Leaky Coax for Wifi?

[Shawn Purdy]

Has anyone had experience with "Leaky Coax" via wifi.  I have an industrial site that has difficulty with adding AP's due to the concrete and steel infrastructure.  Someone throughout the idea of using this type of cable.  From what I've read its not a good idea.  This works well for 900mhz technology but not the higher frequencies of 802.11.  What do you guys think?

[George Stefanick · Accepted solution]

Bad idea generally. However, if you have low bandwidth requirements and low expectations and set these with the users it could fit a specific need. The problem is contention. You are extending a wifi cell far greater and leaking it. So if you have wifi radios on either end of the cable trying to TX at the same time and these radios don't see each other you cause collisions which impacts and hingers radio communication. That said if you limit the application use, amount of devices you limit that contention. 

make sense?

[Shawn Purdy]

It does.  The use would not  be low bandwidth.  This area could potentially have voice along with data applications leveraging it. which is why i was concerned about this being a viable option. 

Thanks for the info.

[George Stefanick]

If this is the case contention might be far greater depending on the run. It would work, but there will be times its not reliable. 

Hope that helps. If you find this helpful consider marking this post answered. Thanks!