How good or bad are the stock antenna of routers?

[Leon Straathof]

Funny nobody even this wonderful long existing site has ever come up with the idea to measure the performance of the stock antenna of modern routers. I say this because lots are thinking what if i buy a aftermarket antenna, not even knowing if the antenna they got are actually bad or good.

What i would like to see if possibble is swapping the antenna of popular routers to see if attached to the other router performance changes can be seen. Start with 2 routers that are topic of discussion like R7800 and RT-AC87U both have 4 antenna so swap them and see if the competition is different when swapped. If there are differences are they noteworthy and is they are judging who makes the best wifi transmitter electronics vs who makes the best stock antenna can be done. Maybe it will have some very intresting outcome hope to read some here in the near future.

 

[ColinTaylor]

The potential effects of different antennas has been discussed ad nauseam in these forums. It's not as simple as good or bad.

 

[thiggins]

Antennas are part of a router's RF chain design. You may think by swapping them you are improving performance. But you could just as easily be degrading it.

This would not be a worthwhile exercise, at least not for me to consider putting time into it.

 

[System Error Message]

Antennas are part of a router's RF chain design. You may think by swapping them you are improving performance. But you could just as easily be degrading it.

This would not be a worthwhile exercise, at least not for me to consider putting time into it.

actually you can improve performance by swapping them, however there are 2 things to consider. Range vs bandwidth. Stock antennas tend to be designed with the wifi's RF to provide a balance of both because theres no use having a super loud wifi when the client isnt strong enough to respond back. There are plenty of options in replacing stock antennas, for instance you can use directional especially if you plan on setting up high performance wifi bridging. I think this may be worth putting effort into, using some directionals and setting up some high performance bridges. Im sure there are a few here who know RF engineering you could ask to get the right antenna specs you'll need to set one up and see how good is it to set up a wifi bridge with this setup to provide ethernet/wifi connectivity to the other end via another wifi router with omni directional antennas.

 

[sfx2000]

Funny nobody even this wonderful long existing site has ever come up with the idea to measure the performance of the stock antenna of modern routers. I say this because lots are thinking what if i buy a aftermarket antenna, not even knowing if the antenna they got are actually bad or good.

Good case study for the OEM High-Gain antenna...

https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wir...ksys-high-gain-antennas-reviewed?limitstart=0

Conclusion - maybe don't bother...

The factory antennae provided by the OEM are matched to the rest of the RF chain, from the WiFi NIC itself, through the PA/LNA of the RF front-end.

 

[Easy Rhino]

don't some designs also incorporate more functional "stuff" into the antenna assembly, so that removing it would break something?

 

[thiggins]

Correct. Only in the NETGEAR R8500 and R9000. Those antennas are removable.

 

[Leon Straathof]

The "Active" antenna designs i guess they can be designed for a specific router meaning some active element normaly on the router PCB probebly the first input or last output amplification could be moved to the antenna. In all other designs there is nothing that binds it to the router, given that all antenna designs for the same function on the same frequency have the same impedance. The difference is the radiation pattern and the gain that pattern will give in the direction that pattern is the strongest. This is true for single and antenna which i have build many (most designs with succes) i never started with dual band antenna because the precision to build both 2.4 and 5 ghz element is a challenge by itself combining 2 succesful antenna in one design was 2 much effort for me.
So for non "Active" designs they are not made in such a way that they will perform bad on another router. But that does not mean that there can't be differences. My guess is that most antenna perform about the same but i noticed that the radiaton pattern of my rt-n66u was more ball shaped and that of the Netgear R7800 is much flatter like the ball is flattned 40%. Meaning when the antenna is vertical with the rt-n66u i had better reception on the second floor when the router is on the ground floor than with the R7800 but the R7800 gets much further in and even outside my garden.