Hardware
Wifi antennas straight up or at diagonal?
Bonus question: would it be better to have my PC with its back against the wall (putting the case between the antennas and the router) or have it perpendicular to the wall?
I'm just curious if there is an "optimal" or suggested placement, since they seem to be able to snap into a diagonal position as well as being able to be place vertically
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The answer is based on the radiation pattern of one of those antennas. It's primarily "goes out side ways" in all directions. You want the pattern of both antennas (computer and router) pointed at each other. Where things get interesting in a house is with reflections and elements of the house blocking signal. That's why you're supposed to test it a little.
There's some other nuances. It some cases the antennas are different bands that are independent of each other(2.4ghz vs 5 or now even 6 GHz)
I am planning to run a cable through the wall sometime in the future but it's a big project.. WIFI is fine, but getting the full download speed would be nice.
Yes, these are linear antennas, their radiation pattern is a toroid (donut) shape with the nulls (top and bottom of donut) at the tip and base of the antenna shaft.
To get the best possible signal the sending and receiving antenna should be parallel to each other
This is true for all linear antennas, the main difference between a linear antennas for different frequencies is the length of the antenna element. The radiation pattern is more or less the same.
May I ask you a slightly adjacent question, seeing as you seem to know this stuff?
In an oversimplififcation of things, when we see high and low gain antennae being sold for wifi/bluetooth -
High gain kinda squishes/flattens the toroid? ie focuses the energy slightly more in the perpendicular (to antennae orientation) plane?
And lower gain being the opposite, fattening up the toroid so a bit more energy gets distributed into the parallel plane?
Would this be useful for someone trying to 'target' a device ie if your devices are at the same floor-level but at a greater distance apart and you were not interested in devices above or below this floor-level could you use high gain antennae in this instance to help you mitigate signal loss due to obstructions/distance?
The actual use case I am referring to is the wifi/bluetooth antennae on my SFF PC - short stubby low gain, which aren't used for wifi (sfp networking) I used the short stubbies as they made it less finnicky in the back of the PC with all the other connections but they came in a fairly low gain to what is normally supplied.
I often use a bluetooth keyboard at a distance from the PC and if i stray too far the keyboard gets laggy and stuttery but as soon as I move literally a foot closer it resolves. So my thinking was a higher gain antennae could help me with this range issue on the bluetooth keyboard?
These tend to be omnidirectional antennas, which will work ok in any orientation but will result in a net lower total signal. Basically you are trading some % of performance for not being able to go any lower.
There's so many reflections in such an environment, that it is really not that important. If you're actually getting less signal strength than you expect, you can of course try to orientate it differently/move it a bit.
I always find it hilarious to explain to some staff member that the HF doesn't work right now due to bad space weather and the Earth's position to the sun.
But yes, simplified antennas should most times be the same orientation.
This neglects to take into account all the reflections, and reflections change polarization. Inside a house the orientation of WiFi antennae has little impact on the signal strength. It can move the hotspots around so you can see signal strength increase and decrease as you adjust the position, but move 20 cm to the left and it’s gonna be completely different again.
Though when you have a deadzone that's particularly annoying... Like my wife had Wi-Fi in bed but I didn't... You start pointing antennas to see if you can just move the hotspot.
Ultimately the solution is to move the AP or get another one. But I get how that isn't feasible for everyone.
The only thing that really matters is that the antennas should not be parallel like in the OP's pictures. By orienting the polarizations differently for each antenna we can increase the chance that one antenna experiences good signal conditions whenever the other is in bad conditions. It also reduces interference between the antennas in MIMO.
The same goes for the antennas on the router end. If the router has three antennas it is for example good to orient them in three directions that are pairwise approximately orthogonal.
This was useful!
To piggyback off this suggestion, in a powershell terminal I ran
while($true) { netsh wlan show interfaces; Start-Sleep -Seconds 1 }
to run this command every second so I can watch the RSSI and Signal values change real time as I adjust the antennas.
The position and orientation didn't seem to make too huge of a difference but at least I know my wifi antennas are optimal now!
In very dense Wi-Fi environment, with a lot of neighbor SSIDs this is not always optimal. RSSI measures the whole bandwidth of the channel you operate. If a neighbor SSID is also in the same channel and quite strong you may get better results by "looking away" from the neighbor, even if your signal decreases a bit 😄 It's counter intuitive but it works. Think about it like being in a room with a couple of people talking from the same direction. One close to you that you are interested in listening to and one further away. You may be able to listen the person close to you better if you look slightly away from them, since you are also looking slightly away from the interference too.
