Cisco 3802e + External Antenna for outside coverage /to protect against bad weather

[fiestas.cesar]

Experts,

We are doing a deployment where we need to cover/provide Wifi coverage for outside areas such as patios and we are planning to use a mix of 3802e plus the air-ant2566p4w-r antennas. 

Although the questions i have are:

What would be the prefer cable part number to use for for the extended cable (maybe 25 feet) (between the ap and the antenna) and we have also asked about how to protect the ap and the antenna against thunderstorms, i guess what we need to use to protect the equipment against bad weather, as how to protect the antenna if it gets hit with a ray during bad weather. Thanks 

[Leo Laohoo]

Have a look at the 1562I.

[pieterh]

If you want to use the 3802 with outdoor antenna, you can place the AP indoor with cabling to the outdoor antenna.

you cannot protect the antenna from lightning, but you can protect the cables to the AP so the AP may survive.

If you do not mount this patch antenna on a pole, but on the wall of a building, you follow general guidelines for protecting the building. for installation guidelines look at installation of outdoor AP's

look at this document for cabling

and here for lightning protection

take same precaution for coax-cabling as here described for UTP cabling ("water-loop") installation outdoor AP 

[Some_Guy · Accepted solution]

@fiestas.cesar wrote:

What would be the prefer cable part number to use for for the extended cable (maybe 25 feet) (between the ap and the antenna) and we have also asked about how to protect the ap and the antenna against thunderstorms

Better to keep it to 2-3 feet if you can. When dealing with radio frequencies the cable loss is significant. It adds up very fast with distance.

You need LMR400-style coax with RP-TNC connectors. It does not have to be Cisco. LMR400 is ordinarily not cheap to begin with, but Cisco takes it to a whole new level. And the cable Cisco will sell you ends up seeming like it's probably a third-party product anyways.

Same with the lightning arrestors. Last time I did some outdoor APs, the Cisco ones were 8-10 times the price of quality third-party ones, and looked like they were probably third-party OEM. A set of the Cisco ones would've about doubled my cost for an AP.

Some people will prefer to stay all-Cisco even for the RF pieces, but IMO Cisco is a networking equipment company, not a radio equipment company. For this sort of stuff I do think it's better to go with a radio equipment company. (Since this is a Cisco forum, I'm not going to give any names though.)

The lightning arrestors need to be grounded. I prefer to have a real electrician install the proper ground wiring to them. I would also suggest looking into third-party mounting hardware for the ANT2566P4W-R that allows you to angle the antenna slightly downwards towards users, instead of flat against the wall firing straight over top of everybody.