I have successfully used a pair of SR2s, 9db 120 degree sectors on either side of a "middle" hallway hotel (where it's narrow and long, with a hallway in the middle), up to 8 stories tall from the parking lot and the pool deck.
For a longer hotel, say a 240 room, 7 story hotel (lower 2 floors, no rooms, so it's really about 50 rooms per floor), I needed 2 per side to cover all the rooms, for a total of 4 units. I've found these work best aimed at the unit's windows. And yes, the extra gain plus good RX sensitivity on SR2's. Upper floors become the hardest spots - at 50 feet from the building at ground level, on an 8' pole, you're going through a lot of walls and floors on the 8th floor. If you had other buildings, you could put them on the rooftops firing into the buildings. I just use the look test - if you can see the window from the point you're at, you're safe. If not, consider more APs - or for me, since they're repeaters, I use a omni-broadcast on the roof, which feeds the ground units, and also provides a boost of signal on the upper units. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mike Hammett Sent: Monday, June 11, 2007 3:11 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: [WISPA] Hotspot construction When building a hotspot type environment, power is needed to cover the whole area. Obviously you have no control over the laptop's abilities. Does a sectorized AP (say 17 dbi 90* sectors) with low power (perhaps XR2 cards with output power turned down) match or best the coverage abilities of multiple APs with rubber duckies? My thought is that the increased gain of the sectors helps pull in the laptops, allowing for someone to deploy less APs, resulting in a cleaner band. My thought on the XR2s in that they have increased receive sensitivity and cleaner reception than other cards, the increased power output would be negated by a lowering of the transmit power to not step on my own feet, crowd the spectrum, overload close receivers, etc. I would think to mount on building roofs, with downtilt on the sectors and have more than 1 sector cover areas that are likely to have reduced signal due to building density and foliage. Tough areas could just have a smaller AP with a ducky. ----- Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions http://www.ics-il.com -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.472 / Virus Database: 269.8.9/832 - Release Date: 6/4/2007 6:43 PM -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
