Wireless Access

Hi all,

I'm looking to upgrade a legacy Aruba deployment consisting of AP105s, mounted in a combination of wall/ceiling. Given the Hospitality series have "moderately directional" antennas, and are designed for wall mount, would these be preferred to AP315s which have downtilt omnidirectional antennas? I'm using AP315s to replace the ceiling mounted AP105s and these are far superior to the AP303H, so would like to use these for wall mount if they provide adequate coverage.

Thanks for any advice.

Hello

For best practice we use anything ending in a '5' e.g. 305, 315, 325 for ceiling moutning as they have downtilit omi antennas. For wall mounting we use an AP ending in a '4' e.g. 304, 314, 324 with external AP-ANT-1w antennas for all round coverage. I wouldn't use a 315 on a wall as thats not what it is designed for.

We do use the 303H as well but only where it is to go over a network gang socket. Also, it only has limited range - a 314 with Ant-1Ws will propogate further.

Hope that helps

Alexander.

Many thanks for your advice, I will certainly use the AP314s in place of AP303s.

Can I ask what would be preferable to mount at around 5m above floor level against walls - AP314, or AP315 with 90deg brackets so that they are parallel to the floor?

I tend to favour the ceiling APs (305/315/325) because all the focus of the antenna energy is directed downwards it tends to cover a larger area (depending on construction characteristics) - though note not above the AP. The 314 with ANT-1w antenna energy is not focused in one direction and so more or less is trying to cover in every direction, including upwards. Imagine if you squash a balloon downwards what happens? It goes out at the sides, you can think of this as the difference between a 315 and a 314 with 1Ws. If you 'squash' the signal down to 'remove' the signal going upwards it goes further to the sides. This is a very basic description of how RF engineers design / alter antennas to suit different scenarios.

Thanks, that's very helpful advice. Going back to the original question about 303 vs 314 with Ant-1w, if the APs are mounted on an external wall and ideally the RF energy needs to be focued into the building, which would give the best coverage - the 303 with "moderately directional antennas" or 314/ant-1w "omnidirection antennas", or even a 315 mounted on a 90deg bracket against the wall?

If you care about range and signal level/quality (SNR), your best to worst order would be:

1. AP-314 with four AP-ANT-1W antennas

2. AP-315 on ceiling

3. AP-315 with L-mount on wall

4. AP-303H on wall

Thanks for the advice - I've contacted our Aruba supplier and advised I wish to purchase the AP314 and AP-ANT-1Ws in place of the previously recommended AP-303H and they advised me since the AP-ANT-1W are omni dircetional, there would be significant AP-AP interference and so creating high density pools of coverage would be better achieved with ceiling mount AP-315?

We also have an Atrium area - 30mx30mx30m. I can only use wall mount APs, so it looks like 4 x AP314 would be best here. The issue is any RF radiated upwards will interefere with other floors that surround the Atrium on 3 sides and open into it (with protective railings). This has been one of the issues with the current deployment where ARM is constantly adjusting channel and forcing us to use 20Mhz channel spacing. I wonder if "slightly directional" AP303H would be better at keeping RF at floor level?