Tech Forum

We're finally getting our Internet installed in our stake. I'm looking for some tips on where to position the 881W Firewall.

Since it has built-in wireless, one of my concerns is how do I disable the wireless to preserve bandwidth for webcasting? With the separate WAPs, I can just unplug them.

I suppose I can take the antennas of the firewall to cripple it's range.

Also, has anyone mounted the firewall to the ceiling to maximize the wireless? Otherwise it's going to get stuck on a cabinet with less then optimal results.

We are in a Legacy building and there is a phone board upstairs to right (facing audience) of stage. I made a shelf and attached it to the low portion of the board. Attached is the signal strengths. It was good to the first partition. The first AP was at the same level. I plan to move it further to the left side of the stage so it covers the Primary rm and Media Library better.

I just added a little section to the meetinghouse firewall wiki article that may help address this a little: https://tech.lds.org/wiki/Meetinghouse_ ... e_firewall. Please use the discussion tab of this article if you have feedback on how this can be improved.

As far as your wireless questions, there is not currently a way to disable the 881W wireless temporarily (like for a Webcast). You can contact the GSC to have it disabled long-term, but this should not be used for temporary purposes. This is something that is being worked on, but it is not currently available. Removing the 881W antennas reduces coverage a little, but not as much as you might think.

Is there any problem using the 881 W wireless, with antenna extension cables?

Our current Pix 501, is in a locked metal cabinet, which hopefully will be replaced soon, due to the licence limitations of this particular model. It would not be practicle to relocate the installation to a different area.

Any advice gratefully received.

Biggles wrote:Is there any problem using the 881 W wireless, with antenna extension cables?

Our current Pix 501, is in a locked metal cabinet, which hopefully will be replaced soon, due to the licence limitations of this particular model. It would not be practicle to relocate the installation to a different area.

Any advice gratefully received.

Biggles, I'm thinking of doing that with our 881W. We currently have them in metal cabinets and we are loosing signal strength, so we want to put the antenna's on the outside of the boxes. So we are looking to get the cables made ourselves.

The antenna connectors on the 881W are odd connectors - typically a male contact in a normally female connector housing, etc. This is required by the FCC - they don't want typical users to be able to go to Radio Shack and tweek the antenna. You can purchase cables to do this from Cisco (they are expensive!), or find some connectors online to build your own, but after I looked at the price for 3 cables (or 6 "special" connectors) I decided it was more cost effective to get an extra 1041N.

We have two old buildings (one built in the 50's) with 881W's in locked metal cabinets and surprisingly they still provide some fair coverage. I've considered drilling holes in the cabinet to let the antennas protrude partially, but haven't so far. I'm not advocating putting the 881 in a metal cabinet, but that's where the patch panels and modem are located and it's in the sacrament preparation area - so I'm not comfortable with the firewall being outside the cabinet.

rknelson wrote:The antenna connectors on the 881W are odd connectors - typically a male contact in a normally female connector housing, etc. This is required by the FCC - they don't want typical users to be able to go to Radio Shack and tweek the antenna.

While this may have been the original intent of Part 15.203 of the FCC rules, the reverse polarity connectors (i.e. male contact in a female house) or "RP" connectors are widely available and fairly inexpensive if you shop around.

rknelson wrote:You can purchase cables to do this from Cisco (they are expensive!), or find some connectors online to build your own, but after I looked at the price for 3 cables (or 6 "special" connectors) I decided it was more cost effective to get an extra 1041N.

There are many options available to extend the antennas out of a cage/cabinet the router might be mounted in. Search for "RP-TNC" at Amazon, or other discount stores. You can buy the connectors for your flavor of coax, buy adapters to convert RP-TNC to any number of connector styles, or simply buy the RP-TNC male to female cables pre-made. The pre-made cables may have a bit more loss than the ones Cisco sells, but for a short cable, the difference probably won't be measurable. And at about 1/10 the cost of the Cisco cables, it's certainly a viable option.