Any need/advantage of having Ethernet?

[jboy210]

Hi,

I recently added an Wifi Access point to my garage for the cars (updates are now more frequent and very fast). I could add a cable to the Access point and extend the Cat 6 Ethernet to other parts of the garage. Does the equipment in a Tesla solar sets up (hopefully solar roof if it matters) benefit from a Ethernet connection?

 

[woferry]

I think it's best to put the Gateway on ethernet if you can. Nothing else in the Solar Roof setups I've seen has any ethernet option (seems they've all been Delta inverters and those are ZigBee).

How to 'properly' do ethernet to the Gateway seems to be pretty tricky, since the port is in a box along with a bunch of AC wiring. AFAICT the only 'proper' way to do it is with special 600V-rated ethernet cable, and an industrial-style ethernet switch that offers the right level of protection for the other end of the cable should anything become shorted to AC (I forget the exact term and can't dig for it right now, I think it's a particular 'class' rating). One of these days I plan to install a structured media cabinet, and as a part of that I plan to pick up a qualifying switch and the right cable to run out to my Gateway (exterior to the house), so for now it's just on WiFi, but that does occasionally pose problems with me not being able to automate data collection from it (mainly after a firmware update on the Gateway or if I do anything to my WiFi router).

 

[charlesj]

Hi,

I recently added an Wifi Access point to my garage for the cars (updates are now more frequent and very fast). ...

How and what are these devices. I may want to do this as well if possible. My main wi-fi router is bit far with a weak signal there.

 

[jboy210]

How and what are these devices. I may want to do this as well if possible. My main wi-fi router is bit far with a weak signal there.

Your router is likely a router and an Access Point combo. It does 2 functions. First it routes internet data to devices inside you house. Second, it has a wifi transceiver built in the let's device close to you router connect via WiFi to the internet. A standalone Access point is just this second part, the wireless transceiver.

Your router likely has some ethernet connectors in the back. So what you would do is run a ethernet cable from your router to your Access Point. Your access point then connects to nearby Wifi enabled devices like a your Tesla. I am wired this way and had pulled cables through the house. A lot of newer homes by me (say Post 2005) come pre-wired with ethernet cable.
Here is the access point I have scatter around my home.

https://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-Networks-802-11ac-Dual-Radio-UAP-AC-PRO-US/dp/B015PRO512/

If you don't want to deal with cables you can look at Mesh networks like the ones below that come with a router. Let me say up front I have no experience with mesh networks. These use separate channels from your normal Wifi to communicate between the multiple access points. This allows you to get the wifi without pulling cables.

Amazon.com: mesh networking

 

[charlesj]

Your router is likely a router and an Access Point combo. It does 2 functions. First it routes internet data to devices inside you house. Second, it has a wifi transceiver built in the let's device close to you router connect via WiFi to the internet. A standalone Access point is just this second part, the wireless transceiver.

Your router likely has some ethernet connectors in the back. So what you would do is run a ethernet cable from your router to your Access Point. Your access point then connects to nearby Wifi enabled devices like a your Tesla. I am wired this way and had pulled cables through the house. A lot of newer homes by me (say Post 2005) come pre-wired with ethernet cable.
Here is the access point I have scatter around my home.

https://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-Networks-802-11ac-Dual-Radio-UAP-AC-PRO-US/dp/B015PRO512/

If you don't want to deal with cables you can look at Mesh networks like the ones below that come with a router. Let me say up front I have no experience with mesh networks. These use separate channels from your normal Wifi to communicate between the multiple access points. This allows you to get the wifi without pulling cables.

Amazon.com: mesh networking

Thanks for all the info.

My house was finished building in 1993 so no ethernet cables prewired.
Right now the wi-fi router and modem are in a 2nd story bedroom just about the furthest point from the prospective location for th Gateway.
It is a gigabit tri band router. It was difficult to wire to a nearby bedroom. A study behind it was not bad. There is where the Envoi
is that monitors the micro inverters pretty well.

Running wire to Gateway would be most difficult.
A Mesh may work if I could use the existing wi-fi. I see LinkSys has one, my brand of wi-fi, so I will call them to see if that would work together.

 

[Boatguy]

Unless your effective WiFi connection is significantly slower than your internet connection, there is no reason to use a wired (aka Ethernet) connection. Most modern access points / routers are much faster than the network connection. The gateway is communicating very very little data, a tiny amount of text. Even an ancient 11Mb connection would be more than sufficient.

