Is Higher(Raised) Always Better?

[Darknessrise]

In other words, does raising your router always produce better results?

It may sound a little silly, but I'm trying to cover my neighborhood. Not because they're going to access it, but I want their networks to change channel away from mine which wouldn't be possible if they can barely see my network.

We live on a very hilly area. To the left and in front, it goes down and to to the right and back, it goes up.

I had my RT-N66 a little over half way up the wall on the second floor right next to the wall facing where the terrain begins to drop. I have my center antenna slightly tilted back to make it more flat with the hill and the two side antennas facing to the left and right.

I now tried to raise it up a little bit higher(its antennas are now a few feet from the ceiling).

Is there a point where raising it too high would make a drastic difference(in a bad way) when you're trying to cover something below and above. Most of my signal goes down it since that's the side of the house it's located at.

 

[azazel1024]

A vain hope to think they'd change away from your network when set on auto. You typically need a LOT of signal strength for a router's auto channel selection to decide to switch to a different channel. It is also generally dependent on seeing a lot of traffic on your network and only pools periodically.

So the odds are excellent, nothing you can do short of strapping a 30dBi directional antenna on your router and pointing it at someone else's router is going to get it to switch channels. Maybe/possibly if you were in an apartment building your router would encourage another one to move channels...but there are likely to be so many other people around, it'll do no good.

auto channel congestion avoidance is useful in a tiny subset of a tiny subset of cases.

The radiation pattern from an omni directional antennas is perpendicular to the antenna in a donut pattern. The higher the gain, the flatter the donut. With the 5dBi antennas that ship on the N66, it is roughly a 32 degree HPBW (half power beam width. So everything within 32 degrees is within 3dBm signal strength, 16 degrees above the perpendicular plane and 16 degrees below the perpendicular plane. The further away from the perpendicular plane, the lower the signal).

In respect to a house at some distance from you, raising or lowering a router/antennas that has a 32 degree HPBW is going to make absolutely no realistic difference in signal strength unless you were relocating it dozens of feet higher up. Only thing you might gain is line of sight to something that was previously blocked by an obstruction, that could be very worth while, if you were actually trying to communicate with the router.

When it might matter is if you are using an 11+dBi omni antenna that might have something like an 8 degree HPBW, or even less. However, even then, the difference of a few feet isn't likely to mean anything, except maybe to anything close to the antenna trying to connect.

For your own use, the ideal position is to locate the router/antennas roughly at the height you'd be holding clients, but again, with 5dBi antennas, the radiation pattern is generally wide enough that a foot here or there isn't going to really matter much.

 

[thiggins]

It may sound a little silly, but I'm trying to cover my neighborhood. Not because they're going to access it, but I want their networks to change channel away from mine which wouldn't be possible if they can barely see my network.

This "method" sounds like it will create more problems than it solves. You want to optimize signal levels for your own WLAN.

Stuff like this makes things worse for everyone, just as power boosting and 40 MHz channel use in 2.4 GHz.

The way pros manage bandwidth is by lots of APs with proper channel management and a solid frequency use plan.
It Takes A Neighborhood To Fix Bad Wireless

 

[stevech]

In other words, does raising your router always produce better results?

It may sound a little silly, but I'm trying to cover my neighborhood. Not because they're going to access it, but I want their networks to change channel away from mine which wouldn't be possible if they can barely see my network..

That won't work.

 

[RogerSC]

Why not consider migrating your network to 5GHz.? Then it won't matter what your neighors do, and you won't be bothering them. You can start with the parts of your network that do media streaming, which tends to be most sensitive to throughput and interference. You can add a wireless adapter to a laptop that has the 5GHz. band for example, for not too much cost. And, as time goes on, you can migrate other clients as you get a chance.

I also used an Asus RT-N66U wireless router for some time, and the 5GHz. coverage was good enough for my whole house here.

Just a thought *smile*...it does cost some money, but can give you more peace of mind. And you don't have to do it all once, just the critical parts of your network first.

 

[stevech]

There are a ton of routers in my neighborhood.

Matters not how many SSIDs you detect. Does matter if any are streaming much more than mere Netflix, and thereby using a lot of air time.
Vast majority of SSIDs will have a very low utilization factor (percent of available air time actually used).

None of the freeware WIFi tools I've seen show utilization.
So don't worry so much about SSID counts.

You can't win an "I own the spectrum" challenge.