Wireless Access

We have a few sites that contain wall-mounted AP224 w/ ANT-1W. These APs are mounted 12-15 feet high, and the antennas are in a "W" type pattern with all antennas running parralel to the wall. For the most part, we're using these AP224s on the first floor of multistory buildings where architectural design made it impossible to mount AP225s (read: no ceiling tiles or beams to affix anything to). The floors above contain ceiling tiles and as such we have AP225s installed where necessary.

Recently I attended a meeting in one of these buildings and noticed a lackluster wireless signal, despite being ~20 feet away from an AP224 with clean LOS. Looking at the controller I saw I was associated with an AP225 installed on the floor above me. There were, in fact, only a handful of devices associated with the AP224 in the room despite there being ~40 or so people present with wireless devices.

Is my antenna installation correct? I have seen everything from a \ | / orientation running parralel to the wall (what we're currently using), to the same orientation with the 1 & 3 antenna being angled away from the wall at 45 degrees, to the antennas being completely vertical | | |.

The antennas show 2.4G/4DB & 5G/6DB in their description and were provisioned as such in the controllers. Are these values correct?

Is 12-15 feet too high for these APs to be mounted?

Any other tips for optimizing wall-mounted AP placements?

That should be fine.  What channel was the access point on?  Was it a DFS channel?

You should do a "show ap monitor pot-client-list ap-name <name of ap>" to see what clients that access point can see.  Also, try to run inssider on a laptop to see if it can see that access point and how well.

Can't recall the channel, but we don't have DFS channels enabled here at all.

I'll be out there later this week to measure signal strength of that AP vs others in the building. Will report back with my findings!

MAKE SURE those antennas are tight, we have noticed that in some tests if the antennas are just 'finger tight' but not 'scured (think very firm finger tightenting), that the antennas are not fully connected and as a result RF performance is WAY down (by 10-20dB or more). If the AP is on a clean channel, power is good, etc, first thing would be to check and make sure those antennas a firmly seated, as tight as you can with your fingers.

Sometimes it is the obvious stuff...

I wasn't able to make it out to the particular conference room I had referenced in my original post, but I did get to a loading dock where other fac/staff have complained of poor connectivity with an AP224 sitting on the wall unobstructed.

I fired up inSSIDer as recommended and the signal from the AP224 in question was extremely weak. Got on a ladder and the antennas were not even "finger tight". Secured them, and all of a sudden the signal in that room was glorious.

I'm obviously not 100% sure that will be the case in all of my trouble spots, but I will remember to have a ladder handy for the next few spots I visit.

For reference, this is the antenna orientation I'm using:

Good deal! Glad I guessed right. And that is the correct antenna orientation. Kudos, have a great weekend!

Also, a common 'cause' of this is that someone may finger tighten the antennas (though not as firm as it should be) but then start moing the antenna to get to the '\ | /' and then then loosen when they are moved around. It's one of those 'things' that people just have to be extremely cogniscant of when securing the antennas.