AC68U External Antenna

[sandiegoboy]

Hi,
Can anybody comment on the effectiveness of using:
1. High Gain Antenna
2. A cable extension/base to locate the antenna a bit away from router and possibly higher
3. Both #1/#2 together

I have read some complains that high gain antennas dont really work. In another forum somebody indicated that using the cable extension and setting the (original) antennas a bit further apart had a positive impact
Thanks

 

[pete y testing]

the question is what are you trying to achieve

in most cases you are correct these claims of higher gain antennas working better is just BS and your spending money for no gain

the issue of using ext cables is that unless you buy the really expensive stuff that has no loss and gain you get from locating the antennas further away is lost in the resistance of the cable

so the real question is what are you trying to achieve as its almost always the local environmental conditions or construction materials in the building or simply poor placement of the router that gives poor wifi coverage

i have a 3500 st ft house and if i place the 68u in the center of the house i get wifi just about everywhere , however if i place it in my study at one end of the house i get poor wifi at the other

the best and simplest solution if you have the router in a poor location is to have ethernet run from that location to somewhere else in the house and run a second wireless access point as its always best to get the wifi transmission to where its needed rather than try and force it through to many objects

if you cant run ethernet then you might want to consider in order of preference

1. mesh / dw systems

2. powerline adapters

3 . repeaters and extenders

 

[dlandiss]

Hi,
Can anybody comment on the effectiveness of using:
1. High Gain Antenna
2. A cable extension/base to locate the antenna a bit away from router and possibly higher
3. Both #1/#2 together

I have read some complains that high gain antennas dont really work. In another forum somebody indicated that using the cable extension and setting the (original) antennas a bit further apart had a positive impact
Thanks

1) I can verify that at least in my case better antennas help. I base my opinion on tests that only measured download speed, not signal strength. Without moving either the router under test or the test client I ran several tests in each configuration, tossed out the fastest and slowest as possible outliers, and found the mean of the rest.

I chose a fairly distant location (actually in a different brick building about 60 feet away on the same lot) to be sure that if the antennas did improve the signal it would be noticeable.

The results with "9dBi" antennas over the OEM (5dBi??) units were a 32% improvement in download speed on 2.4GHz and 380% on 5GHz.

I did not measure upload speeds for this test because mine are capped at about 5Mbps which limits the use of measurements. However, the reciprocity principle suggests that in situations where signal strength is the limiting factor uploads would be similarly improved.

2) An issue to watch for with remote antennas is loss in the connecting cable. Even expensive 0.5" diameter cables can lose more than 1dB for every 10 feet. Connectors have loss too. See also https://forum.mikrotik.com/viewtopic.php?t=21707

3) That said, Pete is right about other solutions often being more useful. I am using both access points AND better antennas here because of large, 115-year-old brick buildings.

Hope this helps!