This is simple to test. Stand in front of your Gateway and run an internet speed test. If it's within 50% of your ISP's promised internet speed, there is no reason to consider Ethernet. And if it's not, first consider changing your wifi access point. A $100 Ubiquiti / Unif access point should easily do the job and much simpler than trying to pull wire for Ethernet.

And no, I have no connection to Ubiquiti or any other vendor.

 

[jboy210]

Unless your effective WiFi connection is significantly slower than your internet connection, there is no reason to use a wired (aka Ethernet) connection. Most modern access points / routers are much faster than the network connection. The gateway is communicating very very little data, a tiny amount of text. Even an ancient 11Mb connection would be more than sufficient.

This is simple to test. Stand in front of your Gateway and run an internet speed test. If it's within 50% of your ISP's promised internet speed, there is no reason to consider Ethernet. And if it's not, first consider changing your wifi access point. A $100 Ubiquiti / Unif access point should easily do the job and much simpler than trying to pull wire for Ethernet.

And no, I have no connection to Ubiquiti or any other vendor.

Thanks for info. Wifi is as fast as Xfinitiy provided connection - 300mbps down/ 12 mbps up. Sounds like it should be fast enough. Ethernet is already in garage since we have an Access Point there for the Teslas. We also use Ubiquiti, 3-APs (AC Pros), router, and switches. Great stuff. Easy to manage.

 

[mattack4000]

I kept my old google wifi as a mesh point for the reason, but I am sure wireless is fine

 

[JohnRatsey]

My installer used a pair of cheap powerline adapters to get a wired network connection to the gateway since the WiFi signal was poor. I don't think special high voltage ethernet cable was used to connect into the gateway but if there is a problem then only the local powerline adapter would get frizzled, not the rest of the LAN.

 

[bob_p]

Our house was pre-wired with CAT cabling - and found there were two unused CAT cables already on the outside of the house right below the electrical panels, so it only took a few minutes to connect the PowerWall to our wired network.

After we did that, then I realized this may be a bad idea - and could disconnect the cable inside the house. By having a hardwired connection outside of the house, it's theoretically possibly someone could use that cable and connect to our internal network, bypassing our router's firewall. Though this security risk is probably so low not to be concerned.

Plus, the Tesla Gateway is supposed to have a cellular connection, so even if the house network is down - it should be possible to communicate with the gateway through it's cell connection.

 

[DrSmile]

My gateway did connect through cellular, but it was so spotty I quickly figured out how to connect it to my router (thanks internet!). It runs flawlessly through WiFi so I don't see the need for a cable.

 

[jboy210]

Thanks for the comments.

I am also worried about getting the wifi signal outside my house. We have a stucco external walls. So that is tar paper with a faily tight metal mesh wrapping and then cement stucco sprayed on top of that. The metal mesh is grounded, so my house is essentially a Faraday cage that eats up the wifi leaving the house. In fact if I go over to the side where our power meter is I cannot access the wifi even through the access point is 10 feet away in the garage. Is this going to be an issue it they want to put the gateway and other gear in this area?

 

[chrisbailey13]

My gateway is connect to the Ethernet via a regular cat5 cable and a switch. No special Ethernet cable was needed for the 100+ft run back to the router.

 

[woferry]

My house is also stucco with the Gateway on the outside. I don't think the stucco poses any trouble, though my base station is less than 15' from the Gateway. The RSSI reported by the base station is no worse than other devices inside the house. My issue has more been that the WiFi in the Gateway doesn't seem all that reliable/stable and does have a tendency to fall off the network whenever anything changes. It's not a problem for the Tesla app data since the Gateway still has the cellular fall-back for that. But if you want to also collect your own data or communicate directly with the Gateway (as some of these automation scripts would require I think), then having that flakey wireless connection vs. what should be a solid wired connection could be a much bigger deal. It's been frustrating enough for me that I'm definitely looking forward to getting it wired, I just want to make sure I do it safely even though it costs more to do so.

 

[Darwin]

My issue has more been that the WiFi in the Gateway doesn't seem all that reliable/stable and does have a tendency to fall off the network whenever anything changes.

This has been my experience as well. I'm not sure the gateway has ever reliably automatically joined my wireless network after rebooting my home router. My wired ethernet connection though has been rock solid. If you're concerned about security and your Tesla gateway is readily accessible from outside your house, you may want to restrict home access to the connection - or connect in its ethernet cable to your home network downstream of your home router/firewall, such as plugging directly into your cable modem instead of your home router - similar to a wireless guest network.