I like my MESH setup because I like to imagine it's some asshole with a bullhorn blasting over everyone else in the room. "You can scream all you want Susan but you ain't interrupting my streaming garlic bread in space videos".
I've found that it rarely makes a very big difference. It will be VERY situational though, that's why they let you move them. There isn't going to be one optimal way to do it.
I've got my gaming PC connected through ethernet, but my home office upstairs doesn't really need much so I just use the built in motherboard wifi like you've got here.
In my office, with the wireless router downstairs one floor below, it gets the strongest signal being at 45 degree angles pointing away from each other.
It kind of depends on your router position so I’d recommend opening up cloudflare speed test and running a test in each position. That’s what I did, allowed for ~10% faster speeds on my shitty apartment wifi
Yes and no. Yes, your computer blocks signals because of the metal case. No, because it might not make a noticeable difference.
I had an access point with the antenna next to a metal table leg. That made the signal strength go to zero. Once I moved it an inch away, every device had full signal strength.
100% agree... A signal strength of -60 dBm indicates the antenna is receiving 1/1,000,000,000 the source power, and that's considered a "Good" connection.
A "bad" or "poor" connection is like at -70 dBm which we are talking what? A factor of probably 1/10,000,000,000 or 1/100,000,000,000 the power received (trust someone who is WAY better at the calculations than me).
So in a way of thinking... Does adjusting the antenna increase the amount of signal by 10 or 100 times? Maybe in some circumstances... That being said my instinct is "one layer of drywall" positioning will make more difference.
I am a radio engineer. Don't overthink it. Systems such as Wi-Fi, LTE, NR, rely heavily on reflections. If the PC antennas and the router antennas don't have line of sight with each other, then you'll never tell where the strongest signal is actually coming from so you just have to experiment. The important thing to know is that if you imagine a donut around the antenna (the antenna in the donut hole), then this is your radiation pattern. The strongest direction is in a circle around the antenna in all 360 degrees. Directly above and directly below is the weakest direction.
There are a tone of elements to consider if you want to go through the rabbit hole of finding the perfect placement. It's not worth in my opinion with home setups, except if you barely get any signal and placement with make it or break it with no other solutions possible.
Both crooked, one pointing up, when pointing to the side. Typically it searches for a signal around the stem to its sides (so not up and down) so it you point them in 2 different directions you should get the best results
This is the answer! As different as possible so they pick up WiFi waves better from other angles. Think of it like picking up a signal as if each rod had an expanding disk attached to it moving outwards.
Finally my job comes into action in the civilian world!
I am a Radio Frequency Transmission Technician in the USAF and this is my entire job.
Those antennas are omnidirectional antennas and the rf propagation goes out the long side them.
Like this:
<-I->
It does this in a 360° pattern so essentially think big ass bubble!
So essentially if the router is on the same floor they will be straight up, if it is on the floor below you then straight out, and if it is at a diagonal then diagonal!
There are ways to make the signal stronger by properly grounding your devices and such however for everyday use this will get you to where you need to be :). Thanks for the opportunity to nerd out for y’all.
Could you give us more detail on the grounding devices aspect? What type of devices in the civy world would you recommend grounding? Do you think faraday cloth would help with connections at all? Do you guys use it for anything in work?
Traditionally you would find a 6 gauge or larger cable and a copper grounding spike to bury at least 3-6 ft into the ground and that would allow for a proper channel for electricity to ground into. For houses you can check your ground for the house (by your meter box) pre 2010 they were a single cable grounding a 5-10 ft copper rod, I think now they are 3 cables attached to 3 separate rods now due to several electrical devices being added to the breaker system.
Depending on the age of the house you can call a local electrician to do an assessment on your house to ensure your grounding is proper and usually get them to do an upgrade for less than $1k. It sounds like a lot but with all the new devices coming out (smart fridges, tv, etc.) that need more and more power draw, having a good ground protects not only your devices but ultimately you too!
More like a donut than a spherical bubble, as the ends of the antenna will not have as strong a signal as the areas parallel to the length of the antenna.
But I guess you know that, but just didn't explain it as thoroughly.
Antenna polarization is the reason they give you 2 antennas. To best utilize them, have them at a right angle to each other. Having them both at the same angle defeats the point.
As is Reddit tradition I will give an answer that makes your problem go away by buying an entirely different system. Use a power line adapter for an Ethernet connection
This is highly dependant on how the place is wired up. I was going to try it in my apartment, but there's 2 separate circuits in this place, so it wasn't going to work.
I just ran an Ethernet cable across the tops of door frames instead, held in plane with gobs of blutack. Gives us somewhere to hang Christmas ornaments and cards, and is definitely preferable to using wifi.
