Adding an external outdoor antenna to an AP?

it is probably better to put a separate AP up there, on an Ethernet cable.

or if you want a box off the shelf, cisco among others make weatherproof units (1300 series i think). Advantage here is it is going to be weathertight

which ever way you go be aware that any electrical connection from a high point outside the building could bring a lot of energy from a lightning hit into the building and has the potential to fry your attached equipment (and other issues like fires and so on)

dont know for consumer stuff, but several cisco boxes have this.

How long of a piece of coax can I use? Any

problem is you get a lot of loss in the co-ax, whereas ethernet cable doesnt have the same problems.

Linksys WAP54G and (I think) WRT54G models have detachable antennas. For the past year or so I've maintained a thousand foot link between a WAP54G and a Senao NL-2611CB3+ DELUXE. (Senao in AP mode, WAP54G in Client mode)

On the WAP54G I use 50 feet of LMR-400 coax to connect the AP to the 24 dBi parabolic wire-mesh antenna I have mounted up above the roof.

The Senao is pretty similar, but a shorter length of coax (10 feet) conected to a 14 dBi Backfire parabolic.

It's probably not the best system in the world, but it works.

Of course, being that you are a business, I'd highly suggest equipment a bit more reliable than Linksys or Senao. Maybe a nice Cisco. My experiance with the consumer level hardware is that it needs to be reset (powered off/on) every couple of weeks. Not a big deal for a home user, but it's the kind of thing that would probably annoy a customer.

FAB-Corp could probably suggest some decent hardware configurations.

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You lose most of what you gain with any usable length of antenna cable. Much more efficient to move the whole access point to the antenna location and stretch cat 5 to it, rather than coax.

Sorta, maybe. It depends on the length and type of coax cable. Even the cheapest junk coffee can antenna will give you 8dBi of gain. In order to lose an equal amount in decent coax (LMR-400 at 0.7dB/ft), you would need to run about 90ft of coax. Anything less than 90ft of LMR-400 and this would be a net gain. As a rule-of-thumb, 6dB loss is equal to cutting your coverage range in half.

There are places and systems where coax cable makes sense, but if running a self contained radio and antenna combination is possible, using PoE (power over ethernet) is usually much better than lossy coax.

I did something similar to this at a marina last summer. Worked quite well. Info at this link:

I did something similar to this at a marina last summer. Worked quite well. Info at this link:

I did something similar to this at a marina last summer. Worked quite well. Info at this link:

I did something similar to this at a marina last summer. Worked quite well. Info at this link:

I did something similar to this at a marina last summer. Worked quite well. Info at this link: