Wireless Access

Hi there,

 

I have a multi-purpose area about the size of a basketball court that requires wifi coverage. The area can be used for a number of different activities, for example, sport (as a basketball court), community meeting (~200 people with dinner tables and chairs setup) or performance arts (~600 seated people).

 

I read through and understand a few of the VRD documents for VHD 802.11ac network.

 

Planning to use AP225s and the question is: overhead or side coverage?

 

The height of this multi-purpose area is about 6m (20ft). On the ceiling, there are 2 humongous fans which are very common nowadays in gym or warehouse facilities.  http://mhlnews.com/facilities-management/green-breeze

 

I'm concerned about the metal blades (not sure what type of metal) would severely inhibit RF performance or not. In particular if the AP225s are placed on the ceiling, that means, the fans (no matter turning at high or low speed)  will be like a sheet of metal between the people and the APs.

 

Does anyone have experience with these humongous fans at all? 

 

Thanks in advance.

I would sidestep the issue completely and wallmount AP224s with Ant-1bs:  http://www.arubanetworks.com/pdf/products/ap-ant-1b_ss.pdf

 

- is much easier to maintain wall mounted access points, rather than go to the ceiling.

- If there is a material in the fan that interferes with wifi, wall mounting would avoid it by not placing the fan between your users and the AP.

Thanks Colin.

 

Isn't it ANT-1B has a very narrow beamwidth in the 5 GHz band   c.f.   AP225 with integrated downtilt antenna?  

 

I know using AP224 and ANT-1Bs, we can tilt the antennas at an angle aiming to the users / ground level when the AP224 is wall mounted. But wall mounted the AP225 somehow can also give a pretty wide vertical beamwidth, isn't it?

The AP225 is not designed to be wall-mounted.  If you do, most of the time the users under the AP do not get any coverage and will attempt to associate to a different access point.  The ant-1bs with an AP224 provides the proper horizontal coverage and coverage under the AP if you have to wall mount, at about between 8 to 10 feet in height.  

 

Again, it is not advised to wall-mount the AP225s...

I am deploying wall mount APs for this exact reason in a gym. However, our implementation uses ap-225. Colin, why would coverage below differ any from an ap-225 being deployed on the ceiling in an office environment?


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