aironet 1200

waymorr

Hi just after a bit of advice we are using the wireless aironet 1200 and we have quite a few blank spots, we were considering buying high gain antennae for the aironets and i was wondering if anybody has done this and which model of antennae did you use, and what type of improvements did you achieve
thanks in advance

sclements

Simply putting a bunch of high gain antennas in wont nessecarily make things right. Infact, that is commonly referenced as one of the 'top 10' wireless install mistakes. Nothing beats a site survey with some good test equipment. I'd say try one AP and survey the coverage area if you're stuck on high gain antennas. Double check your clients to make sure that their radios can talk back to your AP's. It's easy to get wireless signals from your AP, but getting the signalg back is usually where the challenge comes in. Simply putting up high gain antennas, turning up the power, and expecting your poor 4 year old laptop to be able to yell back not something that you should expect to work well without significant testing.
-Sam

JDMurray

Yes, you really need to perform a site survey to understand how the Wi-fi signals are being affected by the energy and objects in the environment, otherwise you are just guessing on how to solve your connectivity problems. You could spend a lot of time and money on antennas only to (eventually) infer that's not the solution to your problems.

One thing to try is using different types of Wi-fi receivers on the client. For site surveys, I use a variety of wireless NICs and antennas with a laptop to check which ones work better. Often times it's not the AP that the problem but the gain or polarization of the antenna at the client. If all of my receiver configurations result in a poor signal then I know that I've got something wrong in the environment (metal window blinds, microwave ovens, cordless phones, wet trees, other APs, etc.).