What is the best way to get Wi-Fi to a detached garage or another building?

Close in, a wireless mesh node is the easy answer, but the limit is shorter than most people expect. TP-Link tells owners of its outdoor Deco unit to keep it within 33 ft of the indoor unit it connects to wirelessly, and no more than 50 ft. A plain extender has a second problem: it rebroadcasts the same signal, so every frame crosses the air twice and throughput falls by at least half. If a garage is close but behind several walls, run a cable to the mesh unit instead. TP-Link removes the distance restriction once it has Ethernet backhaul.

Up to 100 m, cable is the most dependable option. Standards limit a twisted-pair Ethernet channel to 100 m (328 ft), made up of 90 m of fixed cable plus patch cords at each end, so a run from house to garage has to fit inside that. Buried cable needs to be direct-burial rated, with water-blocking gel or tape around the conductors. Ordinary outdoor-rated cable isn't recommended underground unless it's in conduit. At the far end, an access point turns the cable back into Wi-Fi. Copper between two buildings brings one risk that the air gap avoids: a ground-potential difference. One owner in this brief's evidence lost equipment at both ends to a single surge across 250 ft of Cat5e, so fit surge protection at both ends.

If you can't trench, or the building is past 100 m, a pair of radios replaces the cable. A pre-paired 5 GHz kit is enough to bring internet service to a garage. TP-Link rates its EAP211-Bridge kit to 1 km and markets these kits for buildings 100 to 3,000 ft away. Expect real throughput well under the 867 Mbps headline. From about 500 ft to a quarter mile, if you want the far building to behave like it is on the same gigabit switch, this guide's pick is two UISP Wave Picos: 60 GHz with a 5 GHz fallback.

Every bridge needs clear line of sight between the two mounting points, and 60 GHz needs it to be completely clear. A tree in the path or coated window glass will break the link. If a trench for power or water is going in anyway, this brief's field reports say to lay fiber in it too and skip the radios.