Getting good WiFi in the garden
If you are planning on spending more time outside in your garden this summer, you may want to consider installing a Zyxel access point inside one of its special enclosures, says Patrick Hirscher, EMEA Wireless Market Development Manager at Zyxel.
The summertime is almost here in Europe and a lot of us will probably be spending more time than we had previously expected to, working from home. If the sun is shining (and let’s hope it does for at least some of the time), you may well want to work outside in the garden. Or maybe look at converting the tool shed at the bottom of the garden into a temporary office.
And with little prospect of being able to travel abroad on holiday, we are probably going to spend more time in our gardens, working on the flower beds perhaps, or simply relaxing. Even if we can’t travel far, we all need a little time off.
Down the garden path
But whether you are working on your laptop, or just checking your smartphone for email or messages, one thing that can be annoying is that the WiFi signal is not always great out of doors. Your home router will be sitting close to the phone connection socket inside the house. As soon as you start to walk down your garden path, you will have walls and windows and probably other obstacles, such as outdoor furniture, between you and the antenna.
That’s going to affect the signal strength. You may still get a connection, but the further away from the house and the router you get, the weaker it is going to be.
One simple solution would be to use an outdoor access point to provide a really good signal all over your garden. But that would probably give you more power and range than you realistically need – and outdoor routers also cost a little bit more than you might want to spend for home use.
Sensible choice
Fortunately, Zyxel has an excellent alternative. We make a special weather-resistant outdoor enclosure, into which you can put indoor access points that are designed to provide coverage over smaller areas. These are more affordable and probably a more sensible choice for use at home. The NWA1123-AC PRO 802.11ac hybrid AP, for example, is both one of our most popular and affordable access points. It’s described as being ‘hybrid’ as it can be managed as a stand-alone access point or remotely, through our web-based management platform, Nebula, giving you added flexibility and control.
The NWA1123 and a number of other Zyxel access points fit neatly inside one of our specially designed casings. The enclosure itself is lightweight yet robust and can be easily mounted on any wall or pole. All you’d need to do is decide where to put it and connect it to the router with an Ethernet cable. You would also need a power source – which could be from a standard AC power socket, or a simple Power over Ethernet (PoE) switch.
Once that’s done, you are all set to go. If for any reason, this is not an option you can consider, you could also provide good Internet access by using one of our LTE routers or portable LTE devices to create a hotspot that will give you good coverage all over your garden.
Either way, if you want to spend more time outside in your garden this summer, we’ve got options to keep you connected.
