Help with 9dbi antennas for RT-N66R

[4Leaf]

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DMJI9TA/?tag=snbforums-20


Hello everyone. Those are the antenna's I recently purchased and I was wanting some advice of how to get the best results using them. Should I bump the tx power up to like 200mW for example. I've read before that sometimes removing the middle antenna can help in some situations?

I greatly appreciate any helpful advice and thank you in advance.

 

[KGB7]

Youll have to test every possible combination, as it is a trial and error from this point on.

 

[wouterv]

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DMJI9TA/?tag=snbforums-20


Hello everyone. Those are the antenna's I recently purchased and I was wanting some advice of how to get the best results using them. Should I bump the tx power up to like 200mW for example. I've read before that sometimes removing the middle antenna can help in some situations?

I greatly appreciate any helpful advice and thank you in advance.

I am very curious to the result.
Setting TX power to 200mW will for quite sure cause temperature issues in the router, and setting the router to 200mW will only really help if the client end is also set to a higher TX power.

To me "high gain" dipole antenna's for 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz sound like the cure against any disease.
The wave length for 2.4 GHz is about 0.125m/4.92", for 5 GHz it is half of that.
The ideal dipole antenna length is half the wave length (for 2.4 GHz 0.06m/2.5" and for 5 GHz 0.03m/1.2"). Hence many routers have those tiny antennas inside the case.
I believe it is anyway better to have the antenna's outside the case.
The only antenna that would give benits is a directional antenna, those are often dishes or similar to what is used for the cell phone network.

Most important for your home router is:

• free line of sight between router and client (ideal situation).
• router placed as far as possible away from walls and ceilings (specially away from steel armoured concrete).
• place the router on a hard surface (preferably wood).
• take care of sufficient ventilation around the router.
• no obstacles near by the router that absorb or disturb TX or RX (no metals, no water filles vases, no transmitting electronics).
• never place the router in a cabinet.
• basic orientation of the 3 antenna's: \|/ - at least one antenna should ideally be parallel with the client antenna (but how is that orientated in a laptop or mobile device?).

 

[sm00thpapa]

Those antennas are worthless. Return them.

 

[dlandiss]

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DMJI9TA/?tag=snbforums-20


Hello everyone. Those are the antenna's I recently purchased and I was wanting some advice of how to get the best results using them. Should I bump the tx power up to like 200mW for example. I've read before that sometimes removing the middle antenna can help in some situations?

I greatly appreciate any helpful advice and thank you in advance.

4Leaf, don't bother raising your transmitter power. Suppose you could double your transmitted range that way -- how would you also double the transmitter range of the client computer so it could answer you back?

That's the beauty of improved antennas. Due to the reciprocity principle they give you the same gain in receiving that they do in transmitting.

You can easily be misled if you only make simple signal strength measurements at close range, because once a connection is established the transmitter power will automatically reduce to a value that maintains good bandwidth but minimizes interference to other networks. It will seem as if the antennas are adding nothing, but if you had a way to monitor transmitter power you would find that it has reduced.

On the other hand, if you take a laptop out to the farthest distance that will maintain a usable connection with the standard antennas, and then replace them with the "9dBi" style, you will be able to move farther out. I've tried it. They work, but you have to respect the way radio waves travel and the way WiFi controls transmitter power if you want to see objective results.

You can try both of these antenna configurations, but you will probably find the the one on the left works slightly better.

Hope this helps!

 

[4Leaf]

So far I haven't seen any improvement with these antennas. In fact, I have only seen worse throughput and around the same or maybe even worse signal strength regarding some of my wireless network clients devices. I guess I am going to have to revert back to using the stock antennas.

Is it possible that the sdk 6 driver firmware may work better for these antennas then the sdk 5 I am using by merlin?

What are some antennas that would actually improve my signal strength and throughput that are directional and work for both wireless ghz bands. Also, how do the directional antennas work? Do they work in two different directions as front and back parallel of which way I would have the antennas pointed towards?

 

[sm00thpapa]

So far I haven't seen any improvement with these antennas. In fact, I have only seen worse throughput and around the same or maybe even worse signal strength regarding some of my wireless network clients devices. I guess I am going to have to revert back to using the stock antennas.

Is it possible that the sdk 6 driver firmware may work better for these antennas then the sdk 5 I am using by merlin?

What are some antennas that would actually improve my signal strength and throughput that are directional and work for both wireless ghz bands. Also, how do the directional antennas work? Do they work in two different directions as front and back parallel of which way I would have the antennas pointed towards?

Read post #4 up above.

 

[wouterv]

So far I haven't seen any improvement with these antennas. In fact, I have only seen worse throughput and around the same or maybe even worse signal strength regarding some of my wireless network clients devices. I guess I am going to have to revert back to using the stock antennas.

Is it possible that the sdk 6 driver firmware may work better for these antennas then the sdk 5 I am using by merlin?

What are some antennas that would actually improve my signal strength and throughput that are directional and work for both wireless ghz bands. Also, how do the directional antennas work? Do they work in two different directions as front and back parallel of which way I would have the antennas pointed towards?

I really do not believe in enhancing the SOHO router performance by using other antenna's
The TX power of these routers is so low (80 mW for the USA), and the mass production design probably quite well balanced. You easily lose more power in the cabling and the connectors then you benefit an eventual better antenne.
Look in a professional (office) environment with wifi coverage: almost every room has one or more accesspoints (with usually internal antenna's).
The home solution for better coverage is equal to the office solution: add accesspoints.
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wire...best-way-to-get-whole-house-wireless-coverage
A large house can simply not be covered with one (legal) router or accesspoint.
For high power professional, licensed applications you can use directional antenna's.

 

[Deleted member 22229]

So far I haven't seen any improvement with these antennas. In fact, I have only seen worse throughput and around the same or maybe even worse signal strength regarding some of my wireless network clients devices. I guess I am going to have to revert back to using the stock antennas.

Is it possible that the sdk 6 driver firmware may work better for these antennas then the sdk 5 I am using by merlin?

What are some antennas that would actually improve my signal strength and throughput that are directional and work for both wireless ghz bands. Also, how do the directional antennas work? Do they work in two different directions as front and back parallel of which way I would have the antennas pointed towards?

You would need to use a yagi type antenna its very directional but it would make a big difference in the direction the antenna was aiming. Bottom line you need a beam antenna not a omni directional for a real improvement. And then you have to have very low loss coax cable running to that yagi because there is huge loss at the freqs routers use.

 

[Flying Dutchman]

Well, I have positive experience with the 12 dBi antennes.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KQ0EN2A/?tag=snbforums-20

I mounted these on my RT-N66R and the result is that I can use my wifi network far away in my garden without dropping the connection. With the stock antenna the connection dropped half way the garden.

The difference in usable distance is about 20 meters.

The router is situated on top of a cabinet in the living room. The antenna's are rather ugly but good performance is worth it

Bernd

 

[dlandiss]

The only antenna that would give benits is a directional antenna, those are often dishes or similar to what is used for the cell phone network.

Almost. Vertical antennas longer than a quarter-wave remain omnidirectional in the horizontal plane. The gain they exhibit is from flattening the pattern in the vertical plane -- picture a squashed doughnut -- and using that power in the horizontal plane as well.