Multi-building WIFI (Advice wanted)
I have a small rural farm and am looking to get some decent interconnect between buildings. I currently have an LTE modem and antenna on a lamppost (the place with the best signal), and have a mesh set up between the lamppost and 2 buildings: lamppost <-> house <-> barn. There is line of sight between each hop. I am currently using 3x EAP225-Outdoor. The APs are pole mounted on the lamppost and house, and surface mounted to a wall (log) on the barn.
The first hop (lamppost <> house) is about 25m, and is showing -64 dBm (866tx/351rx). The second hop (house<>barn) is also about 30m and is showing -80 dBm (526tx/234rx).
The current performance between the house and the barn is unacceptable - i would have expected the connection to be much better. Additionally, the weather seems to affect the connection a lot. it can fluctuate between -70 and under -80dBm. There is a difference in elevation of about 15m (the house is at the top of a small incline, and the barn is at the bottom). Again - there is line of sight, so i would have thought the connection would be more stable. There is a tree (currently bare of leaves, about 5m off the line of sight).
I have tried changing channels and width, manually setting power levels, etc.
Ideally I would like a stable 300mbps+ between each hop. Neither is achieving anywhere near that that when running iperf between APs (i effectively get half the connected Rx bitrate).
Am I using the wrong tool for the job? Is this sort of loss expected over these ranges? Would using directional antenna help, and if using a directional antenna, would i then need to use an additional APs to point in the respective directions (one towards lamppost, one towards barn) from the house? Would upgrading to a more recent EAP result in a better connection (EAP650 advertises "long range coverage", for example), or should i look at using at bridges as the interconnect instead of expecting the mesh to do the work? I appreciate its not long distances I am talking about here and could run a wire, but that is not an option this year. I have tried powerline solutions, but they lack stability.
Any advice would be most appreciated.