Cisco Aironet + Catalyst — Long-Range WiFi (up to 10km)
Carrier-grade wireless using Cisco Aironet access points with directional antennas and Catalyst switching — engineered for remote sites, industrial estates, and multi-site campuses that need reliable, low-latency connectivity without long lead-time fiber.
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Survey & Line-of-Sight: Confirm clear LOS between sites; check Fresnel zone and elevation with tools like Ubiquiti Link or HeyWhatsThat.
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Hardware Selection: Cisco Aironet APs with directional dishes for PtP backhaul; sector antennas for local coverage; Catalyst PoE switches.
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Mounting & Alignment: Secure mast/tower, weatherproof enclosures, precise dish alignment using -dBm targets.
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Power & Cabling: PoE+ from Catalyst; shielded outdoor Cat6; proper grounding and lightning protection.
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VLANs & QoS: Trunk links across PtP, VLAN segmentation, QoS for voice/video and priority traffic.
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RF Planning: Choose 5 GHz channels, DFS awareness, channel width (20–40 MHz) balancing throughput and stability.
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Security: WPA2/WPA3-Enterprise, RADIUS, MAC filtering for IoT; management ACLs.
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Monitoring: SNMP/NetFlow, logs, auto alerts; baseline throughput and latency.
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Failover: Optional secondary path, automatic route failover and spanning tree safeguards.
