Getting Ethernet to a detached garage, a shed or a second building leaves you three options. You can trench a cable, hope a mesh node reaches, or fit a point to point wireless bridge, and for most yards the bridge wins. A matched pair of radios costs less than a day of digging, carries a real wired network to the far side, and doesn’t care how thick your brick walls are. The catch is that the two radios have to see each other, so the right kit depends on your distance and what sits in between.
This guide ranks five wireless bridge kits for a garage or outbuilding link: two TP-Link Omada kits, the Ubiquiti UniFi Building-to-Building Bridge, and the airMAX NanoBeam and NanoStation Loco. It also covers line of sight and the Fresnel zone, which PoE each radio expects, and how to test the link with iperf3 once it’s up. Prices and stock below were checked in October 2026.
The quick picks
If you only read one part of this page, read this. Each pick is a full link with two radios, unless the section says you have to buy two:
- Best for a garage or shed under 1 km: the TP-Link Omada EAP211-Bridge KIT. A pre-paired pair with a wide beam that’s forgiving to aim, three Gigabit ports per radio, and the lowest price here for a complete kit, sold by Amazon itself.
- Best for a long or awkward link: the TP-Link Omada Beam Bridge 5 UR KIT, a pair of 23 dBi dishes rated for 15 km that accept 802.3af or passive PoE.
- Best if you already run UniFi: the Ubiquiti UniFi Building-to-Building Bridge (UBB), a 60 GHz pair with a 5 GHz backup radio that takes over in heavy rain.
- Best for tinkerers who want airMAX: the Ubiquiti NanoBeam 5AC Gen2, sold as single radios, with two Gigabit ports and the UISP app for alignment.
- Cheapest airMAX pair: the Ubiquiti NanoStation 5AC Loco two-pack, small radios for a short link, as long as you budget for 24V passive PoE injectors.
If your garage is 20 to 200 metres from the house, buy the EAP211-Bridge KIT. Its 1 km rating sounds short until you realise almost no backyard link runs longer than a few hundred metres. Its wide beam also means you can get it working with a ladder and a phone, instead of a signal meter and a second person.
How we picked
We didn’t have these radios on a roof, so nothing below claims a throughput number we measured over the air. Every spec comes from the manufacturer’s own product page or datasheet, fetched in October 2026. We checked every Amazon link against the live listing for the exact model, whether it is a pair or a single radio, and whether it is in stock. Where a vendor publishes only a PHY rate (867 Mbps, 1.7 Gbps), we say so, because that’s the signalling rate and not what an iperf3 test will show you on a real link.
We dropped several popular names on purpose. The TP-Link CPE510 still sells, but its Ethernet port is 10/100, so it caps your link at 100 Mbps however strong the signal is. The original MikroTik Wireless Wire Cube is discontinued, and the Cube Pro kit showed a four to five week lead time. The UBB-XG was out of stock at Ubiquiti, and the Amazon listing we found was priced far above Ubiquiti’s store price.
The no-name “5 km CPE kits” on Amazon had no manufacturer spec page to verify against, so they are not here either. We ran the commands in the testing section on two Ubuntu 26.04 VMs in our Proxmox lab, so the syntax and output format are real. The radios themselves were not part of that test.
The point to point wireless bridges compared below differ on the specs that actually change which kit fits your yard. Range is the vendor’s rated figure in ideal conditions, and the data rate is the PHY rate, so read both as ceilings:
| Kit | Band | Rated range | PHY rate | Ports per radio | Power | Sold as | Price band |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TP-Link EAP211-Bridge KIT | 5 GHz | 1 km | 867 Mbps | 3x GbE | 802.3af, 24V passive, 12V DC | Pair | about $110 |
| TP-Link Beam Bridge 5 UR KIT | 5 GHz | 15 km | 867 Mbps | 1x GbE | 802.3af, 24V or 48V passive | Pair | about $130 to $150 |
| Ubiquiti UniFi UBB | 60 GHz + 5 GHz backup | 500 m | 1.7 Gbps (60 GHz) | 1x GbE | 48V passive or 802.3af | Pair | about $500 to $550 |
| Ubiquiti NanoBeam 5AC Gen2 | 5 GHz airMAX ac | 10+ km | 450+ Mbps throughput (vendor) | 2x GbE | 24V passive only | Single | about $100 to $110 each |
| Ubiquiti NanoStation 5AC Loco | 5 GHz airMAX ac | 10+ km | 450+ Mbps throughput (vendor) | 1x GbE | 24V passive only | Two-pack | about $150 for two |
Two things jump out. Every kit here has a Gigabit port, so even the UBB’s 1.7 Gbps radio can’t hand you more than 1 Gbps on the wire. The power column is where first-time buyers get burned: the two airMAX radios only take 24V passive PoE, and a standard 802.3af switch port won’t power them.
