Wireless Access

Looking for some best practice advice for what size of ceiling to chose external antennas vs internal antennas? Specifically AP-104s vs AP-105s.

I've heard in 10 feet and below ceilings to use external omnis (w/ AP-104s) and mostly anything above 10' to use internal antennas (AP-105), can anyone add/expand on this?

Thanks!

You can certainly deploy the internal antenna models higher than 10 feet.

The AP-105 has an integrated downtilt antenna system built-in to every unit.  This makes deployment more cost-effective and much more streamlined.   

I have seen the AP-105 deployed in practice @ 25 feet high, and up to 50 feet high.   The latter case was not optimimum (as you would likely guess ;-))   ... but  you will likely find the AP-105 is sufficient in the vast majority of environments. (as in 99% of spaces)

What about below 10'?

We've heard that the WAPs with internal downtilt antenna may be sub-optimal when mounted on ceilings below 10'.  The antenna plots don't seem to indicate more than a 2-3 dB difference between 0 and 90 degrees on the E-plane plots.  Are there other factors at work here we should be aware of outside of just signal strength?

I use the AP-105 all the time in ceilings under 10' tall.    10 foot ceilings or less are pretty common... I would be more concerned when the ceiling height is more like 8 feet or under.    

Worst case, all that happens when the <8 foot ceilings are in play is that you end up needing more AP-105's (or any APs that are integrated downtilt) than when higher ceilings(the norm) are found.      In practice, that may mean placing ~20% more APs onto a given floorplan then when more 'normal' ceiling heights are in play.   Just something to keep in mind.

The AP-105 has been our workhorse AP for the widest variety of environments you can imagine.   Just in the last week I have seen it deployed in 8 foot ceiling, 10 foot ceiling, a 60 foot gym ceiling, and a 50+ foot auditorium ceiling.   In all cases it works....

Thanks for confirming my understanding.