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Today I was doing a preliminary walk through of a college campus in preparation for installing an 802.11 network. One of the buildings was noted as having Low-E glass. This is my first (sentient) experience with low emission glass and was wondering if anyone has any experience with its effect on wireless.

Here is what I found out about low-e glass from a web site. Low-emission glass (Low-E) is a clear glass, it has a microscopically-thin coating of metal oxide. This allows the sun's heat and light to pass trough the glass into the building. At the same time it blocks heat from leaving the room, reducing heat loss considerably.

Specifically I am using Trapeze Networks RingMaster product to develop my AP plan and I don’t know if I need to assign this low-e-glass a different attenuation value than regular glass. Since it allows the sun’s heat and light to pass through my gut instinct is that it should allow 2.4Ghz waves to pass through also.

Any input is appreciated. Thanks in advance.

have not had experience with this issue, but thanks for the information. never would have thought to look at something like that. keep us posted on what happens.

i would think anything with the word "metal" is going to have some kind of affect, but being in a sheet sandwiched in the glass, would it simply reflect and not scatter?

I have not worked with 2.4 much but have seen signal loss on 900 mhz. when working around low e glass I have had better luck through the block.

Thanks for the info. Without much to go on, I ended up using the same attenuation factor as I do for plain drywall construction in my estimates.
It looks like my company will get the account to install wireless on this campus. I should have some emperical knowledge on low e glass in the near future. I appreciate your input, and will expect higher attenuation than I estimated.
Thanks