Asus N router in rack with external antenna?

[LauraW]

The wifi access points I have now just aren't cutting it -- lots of dropouts, probably due to fighting for channels with folks in the condo complex next door. Some other engineers at work have suggested just putting one N66U or AC66U wifi routers in a central location in the house. I'm leaning toward the N66U since I don't really need AC now, though I may buy it just for future-proofing.

The router will sit on a shelf in my equipment rack out in the garage. (It's actually a fairly central location; the house wraps around 2 sides of the garage.) Since the rack is all metal and is basically a faraday cage, I want to mount the antennas on the wall up above the rack. I've got some questions on this:

1) Has anyone else done this?
2) Is it easier / harder to do external antennas with the N or AC models? That might influence my decision on which one to buy.
3) Can anyone recommend cables I could buy to attach the antennas remotely? A couple of meters would be ideal, since the rack is hinged and can swing out from the wall.
4) Would I be better off buying external antennas that come with their own cables? If so, which ones?

Thanks!

Laura

 

[TonyH]

Hi,
Is it possible to relocate router on top shelf of the rack? If so, should try that first.
I'd stretch CAT cables than antenna coax cables. coax cables, coax connector(s) introduce
RF power losses.

 

[PrivateJoker]

The wifi access points I have now just aren't cutting it -- lots of dropouts, probably due to fighting for channels with folks in the condo complex next door. Some other engineers at work have suggested just putting one N66U or AC66U wifi routers in a central location in the house. I'm leaning toward the N66U since I don't really need AC now, though I may buy it just for future-proofing.

The router will sit on a shelf in my equipment rack out in the garage. (It's actually a fairly central location; the house wraps around 2 sides of the garage.) Since the rack is all metal and is basically a faraday cage, I want to mount the antennas on the wall up above the rack. I've got some questions on this:

1) Has anyone else done this?
2) Is it easier / harder to do external antennas with the N or AC models? That might influence my decision on which one to buy.
3) Can anyone recommend cables I could buy to attach the antennas remotely? A couple of meters would be ideal, since the rack is hinged and can swing out from the wall.
4) Would I be better off buying external antennas that come with their own cables? If so, which ones?

Thanks!

Laura

I believe the N-66U & AC-66U have the same RP-SMA antenna connector and might even use the exact same antenna. However, as @TonyH said, it is a lot, lot better (& easier) if you can reposition the router itself than to run cables to antennas (whether or not they are the stock antenna or something else).

Both of those routers have the cutouts in the bottom to be wall mounted, and you can position the antennas any way you want (parallel with the wall's vertical, or whatever else).

The reason relocating, or moving the antennas isn't usually practical is because you'd need really good cable to limit the loss (like Belden LMR-600, which I have no idea where you could buy in small lengths, maybe eBay) and even with that you'll still get 1/4-1/3 dB per meter in loss (at 5ghz), then you add in "insertion loss" from adding another connector that an extension cable would require, and at 2m length w/ top of the line LMR-600 cable, you'd be at like a .5-2.0 dB loss (at around 2.4ghz & 5ghz respectively).

Here is a link to a pre-made TP-Link cable w/ an N-connector (which is what many larger/professional antennas use) and it's made using LMR-200 (slightly more lossy than LMR-600) and you can click on specs and see the loss that they rate that cable at. So, you'd want to have an omni-directional antenna with more gain to compensate. Now you need 3x extension cables and 3x omni-directional antennas = easily more than you spent on the router if you got decent antennas.

Long story short, it's generally way easier (with more consistent results) to relocate a router w/ its attached antennas, than to use extension cables to relocate or swap out the antennas.

You could buy an extra RT-N66U, run ethernet to it, and make an auxiliary AP from your main router to help your coverage.

HTH

 

[PrivateJoker]

I found a TerraWave antenna that would work that has 36" coax leads built in with RP-SMA connectors - that's good, b/c ideally you do not want RP-TNC or N connectors because you'd just need adapters (at extra cost and added loss).

Here is one TerraWave model that supports 3 antenna APs and is mast & wall mountable, with good omnidirectional output with a decent vertical beamwidth.

You can get it from CDW for around $235 (list is $299). If you open an account at CDW (doesn't take anything) you can get it a little lower, when I logged into my account it brought it down to $227.

This looked like the best omnidirectional fit I could find, easier than doing 3x stand alone antennas and probably better behavior with the multi stream 802.11n than having 3 panel/sector antennas.

HTH

 

[LauraW]

Thanks

Thanks for the advice, everyone. I think you're right that going with the stock antennas is best if at all possible, to avoid both additional expense and signal loss in the cables. I bought the AC66U and it just showed up today. (I figured I'd get the AC version even though I don't need it right now, since the cost difference isn't that significant.)

I need to get the thing mounted up on the wall above my equipment rack tomorrow, and then I'll give it a try. I was hoping to do it today, but the mounting holes in the back of the router wouldn't work with the screws I have on hand, just with the stand that came with it. I'll take it to the hardware store tomorrow and find something that works. Maybe some #4 pan-head screws. If anyone has mounted wall-mounted their router, I'd love to know what you used.

Thanks!

Laura

 

[PrivateJoker]

Here ya go I did a test fit (I wall mount a lot of stuff ), #6 Spax multi construction screws with the flat head worked the best for me on my N66 which I'm pretty sure has identical mounting holes to yours.

In the photo these are just 5/8" long, probably want to go longer if you're using any kind of drywall wall anchor. But the short ones could work in the right material.

Nothing I had in panhead fit well, the slots are pretty shallow.

You should be able to get those at Home Depot. I've also used super strong Velcro in the past successfully.



You might want to mount your router on a piece of MDF with some 1x2" strips of MDF running on its sides so you have a nice way to cleanly have the cables come up behind it and plug in the top.

HTH!

PS - if I try that TeraWave antenna in the next month I'll let you know. I might try it just to check it out, I can get it for about $200 flat at CDW b/c I buy a decent amount there.