The scenario in detail is:
- Units are sitting on same desk, everything works great
- Extender is about 17m from the AP indoors with 3 walls in between - everything works great
- Extender is 224m line of sight at a nearby house. Many trees in between - HaLow does not associate
You are right, I need to check points in between, but the only portable device I have here is the iPad. My model has a lightning connector not USB-C, so it will not power an external device. I need to look for my lithium battery phone charger, which might keep the HL1 powered long enough to figure out the distance limitations. Does the HaLow link negotiate the channel width to maximize the bandwidth of the âvirtual wireâ or is this fixed?
This makes me wish I was back in the classroom teaching wireless datacom to computer science majors. I have a lot of experience with LoRa, but only this basic experience with 801.11ah.
Richard
At the moment, the HL1 is configured for a particular channel and does not automatically move off that. You may get slightly better performance at range (at the cost of data rate) if you switch to a 1mhz or 2mhz channel (use the Quick Config page).
I suspect the issue here is the trees and/or the antenna positioning. You might want to have a look at this discussion: Halowlink1 high gain antenna's
Some further tests show this:
Distance Result
224m No HaLow connection
143m HaLow shows 90dB signal and IPERF3 gives 1Mb rate, but the connection goes up and down
I am going to explore directional antennas and raise the height of the AP end to about 5m above ground.
Hi @james.haggerty This is a great thread and I appreciate your help. I have everything (except one thing) working as I want it to in order to become a Virtual Wire. The only piece I canât figure out is how to make the LAN port of the AP be transparent to the LTE Router I have connected to the WAN port of the AP.
Can you explain in more detail how you have things connected and how you want them to behave? Are you saying you want to move the LAN port off the HaLowLink 1âs private network, and bridge it with the WAN port? If so, use the Quick Config page as described above to move the âlanâ port onto the âwlanâ network, but remember than once youâve done this you will need to access the HaLowLink 1âs management interface via the DHCP allocated address from your router.
If this doesnât help, please explain exactly what is on your network and what IPs you expect devices connected to various interfaces to have.
@james.haggerty
Hereâs what Iâm trying to accomplish:
HaLowLink1 - AP
HaLow Radio connected to EXT
WAN Port - connected to an LTE router (via a PoE Injector) for internet access
LAN Port - connected to camera DVR with internet access through the LTE Router
HaLowLink1 - EXT
HaLow radio - connected to AP
WAN Port - connected to a PoE Injector for power only
LAN Port - connected to an IP camera with Internet access through the AP (virtual wire)
Ideally I would like to be able to connect my laptop to either AP or EXT non-HaLow Wi-Fi for Internet access and to configure the devices. I can get pretty close but canât crack getting them all configured correctly.
Thanks for your thoughts!
Hi David,
Iâm a bit confused about what youâve described:
- I think youâre using PoE splitters, not PoE injectors, correct?
- if so, why is the WAN port on HL1 Extender plugged into anything?
- is the DVR connected to both your HL1 AP and your router? Or is it just that youâve run out of ports on your router, so you want to use the HL1?
At any rate, if the main requirement is âwire up my camera so it can see my DVR and they all have internet accessâ, this is exactly the intended use-case of the Extender, and I would recommend following the Section 1.2 and Section 2.3.1 of the guide. Briefly:
- go to the âWizardâ on the HL1 AP and select âHaLow Wi-Fi devices will get an IP on your existing routerâs networkâ. This is the only configuration you need on the HL1 AP.
- plug the WAN port of your HL1 AP into one of the LAN ports on your router
- plug your Camera DVR into one of the LAN ports on your router (NOT the HL1)
- confirm that youâve paired the HL1 Extender with the AP (i.e. purple HaLow light is on)
- plug your Camera into either of the ports on the HL1 Extender (theyâre all the same in Extender mode)
If this isnât working out for you in some way, let me know where it falls down and we can look at using the Quick Config page to adjust things.
Hi James,
The problem with the configuration you describe is that my little LTE router only has 1 LAN port and itâs being used to connect to the HL1 AP. Thatâs why I was hoping to use the LAN port on the HL1 for the DVR. I could use a switch but itâs in an outdoor weatherproof box that currently doesnât have room or power for one.
Is there any way to make the LAN port part of the same network as the WAN port?
When I connect my laptop to the LAN port of the AP and log in, I can see that the AP and EXT are connected and happy but canât figure out a way to truly make the LAN ports on both HL1 devices part of the same network connected to the internet from the LTE connected to the WAN port of the AP.
Thanks!
David,
There is a section in the config where you can specify what interfaces are part of the virtual bridge that currently contains just the HaLow interface and the WAN port. You would just need to remove the LAN port from the virtual bridge it is currently connected to (if it is connected to one) and add it to the virtual bridge with the HaLow and WAN port so that all are bridged together on the same network. The wizard based configs only do the HaLow and WAN ports automatically and anything additional to that would need to be done using the advanced configuration. I believe the reasoning behind that is that it keeps the out of box LAN config there in case you need failback access to the device via the LAN port in order to factory reset or otherwise change the config from something that might not be working right.
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Thank you very much! I will give this a try.
Thanks! Iâd just note (broken record here) that itâs also possible (and probably easier/safer, due to more guards) to do this via the Quick Config page. I put some screenshots earlier here: Making a HaLowLink 1 access point a bridge not a router - #13 by james.haggerty
Just go to the lan network, remove the port, then add the port to the wlan network.
However, be wary of doing this, as you will then be required to access your device over either 2.4 or via the address allocated by your router. Also, I would recommend configuring via the router allocated address, as this will mean you donât lose access while doing configuration (it will revert unless you use that address immediately after or do âapply uncheckedâ).