1. TP-Link Omada EAP211-Bridge KIT
The EAP211-Bridge KIT wins the typical house-to-garage job because TP-Link built it for short links. It is rated at 1 km, and each radio has a 10 dBi antenna with a 60 degree horizontal and 30 degree vertical beam. The two radios come as a matched kit, so your setup is mounting, plugging in and nudging each one until the Omada app shows a strong signal.
Beam width matters more than the range figure here. A 60 degree pattern forgives a mount that’s a few degrees off, or a garage roofline that isn’t square to the house. Narrow dishes cause hours of frustration in exactly that spot. The three Gigabit ports per radio are the other quiet win, because you can plug an access point and a camera into the garage end without buying a switch on day one.
- Power: 802.3af PoE, 24V passive PoE, or 12V DC, so it runs off most PoE switches as well as a passive injector.
- Weather: IP65 enclosure, rated from -40 to 70 °C.
- Management: Omada app, the local web UI, or an Omada controller if you already run one.
- Where it falls short: the 1 km rating and modest gain leave little margin through trees, and 867 Mbps is a PHY rate, so expect real TCP throughput well below that.
Pick it if your outbuilding is within a few hundred metres and you have a clear view between your two mounting spots. If your link is longer, TP-Link’s EAP215-Bridge KIT uses the same form factor with a 14 dBi antenna and a 5 km rating, for about $140 from a third-party seller on Amazon. The EAP211 kit itself runs about $110; check the live price before you buy.
2. TP-Link Omada Beam Bridge 5 UR KIT
The Beam Bridge 5 UR KIT is your pick when distance or a marginal path is the problem. Each radio is a 23 dBi dish with a tight 9 degree horizontal and 7 degree vertical beam. TP-Link rates the pair for 15 km, so on a 300 metre farm link you get a lot of spare signal for wet foliage and bad days.
On power, it’s also the most flexible kit here. Each radio accepts 802.3af PoE or 24V/48V passive PoE, and a 24V passive adapter comes in the box, so you can run it from the injector or straight off a PoE switch. TP-Link adds app-guided alignment with LED indicators. You will want it, because a few degrees off with a beam that narrow loses most of the signal.
- Hardware: one Gigabit port per radio, IP65, 6 kV lightning protection, -40 to 70 °C.
- Size: 366 x 280 x 207 mm and 1.1 kg per dish, which is a real load on a fascia board.
- Where it falls short: overkill for a 30 metre garage link, harder to aim than the EAP211, and only one port on each end.
Buy it for links past a kilometre, for a path that clips trees near the edge, or when you want headroom rather than a link that just barely holds. Amazon sells it directly at about $150, and TP-Link’s own store has had it on sale for less, so check the live price.
3. Ubiquiti UniFi Building-to-Building Bridge (UBB)
The UBB is the premium choice, and the only one here that isn’t a 5 GHz radio at heart. Its main link runs at 60 GHz (802.11ad) with a 1.7 Gbps PHY rate over a rated 500 metres. Each unit also carries a 5 GHz radio that takes over automatically when the 60 GHz signal fades. Ubiquiti’s UBB datasheet is blunt about why that backup exists: at 60 GHz, any obstacle in the line of sight, even rain, can drop signal levels.
If your house already runs UniFi, it’s the tidiest answer, because the pair shows up in UniFi Network next to your gateway and access points. If you don’t run a UniFi console yet, the self-hosted route in our UniFi OS Server on Ubuntu guide covers it, and the Omada vs UniFi comparison helps if you’re still choosing a side. Each pair includes two PoE adapters, and the radios also accept 802.3af.
- The port is the ceiling: one Gigabit port per unit means 1 Gbps on the wire at most, whatever the 60 GHz rate says.
- Weather: IPX6, and Ubiquiti’s store lists -40 to 70 °C.
- Price: Ubiquiti lists the pair at about $500; the Amazon pair (UBB-US) sits a little above that at about $550 from a third-party seller.
- Where it falls short: it is managed through UniFi (the app or a console) with no standalone web UI, costs several times the TP-Link kits, and in a heavy downpour you’re running on the slower 5 GHz backup.
Pick the UBB if you already run UniFi and your second building is within a few hundred metres in clear view. Ignore the other UBB listing on Amazon that doesn’t say whether it’s one unit or two. The UBB-US listing in this guide is the pair at about $550, so check the live price.
