Wireless Bridge Design Assistance

[mrmcrae]

Hi all

Summary, 

2 x MR86

2 x MA-ANT-27

Is there any benefit having 2 x MA-ANT-27 per MR86 AP for a point to point wireless bridge? 

I noticed that all ports are dual band, so if the other 2 ports are not in use, are they disabled? 

Regards,

[BrandonS]

I think one antenna is fine for point to point. You should find a terminating cap or put cheap omni antenna for the unused ports though. It can damage the radio and probably cause other issues if they are not terminated. 

also, beware you can only bridge a single VLAN and not do a true bridge with Meraki at this time. 

[PhilipDAth]

I'm with @BrandonS , terminate the other ports with something, so the RF energy from those ports can be dissipated somewhere.

[Bruce]

Since the MR86 is a 4x4 antenna array (and you can’t tell it to be a 2x2) you will likely see some issues since the coverage area on two of the antennas will be different to that on the other two. That’s not to say it won’t work, you will take a performance hit as MRC is likely to not provide as good a result, you probably won’t get as many spatial streams up and running, and beam-forming won’t work as well if you’re trying to reach distance. So, in summary the throughput compared to if you were running two MA-ANT-27 on each MR will be less.

You should definitely be terminating those other ports, remembering there are two connections on each port that need termination one for the 2.4GHz radio and one for the 5GHz. Running them unterminated risks damaging the unit.

[cmr]

@mrmcrae as @BrandonS mentioned, at the moment you can only send one VLAN over a wireless bridge with Meraki APs, but that will not be a limitation for too long.