@EagleHeart 

 

The wall mount EAPs will do this.  You should be able to tandem a pair of EAP235's or EAP615's.  The midspan AP will act like an 802.3at device to the switch, and it can optionally provide 802.3af power out it's 3rd ethernet port.  My experience has been that these AP's typically draw about 3.5W in normal operation--so the tandeming should be just fine.  Worst case the outboard AP would support extreme ranges of permformance.  No you cannot tandem a 3rd AP off the second :)

 

The wall mounts have a smaller and more innocuous form factor too--look like chunk light switches.  Yes, you can turn the led off via a software setting too.

 

 

 

Love to hear how it works out for you.

  @EagleHeart Interesting.  Can I mount this AP upside down so that the CAT5e connectors could receive cables through a false ceiling?  Would this affect signal distribution?

 

And speaking of signal distribution, would I be correct in assuming that the signal in behind the wall mount would be very poor?

 

I'm planning on replacing a rented Comcast ceiling mount AP.  Imagine a 5 foot wide hallway about 40 feet long.  There are 3 rooms on the left side and 3 rooms on the right.  The existing AP is mounted in the center of the hallway and serves all six rooms OK.  If I use this EAP615 wall mount, it would have to be at one end of the hallway.  How well do you think this would work to cover the same six rooms?

 

And before you ask why I don't just use the existing AP wiring:  Comcast is really screwing this church.  They installed a second cable modem that supports this one AP only and now the church is being double billed more than $350 per month for internet service and rented AP's.  This is what I am trying to cure by running cable from the original cable modem to support at least 2 AP's in the area.

 

  @EagleHeart 

 

Good morning. 

 

The image above showed the backside of the Wall AP.  The normal mounting orientation is with the central connector pointing into the wall box, and the 3 ports facing down the wall face.  The front face is a smooth white rectangle.  They are designed to be installed in a standard electrical wall box, but in your case, you can use the LV (low voltage) frame to provide the passthrough hole for cabling and screw mounts for the back plate that the AP attaches to.  If you already have a false ceiling, you could probably just leave the APs unmounted above the ceiling tiles (less worry about vandalism or messy cabling).  The APs would be optimized for 180' coverage (not 360, so yes the back would be poorer) and probably optimized for horizontal as opposed to vertical.  So if you mount to the ceiling I would orient them facing down, with the ethernet ports oriented to a side wall, instead of down the hallway.

 

I don't understand why you have to be at one end of the hallway only, but yes the signal will be much poorer in the rooms at the far end of the hallway.  If you can't leverage the existing cabling (if only to pull through your own), then I'd plan on mounting an AP at both ends of the hallway in order to get the same kind of coverage you do today.  One thing to keep in mind is that hard walls will reflect signals really well, so you can go pretty far down a hard-walled hallway (important for channel planning), much farther than you would go than through open space.

  @EagleHeart After going back and reviewing the church, I have decided that using a PoE pass-through AP is not ideal and I will instead use an EAP610 in the hallway.

 

However, your responses gave me pause to my plans for two other rooms in the building.  The first is the sanctuary (image below).  This room is approximately 60 feet long and 40 feet wide.  You can see there is an AV room on the balcony.  I was originally going to install an EAP610 in the AV room but I've realized that this may not be the way to do things.  Instead, I should probably install an EAP615-Wall vertically at the point marked with an 'X'.  This would direct the majority of the signal into the sanctuary.  Will this work OK being well up off the sanctuary floor and in the balcony area?  This would primarily be used for sanctuary guest access as the TV's are hardwired.

 

 

  @EagleHeart The other room I need to deal with is the fellowship hall.  It is about 40 feet deep by 30 feet wide.  It has solid, 8 inch thick (at least!) concrete walls all the way around.  The picture below is a view of one side of the room.  The "X" marks where I would mount the AP.  Behind the doors is the kitchen area.  This kitchen is a building add on so it is only one story tall with a false tile ceiling (see second image).

 

I was going to vertically mount an EAP610 at the "X" or maybe use a horizontal adapter fastened to the wall, but after reading your comments, I think the EAP615-Wall is the way to go.  The CAT5e cable would be run through the false ceiling in the kitchen to the switch.  Will the EAP615 wall adequately cover this room?

 

 

 

  @EagleHeart 

 

For the rooms you show, instead of the wallmount units which are fine for SOHO/medium density I'd be looking at one of the HD (high density) access points, probably this one:

 

https://www.tp-link.com/us/business-networking/omada-sdn-access-point/eap660-hd/

 

Your mounting location in the dining room looks fine, assuming the room is as shown (about 90 seats), if there's another half, you probably want another AP on the far side.

 

I would use two of these same access points for the main chapel area, perhaps mounted in the region of the two white speakers located on either side of the balcony?  You can apparently mount them horizontally or vertically (so you can wall mount them).

Great thought on the AP's for the sanctuary. I'll have an 8 port PoE switch in there. As for the dining room, I'm standing against the wall on the other side to take the picture so that's the whole room. I was in the doorway that you can see in the sanctuary picture. I really appreciate your thoughts.

  @EagleHeart One last question about the use of wall mounted versus ceiling mounted access points.

 

Because of the concrete walls I will be installing access points in 3 offices... 12 x 23, 22 x 23, and 16 x 18.  I will be running cable externally on the outside of the building and either drilling an access hole or using an existing hole put there by AT&T.

 

The holes made by AT&T tend to be in the corners of the office, and this raises two questions for me.

 

1.  Is it OK for the access point to also be in the corner for such a small room?

 

2.  Should I use a wall mount EAP615-Wall in these rooms or something like an EAP610 that is ceiling mounted?  I'm leaning towards the Eap610 on the ceiling in the corner because the EAP615 has a rear connection, something that's not possible to make at the top of the wall, given that the wall is concrete and the hole from the exterior is at the bottom of the wall (see image below).

 

Thank you for any suggestions.

 

  @EagleHeart 

 

I like to use these (I just chuck the outlet and keep the metal surface mount box) for my wallmount APs in your situation.  It's enough clearance for the ethernet cable to make a bend and head out the bottom or directly behind.  https://www_amazon_com/Legrand-Wiremold-BW2-D-Raceway-Outlet/dp/B008JCHU8G/ref=sr_1_15? If you want to get really fancy, you can hide/protect your ethernet cables in the matching raceways.  Check out Wiremold or Legrand products on Lowes dot com.

 

I'm sure those APs would work fine at baseboard level with a limited number of people/devices, but if you can get them just above desk height, the overall performance will be better as there will be less 'clutter'.   Don't forget, you can use those extra ethernet ports on the wall APs for printers or cameras too.