I’ve used Envisalink boards on my last 3 homes. I just recently purchased a vacation home in a remote but gated acreage community. In at least 15 years there have never been any break ins in any of the 150 homes in the 3600 acres. We are 4 miles from the only entrance that has a manned gate. This is a licensed hunt area and everyone is armed so breaking in can be dangerous . but having security system just makes us feel better.
I installed a Vista 20P with a 6162RF, 3 5800MINIs and a 5800 motion detector. We have a DSL WIFI router but running a network cable from the router to the alarm panel would be a real pain.
My solution was to use a Netgear Range Extender https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00L0YLRUW/ plugged into a wall outlet by the alarm panel and connected network cable from th EVL to the Netgear. It works great.
I’ll probobly buy an inexpensive UPS, one for the router and one for the netgear so I have communication with power loss.
Last edited by Flyct on Sun Nov 04, 2018 11:15 am, edited 1 time in total.
I did something similar when I first re-did our entire alarm system (same panel and keypad as the OP's) and added an EVL4. I used a spare NetGear 802.11a/n device operating in bridge mode. Worked just fine. Put the bridge on my $10 "travelling UPS." I later went and added a cable run, but the EVL4 worked fine with the wireless bridge until I did.
Wireless can be as reliable as wired, if it's a good wireless network--using good hardware, properly set up.
While I agree that a WiFi connection can be just as good as a cabled one, we generally recommend against it for long-term reliablilty. Security Professionals won't use it because it is too reliant on the customer's infrastructure. All it takes is for a customer to change ISPs (router/modems) and now the security system is offline. Or if the customer changes simply changes their WiFi password, now you have a expensive service call.
Powerline Carrier (point-to-point) bridges get around the WiFi infrastructure problem as they are dedicated links that can't really be mucked with (nothing is impossible I know). They're a little bit more money than the WiFi bridges, or a home spun dd-wrt solution, but at least it is somethig you can install and forget about.