4. Ubiquiti NanoBeam 5AC Gen2
The NanoBeam 5AC Gen2 is the classic airMAX radio if you want to tune the link yourself. Under the cover sits a 19 dBi 5 GHz radio running airOS, with a dedicated 2.4 GHz management radio so the UISP mobile app can talk to it while you align it. Ubiquiti’s store quotes 450+ Mbps of throughput and 10+ km of range.
Unlike the kits above, it’s sold as a single radio, so your link means buying two. Ubiquiti sells them at about $99 each, which makes the Amazon two-pack at about $249 the worse deal. Two singles from Amazon at about $110 each come out cheaper, though that listing was down to its last unit when we checked. Each radio ships with a 24V passive PoE adapter and has a second Gigabit port.
- Power: 24V passive PoE only. An 802.3af switch port won’t power it, so keep the supplied adapter.
- Temperature: -40 to 80 °C, the widest range of the group.
- Where it falls short: airOS has more knobs than a garage link needs, it doesn’t join a UniFi Network controller, and stock is thin.
Choose the NanoBeam if you like airOS, want link stats you can graph, or plan to add a third building later on the same 5 GHz gear. For a single garage it is more radio than you need.
5. Ubiquiti NanoStation 5AC Loco
The NanoStation 5AC Loco is your cheapest way into Ubiquiti’s airMAX gear, and for a short garage or shed link its small 13 dBi panel is plenty. It has a 45 degree beam, one Gigabit port and an operating range of -40 to 70 °C. Ubiquiti’s store page gives it the same 450+ Mbps and 10+ km figures as the NanoBeam.
One cost hides behind the low sticker price. Ubiquiti lists the PoE supply as not included with the Loco, and the radio takes 24V passive PoE only. Budget for two 24V injectors unless the listing you buy says they’re in the box. Ubiquiti’s own store had the single unit sold out with a November restock date, so the Amazon two-pack from a third-party seller is the practical way to buy a pair right now.
- Who it suits: a shed, workshop or chicken-coop camera link of a few hundred metres with a clear view.
- Where it falls short: one port, no injector from Ubiquiti, no UniFi integration, and the Amazon pair costs about 1.5 times what two singles cost at Ubiquiti’s list price.
The Amazon two-pack runs about $150; check the live price, and compare it with the EAP211 kit before you order: the TP-Link kit is cheaper even before you add the Loco’s injectors, so pick the Loco only if you want airMAX on both ends.
How to choose a point to point wireless bridge
Every kit above does the same job. Two radios form a transparent Layer 2 link, so whatever you plug in at the garage end gets an address from your house router as if it sat on a long cable. The diagram shows the whole path, and most failed links come down to one hop in it rather than the radios.
Work through these in order before you order anything, because each one can rule a kit out:
- Distance: measure it on a map. Under about 500 metres, a short-range kit like the EAP211 or a UBB does the job. From 500 metres to a few kilometres, the EAP215-Bridge KIT’s 5 km rating gives you margin; past that, move to a dish such as the Beam Bridge 5 UR.
- Line of sight: stand at one mounting spot and look for the other. If you can’t see it, a wireless bridge won’t fix that; a taller mast or a different mount point might.
- Fresnel zone: keep at least 60% of the first Fresnel zone clear of branches and rooflines (80% is better).
- PoE type: 802.3af, 24V passive and 48V passive aren’t interchangeable. Check what the radio takes and what your switch puts out.
- Ethernet speed: look at the port, not the PHY rate. A 10/100 port caps the link at 100 Mbps.
- Controller: TP-Link kits work standalone or in Omada; the UBB is managed through UniFi; airMAX radios use airOS and UISP.
People skip the Fresnel zone, and it explains why a link with a clear straight line can still underperform. Radio energy travels in a football-shaped zone around that line, widest at the midpoint, and a hedge or a gutter poking into it costs signal. The radius at the midpoint is roughly 8.656 × √(distance in km ÷ frequency in GHz) metres.
On a 100 metre link at 5.8 GHz that works out to about 1.14 m, so you want around 0.7 m of clearance all round at the halfway point. At 300 metres it grows to about 2 m. At 60 GHz the zone is much thinner, about 0.35 m at 100 metres, but 60 GHz pays for it with oxygen absorption and rain fade. That’s why the UBB carries its backup radio.
Power is the second trap. Passive PoE has no negotiation, so a 24V radio on a 48V injector either does nothing or does damage, and an 802.3af port cannot feed a radio that only takes 24V passive. If your house end already has a PoE switch, the TP-Link kits and the UBB can run straight from it. For the airMAX radios, keep the 24V injector indoors and run the outdoor cable from there.
