ASUS Ant-157 dual-band antenna

[Bojamijams]

https://www.asus.com/Networking/WLANT157/

I usually see people only using one of these and always as the center antenna.

I'm curious why that is? Why not use 2 or 3? I suppose 3 could be a clearance issue but two on the outside would definitely work.

Just seems weird that you would try to only gain 33.3% of the possible throughput.

 

[Skripka]

Coverage.

You trade to get higher signal gain with beam spread. So you might get higher signal power along an axis and therefore longer range, but you trade aperture. For example that antenna has a HPBW (Half Power Beam Width there are other terms like -3dB) rating that you can see in the specification of between 50-70 degrees depending on the axis...what that means is that outside of that angle, the signal strength plummets by half.

Unlike the stockish omni or dipole that propagate out like ripples in a pool.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/col...3/ps469/prod_white_paper0900aecd806a1a3e.html

So people keep the omni/dipole antennas to get good nearby coverage...but only use one of those antennas for longer range directional coverage.

 

[Pericynthion]

Agree 100% with everything Skripka says.

It will vary depending on environment and # clients - if you need a broad spread, then the regular antennas will give you better service. If you have a directed target, then the directional antennas will help.

This is an interesting recent post re: replacing all 3 with ANT157's;

http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showthread.php?t=11823

I can only presume they only have 3 clients, and they are desktops that never move

 

[Bojamijams]

Thank you for that insight into antenna technology.... I have so much to learn

Currently, my HTPC is the client I'm trying to boost the wireless speed of. On the 5ghz band, I get about 2-3 bars and link speed fluctuates from 520mbps all the way down to 120mbps.

So, if I want my client computer to be able to get as much of the 1300mbps as it possibly can, I need to upgrade all 3 antennas right? Or is there a diminishing return that takes place?

Although... I doubt I can even point all 3 antennas at it without interfering with the one behind right?

 

[Skripka]

Thank you for that insight into antenna technology.... I have so much to learn

Currently, my HTPC is the client I'm trying to boost the wireless speed of. On the 5ghz band, I get about 2-3 bars and link speed fluctuates from 520mbps all the way down to 120mbps.

So, if I want my client computer to be able to get as much of the 1300mbps as it possibly can, I need to upgrade all 3 antennas right? Or is there a diminishing return that takes place?

Although... I doubt I can even point all 3 antennas at it without interfering with the one behind right?

Not at all that simple.

Your first problem is whatever storage/source you have being able to actually do gigabit-level I/O both internally as well as whatever bus it is connected by. Your second problem is whatever wireless adapters your clients devices are using...AFAIK there has yet to be a wifi AC adapter of ANY bus that can actually do gigabit throughput IRL.

-5gHz 802.11n won't do gigabit no matter what (mention this as we don't yet know what adapters you're using).
-Most all 802.11ac USB adapters are USB2...which are bottlenecked by the bus connection to 480mbps max.
-The only 802.11ac adapters sold as of now that are USB3 top out IRL at 500megabit or so out of 867mbps max theoretical
-PCIe cards like the Asus PCE-AC66 don't get anywhere near gigabit IRL either

Therefore, I'm not aware of anyone actually yet getting gigabit+ wifi throughput through any router even our AC66U...because the theoretical advert'd maximums are only theoretical and not IRL by a long shot. Are you doing large mass storage data moves, or are you just wanting higher numbers ? In the later case "only" getting ~130mbps is no biggie...in the former it might, but we need to know about the hardware involved and exactly what you're doing where IRL throughput is that important.

 

[Bojamijams]

The device I have installed on the client is the PCE-AC66

In the link you provided, is that the link speed they are listing or actual file transfer speed?

Because at 450mbps of ACTUAL throughput would be about 56MB/s and would be phenomenal but currently I still periodically get stutters when trying to stream HD movies. My 2.4ghz is pretty saturated around me so I want to move to the 5ghz but do need to boost the link quality before I can do it.