme, even so, that should not be causing the issues.
I’ll be having another go with it tomorrow to see if I can get things up and running with a better connection speed.
Have you tried to get your own wireless internet up and running? Do you have any ideas why the internet speeds are all over the place? Let me know in the comments bellow.
