Internal vs. External Antennas

[larnelhight]

Good morning, I am currently installating 3502 Lwapps across my enterprise. I am currently utilizing 3502i(internal antennas) in the customer facing areas and 3502e(external antennas) in the warehouse areas.  The 5 Ghz antennas are 3.5 dBi and the 2.4 Ghz antennas are 2.2 dBi.

Keeping up with the antenna inventory is a real pain and I am thinking about switching to only using the 3502i Lwapps.  Has anyone found a discernible difference between the external and internal antennas if the dBi is the same?

Thanks

Larnel

[ericgarnel]

You may want to stay with the 3502e units for the warehouse areas as you may get better coverage with other external antennae such as wall patches, yagis, etc.  I do not know how much loss the RP-TNC connection has over the factory internal connection, but chances are it may not be much at all.   Omnis are great, but are not the best for all environments.

[Leo Laohoo]

Keeping up with the antenna inventory is a real pain and I am thinking about switching to only using the 3502i Lwapps.  Has anyone found a discernible difference between the external and internal antennas if the dBi is the same?

Gee whiz.  Don't get me started!

One of our projects was to install >600 3502 in a medical facility.  It's not a big building but the medical administrators want to use AeroScout so the number doubles.  Anyway, the system integrators did the site survey and decided to use 3502e all over the place.  We questioned this and the systems integrator (multi-billion dollar company, by the way) vehemently insists that the 3502e with ANT2451NV-R is the logical choice because:

a.  The hospital insists on using external antenna (the hospital never told them what to use because the medical administrators don't know anything about wireless);

b.   Limit number of different parts the organization need to manage (very dumb reasoning:  How many pieces do you maintain if you have 3502i versus 3502e with antenna?);

c.   Mandatory standard in the US (last I check the country of AUSTRALIA is not part of the US of A).

Needless to say we threw out their (system integrator's) argument out the door and saved a miminum value of AU$500K. 

The only time I'm going to use 3502e is when the external antenna has a gain of -6 dBi.  Anything less and I'd be using the 3502i.

By the way, Cisco has released the new 3502p and corresponding super-high-gain antenna, AIR-ANT25137NP-R.