Pineapple Enterprise Antenna Port Specifics

[Chris Boden]

Can someone please outline for me the details on the antenna ports? I'm doing a rather serious custom installation of a Pineapple Enterprise and need to make sure I put the right class of antenna on each specific port. Some of the ports are 2.4GHz, some are 5GHz, and some are Dual-Band for both. Due to the size and installation specifics of the antennas themselves, it's very important for me that I put the right type of antenna on each specific port. So what I need to know is which port wants which type of antenna, exactly.

This is not covered in detail in any of the online documentation that I've been able to find so far, so I'm hoping someone with RF Engineering/Hardware engineering experience on the actual development team reads this soon. 🙂

Thank you everyone!

Chris B.

[DramaKing]

I'm not aware that there are antennas that are specific to one band. WiFi antennas are always in a matched set.

[Chris Boden]

It depends, on the Enterprise Pineapple, the two base radios (the ath10k) are fixed bands (one is 2.4 only, one is 5 only); the mediatek radios are mixed. So I need to be really certain which is which when it gets out to the ports on the side.

[dark_pyrro]

I'm pretty sure this already has been answered on Discord, dragorn's post(s) can't be misunderstood, it is rather clear

[Chris Boden]

His answer hadn't been posted when I made the original post on here. Now, at this point, his answer IS very clear.....that he doesn't have the answer and is trying to find it. But still....I don't have the actual answer yet, so the hunt continues. Someone, somewhere, knows the port allocations, by frequency/band, for the Pineapple Enterprise. And I need to find that info.

What blows my mind is that I'm the first person to need to do this. Does EVERYONE just run these on stock antennae? There's plenty of hardware hacking done with the smaller pineapple, nobody ever does it with the big ones? I can't be the first person to have this problem.

[dark_pyrro]

There might be good reasons to why you are/feel "alone" regarding this specific use case. One is that it's not that many Enterprise users out there, at least not active on the forums and on Discord. I can (with confidence) say that I've covered pretty much everything that has been posted about Hak5 products here on the forums and on Discord for a number of years now, including the Pineapple. The very few posts I've missed is probably possible to count on the fingers of my right hand, and I can say that discussions about the Enterprise specifically has been very limited, I would even stretch it up to being defined as "extremely limited". Why, one might ask? First thing is that the Enterprise is a rather expensive piece of equipment (at least compared to other Hak5 products). Perhaps not if it's an organization that buys it, but for personal use... I don't think it's the first thing you buy. Second, I don't think users pick things apart, but instead use the product as it was intended with warranty in place. Of course, people buying these kinds of products sometimes are the type of individuals that just can't hold themselves back from picking things apart and tweak them (I know I am), but that doesn't mean everyone is doing that. Third, the use case (as I've understood it from the discussions held on Discord) is rather specific. I don't see that it's what "a lot of people" would do generally even though it's of course a possible use case.

Anyway... I would most likely build something tailored to the task in such a use case scenario. Doing that, I would have full control of every component and being able to tweak things more easily. I can't see why the Enterprise really is mandatory in such a use case. Despite all the knowledge and experience that is poured into the product, it's not really rocket science level when it comes to components, so that is no reason in itself to make it mandatory to use the Enterprise in this specific case. I would for sure not buy the product before knowing the specs and without knowing if it's at all a feasible use case for the product.