beam-forming and custom antenna's

[azazel1024]

The antennas are fine, you have a poor AP location - move the AP - bigger antennas do not help...



5GHz is always a challenge - if you can't drill to run cable, then consider HomePlugs as a possible option.

But leave the antennas alone..

Yeah, you'll want/need to find a way to move that access point. Or add another one. Higher gain antennas are going to flatten the coverage, which will REDUCE it above and below the router (unless angling the antennas, but then you reduce the coverage on the existing floor). 7dBi antennas have a half power beam width of around 17 degree IIRC, which is pretty compact (or maybe that is a 5dBi and 7dBi is 11 degrees?). Also since I think that router comes with 5dBi already, a 2dBi gain isn't going to get you much.

I am a HUGE proponent of bigger antennas, so long as you don't have noisome neighbors to contend with, but it also has to be matched with good AP placement. A 2dBi gain might get you 5-20% gain in throughput at medium and long range, but in terms of resolving an actual dead spot, it'll get you little. The higher the antenna gain, the more you NEED an access point on each floor.

 

[legitsu]

you people seem to be making a lot of assumptions about my knowledge wireless I know full well the implications of bolting on a antenna to a radio that wasn't designed with one in mind I also have a fair understanding of wave-sign length and its attenuation, what I don't know is what exactly beam-forming requires from the radio/antenna geometry and its impact on beam width

Yeah, you'll want/need to find a way to move that access point. Or add another one. Higher gain antennas are going to flatten the coverage, which will REDUCE it above and below the router (unless angling the antennas, but then you reduce the coverage on the existing floor). 7dBi antennas have a half power beam width of around 17 degree IIRC, which is pretty compact (or maybe that is a 5dBi and 7dBi is 11 degrees?). Also since I think that router comes with 5dBi already, a 2dBi gain isn't going to get you much.

I am a HUGE proponent of bigger antennas, so long as you don't have noisome neighbors to contend with, but it also has to be matched with good AP placement. A 2dBi gain might get you 5-20% gain in throughput at medium and long range, but in terms of resolving an actual dead spot, it'll get you little. The higher the antenna gain, the more you NEED an access point on each floor.

I was considering getting or building some clover-leaf antenna's yes I am aware the moving the router would likely solve all my issues but the question is where ... as you see in the video due to the layout of the home my options are extremely limited if I move a room over I will lose signal some-ware else and ill still have a dead-zone on one end of the house or the other on the 5Ghz band
as I said I am not at all concerned with the 2.4Ghz coverage it covers the whole house and then some upstairs at the far end of the house the throughput drops out but as I said I don't care ....
this is more of a experiment then anything I only paid 30 dollars for the router and the antennas can be bolted on to my RTN-66U if they don't work out
the end goal here is to expand my knowledge of the peculiarities of 5+ Ghz if I cared about stable throughput I would plug the RTN-66U back in and use it as a repeater

 

[sfx2000]

you people seem to be making a lot of assumptions about my knowledge of wifi I know full well that it may exactly do jack shirt but its either spend 15 bucks and maby see 1 or 2dbi of gain or spend 100.00 rewiring a existing lan....

Sorry you didn't get the answer you wanted - a lot of smart folks replied and answered your question based on their experience and expertise.

Good luck with your experiment

 

[legitsu]

Sorry you didn't get the answer you wanted - a lot of smart folks replied and answered your question based on their experience and expertise.

Good luck with your experiment

lengthy edite above sir "_

 

[sfx2000]

lengthy edite above sir "_

Well, if you're going down that path - just consider that a 2 or 3 stream router/AP - the antennas need to be matched, and pretty much in the same orientation, and let the radios do the beamforming from there.

Again, location is better than adding gain to an antenna, as gain increases the good signal, it also increases everything else - e.g. noise, so in many ways, it's a zero-sum game with adding large antennas to an AP...

And I'm not a hobbyist - I'm an Engineer and have contributed to many wireless specifications and projects, including WiFi - and there are contributors on this thread that are just the same, or even more qualified.

sfx

 

[azazel1024]

Welp, if you are looking for inexpensive, you can still look at adding another router in access point mode. Keep the existing one right where it is. A lot of houses you absolutely cannot satisfactorily cover the entire house with a single router, no matter where you locate it.

Especially older and larger houses. You might be surprised how relatively easy it is to run a wire just to the floor above where the current router is sitting, plug an inexpensive router in to the existing one, set it in to access point mode and BOOM, much better coverage. TP-Link WDR3600 is pretty good for this. Cheap used, not that expensive new, and some of the best 2.4GHz and 5GHz performance for an N600 router out there.

You can get creative on where you run wiring. Behind baseboards is a great place if just running one wire. Short of block walls, both drywall and plaster and lathe walls I have run wires with minimal finishing work to a floor above/below in at least half a dozen homes. Take the baseboard off, remove a little bit of plaster/dry wall to get the wire run in to the wall, floor above, do the same thing, drilling through the floor behind the baseboard at the floor above. Snake a wire fish, or just the wire itself down through the wall to the baseboard of the floor below. Pull it out.

Occasionally the walls don't match up between floors, then you run it down above you as mentioned, but then you might need to cut a small hole in the ceiling, sometimes, to run the wire over, small hole at the wall you are going to run it down to get the wire in to the wall and down, and the remove the baseboard, cut a small hole and pull the wire out of the wall (or put it in a box in the wall there). A couple of small patches, a tiny bit of paint and done. I've also had success simply running a fish down in the ceiling and over, without having to cut in to the ceiling except at the corner of the wall/ceiling.