 

[jboy210]

My house is also stucco with the Gateway on the outside. I don't think the stucco poses any trouble, though my base station is less than 15' from the Gateway. The RSSI reported by the base station is no worse than other devices inside the house. My issue has more been that the WiFi in the Gateway doesn't seem all that reliable/stable and does have a tendency to fall off the network whenever anything changes. It's not a problem for the Tesla app data since the Gateway still has the cellular fall-back for that. But if you want to also collect your own data or communicate directly with the Gateway (as some of these automation scripts would require I think), then having that flakey wireless connection vs. what should be a solid wired connection could be a much bigger deal. It's been frustrating enough for me that I'm definitely looking forward to getting it wired, I just want to make sure I do it safely even though it costs more to do so.

Thanks. I definitely want to collect data and have tons of server credits so writing an service to do this would be a fun exercise.

However, bob_p brings up a good point on the issues of security. I will probably put the Tesla gateway into a firewalled off region so no one could access my home network even if they got access to the ethernet or wifi connection.

 

[RFernatt]

I dropped a Google WiFi mesh unit into the garage to handle all the devices out there. My inverter uses Ethernet to the mesh unit as a wireless bridge.

LOL, probably more connected devices in the garage than any other room of the house.

 

[jboy210]

This has been my experience as well. I'm not sure the gateway has ever reliably automatically joined my wireless network after rebooting my home router. My wired ethernet connection though has been rock solid. If you're concerned about security and your Tesla gateway is readily accessible from outside your house, you may want to restrict home access to the connection - or connect in its ethernet cable to your home network downstream of your home router/firewall, such as plugging directly into your cable modem instead of your home router - similar to a wireless guest network.

Great idea. The cable modem is located in my office which is on top of the garage. It would be pretty easy to run a separate Ethernet cable from modem to the garage wall where the Gateway would be located. And I like the idea of physical separation vs.handling it in the router.

Time to get out the cable fish tape.

 

[bkp_duke]

Unless your effective WiFi connection is significantly slower than your internet connection, there is no reason to use a wired (aka Ethernet) connection. Most modern access points / routers are much faster than the network connection. The gateway is communicating very very little data, a tiny amount of text. Even an ancient 11Mb connection would be more than sufficient.

This is simple to test. Stand in front of your Gateway and run an internet speed test. If it's within 50% of your ISP's promised internet speed, there is no reason to consider Ethernet. And if it's not, first consider changing your wifi access point. A $100 Ubiquiti / Unif access point should easily do the job and much simpler than trying to pull wire for Ethernet.

And no, I have no connection to Ubiquiti or any other vendor.

I disagree on this. I am someone that keeps my network setup on the "bleeding edge" in terms of firmware updates, etc. Every firmware update I do to my Ubiquiti access point, which is 8 ft from the Tesla gateway, causes the gateway to drop the IP address and it doesn't pick it back up. If I were able to get a wired Ethernet connect to the gateway, this problem would not exist and the gateway would pick the connection back up immediately after a firmware upgrade.

 

[JayClark]

I disagree on this. I am someone that keeps my network setup on the "bleeding edge" in terms of firmware updates, etc. Every firmware update I do to my Ubiquiti access point, which is 8 ft from the Tesla gateway, causes the gateway to drop the IP address and it doesn't pick it back up. If I were able to get a wired Ethernet connect to the gateway, this problem would not exist and the gateway would pick the connection back up immediately after a firmware upgrade.

Agreed. Mine is connected via ethernet over a power line device that Tesla installed, and I've played with using the wifi connection only, and the ethernet (even via power line adapters) is much more reliable and consistent. My wifi is all ubiquity, carefully optimized using wifi channel scanning, with four APs, with one at the garage - and still ethernet is more reliable, and faster. My impression is there is something a little flakey about the built in gateway wifi device, because I noticed the drops also. Also, the gateway seems really "noisy", when on it seems to effect the speed of other devices in the area of my garage. I've gone as far as placing little metal caps over the gateway "antenna" nubs at the top, and was notable how much that cut down on wireless noise around the garage. I'd like to turn the gateway wifi off, but there doesn't seem to be a way only logging in via the gateways web server using my customer account.

Also, wireless by nature is contending with tons of noise in any modern neighborhood, to say wifi is "always" faster is just not correct. And in my case, with tests I've done with my 1gig internet service wifi runs at like 1/3rd to 1/4 the speed of my ethernet connections in the best cases, usually much less as compared to my ethernet connections even when near an AP.

If I carefully control the situation, and limit activity on my wireless network, then my wireless connections can hit hit up to 400mps, but for only very brief moments, but in most places it's more like 100mps or so or less (still great in my mind), but not even close to the ethernet speeds - and the ethernet is rock sold at close to 1gig most all of the time.