Media bride on a network without another asus router?

[tgl]

Mostly marketing directed. See the antenna gain on GT-AX11000 router:

RTHR00 Wireless-AX11000 Tri-band Gigabit Router, ROG Rapture Tri-band Gaming Router Test Report 5G ASUSTeK Computer

Wireless-AX11000 Tri-band Gigabit Router, ROG Rapture Tri-band Gaming Router Test Report 5G details for FCC ID MSQ-RTHR00 made by ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Document Includes Test Report Test Report 5G

fccid.io

Hmm ... if I'm reading that very dense report correctly, they're quoting the directional gain as 5.31 dB (appendix C.2 page 2). That doesn't sound too shabby: more than a factor of 3 directional difference in radiated power. Am I reading it wrong?

 

[Tech9]

This is what I see:

In other words - omnidirectional antennas. It doesn't matter much how they are oriented.

 

[tgl]

Ah. I wonder what that number in the appendix is then. But anyway, two-ish dBi is not omnidirectional --- I'll grant that it's not high gain, but there's some gain. The reference I was just looking at says that an ideal dipole antenna has a gain of 2.1 dBi, so these seem to be acting just about like you'd expect for a dipole.

 

[Tech9]

This router (like many other home routers) has external antennas mostly for marketing purposes:

The size is also for marketing purposes only, the actual antenna inside is 5cm long. The rest is "gaming" plastic.

 

[johntitor]

This router (like many other home routers) has external antennas mostly for marketing purposes:

View attachment 46237

The size is also for marketing purposes only, the actual antenna inside is 5cm long. The rest is "gaming" plastic.

But are they better than internal anntenas?

 

[wouterv]

In old school radio techniques the ideal antenna is one full or a half wave length long.
For the good old 27 Mc the wave length is about 11 meters, resulting in huge antenna's.
For 5 GHz the wave length is 6 cm or about 2 inches, in most cases this result in router antenna's constructed out a single piece of wire of about 6 cm long (put in to a fancy plastic holder as external antenna, the downside is that there are usually connectors or small pieces of coax cable in between the PCB and the antenna wire) or they fabricate antenna's out of metal sheet material soldered directly on the PCB as internal antenna (with the advantage that the antenna can be close to the RF circuit without losses in connectors or a piece of coax cable).
Positioning of the antenna is most important, internal or external. If they position the internal antenna close to an electronic source of noise it won't work well.
Any router with external or internal antenna's shall be placed at a proper location away from sources of disturbance or blocking, besides position also antenna orientation can play a role.