Wireless Access

Hello!

Hoping any of you can provide some pointers, please. We have an OAW 4550 controller and I am needing to bridge from one building that has a 304 AP with a triple connector outdoor antenna (functional) to a new building about 150 feet away. There's no physical connection (i.e.conduit) between these buildings, and the new building has metal wall coverage. Thus, at the new building, I need a "receiver" outdoor antenna to bring the WiFi signal inside, an AP for the antenna, and a switch for connecting devices. What is the configuration suggested in this scenario? for instance, what antenna/AP is needed on the second building? Can any other brand of the antenna be used to build this bridge or has to be the same as the existing one? Any other options/considerations?  Thanks in advance for your input!

I would have a look at the AP-387 for such a situation as standalone point-to-point. This AP has a 60GHz high throughput radio with 5GHz backup (or actually load-balancing).

If you prefer to have it integrated with your controller, you can use a pair of the AP-387 as well in mesh, or an AP367/AP377 for standard 2.4/5GHz Wifi mesh with the existing AP-304.

It is not required to have the same AP or antenna on both sides, but please seek advice from your Aruba partner to evaluate the available options.

Using indoor APs with external outdoor antennas is typically not recommended if an outdoor AP with built-in antenna can do the job. External antennas are harder to install and cabling of external antennas is in general less reliable compared to the antenna built-in the AP.

Herman - thank you for your feedback, really helpful. I will contact our vendor to determine the next steps. Thanks!

Concur with Herman, I would avoid trying to deploy APs inside with outdoor antennas. There's a number of reasons (more risk with cabling issues, lower transmit power, more loss with cables, harder to install since you have to pull antenna cables through the wall core, etc). The 387 PtP will give you approx 1Gbps across the link and less impacted by interference, a 367 PtP will be about half that depending on the channel availability and interference.