RE: [WIRELESS-LAN] Extending an external antenna

[Phil Raymond]

Title: Extending an external antenna

Howie said it very well. As someone who works at a company that engineers coaxial antenna systems, you do NOT want to run coax 250’. Signal loss and expense are both excellent reasons why this is not feasible. Also, you will have separate external antenna connectors for 2.4 and 5-6 Ghz so you would either need a diplexer or two cable runs.   Run cat5/6 to either an outdoor PoE AP or a PoE AP in a NEMA enclosure, and connect to a dual band (2.4 and 5-6 Ghz) directional antenna that has the proper pattern (120-180 degrees or so depending on where the scoreboard is). Of course I’m not sure of what type and how many client devices you are planning on supporting with the single AP, but that should be considered as well. Also, if you buy a dual band antenna that is 2.4 Ghz and 5.8 Ghz bands, then you will need to set your 802.11a channels to support only U-NII 3 which is the 5.8 Ghz outdoor frequencies.   Hope that helps and not confuses…     From: Howie Frisch [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, May 19, 2006 10:51 AM To: WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Extending an external antenna   Lee: Unless you go for very low loss COAX, which is both expensive and thick - the same stuff they run up cellular towers - the loss in the cable will likely be more than anything that you can get out of an antenna. I think that you may be far better off looking for an outdoor access point, then running Ethernet (with POE) or separate ethernet and power (if allowed) through your conduit.  This would let you put the "radio" a lot closer to the antenna and would let you operate with a short COAX run of a few feet.  You'll pay more for the outdoor access point, but you'll get more than that back in cable and installation costs - plus the whole thing is likely to work better. Howie Frisch UTStarcom, Inc. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Lee Weers wrote: We have a situation in which we need to cover our baseball and softball fields wirelessly.  There is currently no infrastructure there.  What we are looking to do is put a high gain antenna on the football stadiums scoreboard.  There is a conduit that we can run some coax through out to the scoreboard.  My question is this: 1.  Can you extend an antenna from an AP 250 ft?  (That's how long it is to the scoreboard) 2.  What kind of coax do we need to use to do a/b/g? We would like to mount the ap inside of the building and then just extend the external antenna to the scoreboard. Thank you,   Lee Weers Assistant Director for Network Services Central College IT Services (641) 628-7675 ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/. ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/. ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/.