Our roundup of PoE switches for cameras and access points covers the 802.3af and 802.3at side. Use outdoor-rated Cat6 for the runs up to each radio; the Cat6 house wiring guide covers terminating and testing those runs.
Finally, think about what goes on the far end. A bridge gives your garage one Ethernet drop. To get Wi-Fi out there, plug in an access point, and our Wi-Fi 7 access point picks all run from PoE. If the garage is mostly for cameras, the PoE cameras for Frigate guide shows what a few streams need in bandwidth, which any of these kits carries comfortably. If your outbuilding already has coax running to it, a pair of MoCA adapters may beat any radio, because a cable never needs line of sight.
Test the bridge with iperf3 and ping
A green link LED tells you the radios associated, not that the path is healthy, so test it end to end. You need one Linux box in the house and one in the garage, both on the bridged network. On Ubuntu or Debian, install the tools on both:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y iperf3 mtr-tiny ethtoolStart the iperf3 server on the house machine (192.168.1.10 in this example). The -D flag runs it in the background, and it listens on TCP port 5201, so open that port first if ufw or firewalld is active on that box:
iperf3 -s -DFrom the garage machine, run a 30 second test toward the house. A short 10 second test can look fine while the link is still settling, so give it the full 30:
iperf3 -c 192.168.1.10 -t 30Our lab produced the output below. The two Ubuntu 26.04 VMs sat on the same virtual switch, which is why it reads 18.6 Gbits/sec. On a real 5 GHz bridge the number will sit well below the radio’s PHY rate. The lines to read are the two at the bottom and the Retr column:
Connecting to host 192.168.1.10, port 5201
[ 5] local 192.168.1.60 port 41164 connected to 192.168.1.10 port 5201
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate Retr Cwnd
[ 5] 0.00-1.00 sec 2.21 GBytes 18.9 Gbits/sec 0 3.13 MBytes
[ 5] 1.00-2.00 sec 2.20 GBytes 18.9 Gbits/sec 0 3.87 MBytes
[ 5] 2.00-3.00 sec 2.12 GBytes 18.2 Gbits/sec 0 4.20 MBytes
[ 5] 3.00-4.00 sec 2.14 GBytes 18.4 Gbits/sec 0 4.20 MBytes
[ 5] 4.00-5.00 sec 2.15 GBytes 18.5 Gbits/sec 0 4.20 MBytes
[ 5] 5.00-6.00 sec 2.19 GBytes 18.8 Gbits/sec 0 4.20 MBytes
[ 5] 6.00-7.00 sec 2.12 GBytes 18.2 Gbits/sec 0 4.20 MBytes
[ 5] 7.00-8.00 sec 2.23 GBytes 19.2 Gbits/sec 0 4.20 MBytes
[ 5] 8.00-9.00 sec 2.25 GBytes 19.3 Gbits/sec 0 4.20 MBytes
[ 5] 9.00-10.00 sec 2.16 GBytes 18.6 Gbits/sec 0 4.20 MBytes
[ 5] 10.00-11.00 sec 2.17 GBytes 18.7 Gbits/sec 0 4.20 MBytes
[ 5] 11.00-12.00 sec 2.27 GBytes 19.5 Gbits/sec 0 4.20 MBytes
[ 5] 12.00-13.00 sec 2.23 GBytes 19.2 Gbits/sec 0 4.20 MBytes
[ 5] 13.00-14.00 sec 2.11 GBytes 18.1 Gbits/sec 0 4.20 MBytes
[ 5] 14.00-15.00 sec 2.09 GBytes 18.0 Gbits/sec 0 4.20 MBytes
[ 5] 15.00-16.00 sec 2.09 GBytes 17.9 Gbits/sec 0 4.20 MBytes
[ 5] 16.00-17.00 sec 2.06 GBytes 17.7 Gbits/sec 0 4.20 MBytes
[ 5] 17.00-18.00 sec 2.09 GBytes 17.9 Gbits/sec 0 4.20 MBytes
[ 5] 18.00-19.00 sec 2.10 GBytes 18.0 Gbits/sec 0 4.20 MBytes
[ 5] 19.00-20.00 sec 2.10 GBytes 18.1 Gbits/sec 0 4.20 MBytes
[ 5] 20.00-21.00 sec 2.14 GBytes 18.4 Gbits/sec 0 4.20 MBytes
[ 5] 21.00-22.00 sec 2.12 GBytes 18.2 Gbits/sec 0 4.20 MBytes
[ 5] 22.00-23.00 sec 2.18 GBytes 18.7 Gbits/sec 0 4.20 MBytes
[ 5] 23.00-24.00 sec 2.11 GBytes 18.1 Gbits/sec 0 4.20 MBytes
[ 5] 24.00-25.00 sec 2.15 GBytes 18.4 Gbits/sec 0 4.20 MBytes
[ 5] 25.00-26.00 sec 2.05 GBytes 17.6 Gbits/sec 0 4.20 MBytes
[ 5] 26.00-27.00 sec 2.17 GBytes 18.6 Gbits/sec 0 4.20 MBytes
[ 5] 27.00-28.00 sec 2.21 GBytes 19.0 Gbits/sec 0 4.20 MBytes
[ 5] 28.00-29.00 sec 2.32 GBytes 19.9 Gbits/sec 0 4.20 MBytes
[ 5] 29.00-30.00 sec 2.25 GBytes 19.3 Gbits/sec 0 4.20 MBytes
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate Retr
