Routers: Are Higher dBi Antennas Effective?

[de.das.dude]

now i want that router too

 

[remixedcat]

Ha ha go get it!!!

 

[MT Alex]

Well, I moved my router from off of the floor behind my trashcan on the lower right to on my desk in the upper left. It seems to have made a substantial improvement. I'll have to see how things go.

 

[Aquinus]

Well, I moved my router from off of the floor behind my trashcan on the lower right to on my desk in the upper left. It seems to have made a substantial improvement. I'll have to see how things go.

http://img.techpowerup.org/130127/001.jpg

That's a pretty old Sylvania monitor. One of my good friends use to have one and his fiance just replace it with a 23" @ 1080p. The higher you can put it up the better. Be careful having it near your computer though. If it is behind your tower your case could act as a barrier for the wi-fi signal, especially if it has metal in the chassis.

 

[a_ump]

Well, I moved my router from off of the floor behind my trashcan on the lower right to on my desk in the upper left. It seems to have made a substantial improvement. I'll have to see how things go.

Now be honest. How long did you clean your desk before you took that picture? lol

I myself had a similar problem. My ISP Frontier provides a Zyxel ADSL2+ Gateway(Modem+Router) and its range is poop so from my in laws house, 50' away/second story, it wouldn't reach our store/restaurant. Found an old Netgear WGR614v10, updated firmware making it go from 54mbps to a 150mbps Wifi-N, put it by the window as a repeater and viola, great signal in the whole store. It was a really simple process, hook the laptop up to the Netgear via ethernet, turn off DHCP, selected repeater/bridge mode, set the Zyxel's IP as the gateway IP. Now it did take me 4 hrs because it wouldn't work....because i didn't power cycle both routers XD lol

If you decide that moving your router isn't good enough then i 2nd the idea of getting an old cheapo router with wifi-n capability and putting it in repeater mode.

 

[Steevo]

Mount it to the wall above your desk, get an old picture, or have the kids paint one, and add some FJ to the back to enclose it and put that on the wall. Art, and wifi.

 

[xvi]

It is probably possible to purchase a multi-directional antenna with more gain. More gain means more sensitivity which means more range in every direction. You would need to first determine the db of gain of your existing antennas. If you can then find antennas with a higher db number than the ones you currently have, that will likely give you more range.

Not in every direction. High gain antennas typically sacrifice vertical performance for horizontal.

I found it while poking around checking out reviews for it. Most of them are very positive, not sure what the troubles are with this dude.

"Compress the signal" is a bit misleading since most people will think compression as in WinZip. What they mean is that it focuses the radiation of the antenna. The first picture shows a standard omnidirectional antenna, the second, a "high gain" omnidirectional antenna. If you're trying to reach, for example, a second floor, a high gain antenna may actually make things worse.

Standard Antenna

High Gain Antenna
(Note that it's more squat.)