[ 5] 0.00-30.00 sec 64.8 GBytes 18.6 Gbits/sec 0 sender
[ 5] 0.00-30.00 sec 64.8 GBytes 18.6 Gbits/sec receiver
iperf Done.On your radio link, watch for two things in that output: per-second bitrates that swing wildly from line to line, and a Retr count that keeps climbing. Both mean retransmissions, which usually point to interference or a partly blocked Fresnel zone. Then run the test in the other direction, because radio links are often asymmetric:
iperf3 -c 192.168.1.10 -t 30 -ROur reverse run finished at 18.7 Gbits/sec with zero retransmits, effectively the same as the forward test. On a bridge, a large gap between the two directions is worth chasing with alignment before you blame the hardware.
Throughput isn’t the whole story, because a link that passes a speed test can still drop packets every few minutes. A longer ping catches that. This one sends 1,000 pings at five per second and prints only the summary:
ping -c 1000 -i 0.2 -q 192.168.1.10The lab result came back clean, with no loss and a worst case of 30.7 ms against a 0.4 ms average:
PING 192.168.1.10 (192.168.1.10) 56(84) bytes of data.
--- 192.168.1.10 ping statistics ---
1000 packets transmitted, 1000 received, 0% packet loss, time 207748ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.143/0.409/30.750/0.973 msOver a healthy bridge the average stays low and steady, and loss reads 0%. Any steady loss above zero is a fault, not a quirk, and it is the number that makes your video calls and camera streams stutter.
mtr combines ping and traceroute into one report, which is handy for checking that the garage machine reaches the house in a single hop, the way a Layer 2 bridge should:
mtr -rwc 50 192.168.1.10One hop and 0.0% loss across 50 probes is what a transparent bridge looks like. If the house router shows up as an extra hop, the radios are routing (or running NAT) instead of bridging, and devices in the garage will sit on a different subnet:
Start: 2026-10-30T06:29:01+0000
HOST: garage-01 Loss% Snt Last Avg Best Wrst StDev
1.|-- 192.168.1.10 0.0% 50 0.4 0.5 0.3 0.7 0.1The throughput tests are finished at this point, so stop the background server on the house machine with pkill iperf3.
Last, confirm the wired side negotiated Gigabit, since a damaged outdoor cable often drops to 100 Mbps and quietly caps the link:
sudo ethtool eth0 | grep -E 'Speed|Duplex|Link detected'Our VM uses a virtio NIC, which has no physical speed to report, so it prints Unknown:
Speed: Unknown!
Duplex: Unknown! (255)
Link detected: yesOn a real NIC plugged into the garage switch you want Speed: 1000Mb/s and Duplex: Full. If it shows 100Mb/s, re-terminate the cable between the radio and the injector before you touch the radios. A network tester that reads PoE and link speed saves a lot of ladder trips here. Replace eth0 with your interface name from ip -br link.
Which bridge for which yard
Start from your distance and what’s already in your network, not from the spec sheet with the biggest number:
- Garage or shed within a few hundred metres, clear view: the TP-Link EAP211-Bridge KIT. Cheapest complete pair, easy to aim, three ports at the far end.
- Second building past 1 km, or a path near trees: the Beam Bridge 5 UR KIT, for the extra gain and the 15 km rating’s margin.
- A UniFi home with a short, clear link: the UBB, if the price does not bother you and you accept 5 GHz fallback in heavy rain.
- You want airOS stats or plan more buildings later: two NanoBeam 5AC Gen2 radios bought singly.
- You want airMAX on a budget and already own 24V injectors: the NanoStation 5AC Loco two-pack.
If none of those fit because you have no line of sight at all, no radio on this list will save you. That’s the point to price a trench and a direct-burial Cat6 run, or a pair of MoCA adapters over existing coax, before you spend money on gear that can’t see its partner.