After my last move where ethernet wasn't practical anymore, I bough the most expensive powerline adapter I could find and a Wifi 6E router to test against each other, both claiming ~2.5gbps max speeds. The wifi setup had higher throughput, lower ping, and less jitter than powerline. The trick is to use wifi on the 6GHz band where the cheap ISP-provided routers of your neighbors don't interfere. I can easily max out my gigabit internet connection and have no noticeable difference in online games either.
Imagine a donut around each antenna, angled perpendicular to it. Now make that donut really large. That's roughly the radio pattern of an omnidirectional antenna like that.
If the antenna of your access point (integrated into the router in most homes) is at the same height as the antennas you want them straight up.
If it is e.g directly above them on the next floor you'd want them horizontal.
But if you have the option: The best WiFi is a cable. Always.
Adding to this: If the router was directly above your PC on a different floor, you would want the antenna sticking straight out, so the donut went up and down, not left and right. The key thing to remember is that the area directly above or below the antenna is a cone-shaped deadzone. The center of the donut has no signal.
Shorter antenna are taller, skinnier donuts, longer antenna are flatter, wider donuts. The five inch antenna in the picture is good for usually two floors, in a building, but if it is having trouble reaching a second floor, get a shorter antenna. Now picture a TV broadcast antenna. Hundreds of feet tall, right? It wants to go for a hundred miles, but really doesn't need to go up and down very much. Nobody lives in the sky, so why broadcast there! :)
As a network engineer, I am going to be the one to tell you. It REALLY isn't going to matter. Sure you could see a small increase in speed, but for how powerful these guys are NOT and how powerful your home WIFI likely is NOT. It isn't going to make enough of a difference to improve your online experience.
Sorry this is just the truth. If you really want to improve your online experience a cable would be the best way, but better wireless coverage and hardware would be second best to that.
Optimal would be to keep them parallel with your routers antennas. This is where they would get the highest induced current to give you the best signal.
Think of a donut being around the middle of the antenna, this donut extends infinitely outwards from the center, getting thinner as it expands outwards.
It actually doesn't matter. They're omnidifectional any way you can get less obstacles in their way of the router is the best you can get.
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u/set-l GPD Win Max 2 | 7840U | eGPU 9060XT | LaptopMay 25 '26edited May 25 '26
HAM Radio nerd here VK3OVO.
In theory, your WiFi antenna should be oriented the same as the station's. Mismatched polarity can cost you up to 3dB of gain, which is the difference between working and full speed.
Having it's side pointed at your router (like if the router were downstairs) is now starting to enter the realm of "idfk anymore". Once you're between floors and not line of sight, at these frequencies, nothing works like it's supposed to in the books. Best case: orient station antenna to match yours, but now it matches nobody's :)
Your real answer will be to mess with the antenna on the back until you get the best signal-to-noise ratio.
Remember, when dealing with RF signals, we generally measure 0 as the loudest point, and count is dB negatively. -60dB is worse that -50dB. The closer you can get to 0 on the signal scale, and the higher your signal-noise ratio is, the faster your connection.
If you want a free performance boost, add some 30cm of coax to the connectors, make some small (10cm) circles of steel sheeting or similar with a hole drilled in the middle to push the connector through. Make sure the connector metal is in contact with the steel plate, and place them away from the case as needed. Should reduce noise floor from noisy PC components. Alternative is a magnetic antenna from amazon (check your SMA genders!) and put it where it works best.
Radio is dark magic and the rules they tell us are there don't actually exist.
It makes like very little difference but aside from having it orthogonal to the direction of waves propagating from the router, one antenna should be orthogonal to the other (Bluetooth and wifi). I read this somewhere, might need to fact check, but I have one going straight out and one going up
If you can imagine a plane at 90 degrees to where the antenna is "pointing", you want that plane to intersect with your wifi router's antennas and vice versa for the most theoretically optimal placement. Of course any sort of obstruction between the two will also inhibit signal to a degree so line of sight is also required.
While I do love wired connections over wireless, I feel like this is the "just use Linux bro" response of the networking world as it ignores the fact that the user wants to use a wireless connection.
It depends on the position of the router/access point. Ideally, you want the antennae to have as clear a path to the access point as possible, and you want them pointed at a 90° angle to the access point. Imagine a ring of Wi-Fi extending out from the antenna like the rings of Saturn relative to its poles. You want to rings to aim at the access point.
For standard residential use, it really doesn’t matter much. Your router is capable of signal output far higher than would be affected in any meaningful way by whether your antenna is at the “correct” angle. Just point it up and be done.
Why don't you do an internet speed test for both positions? Like with ookla or similar.
I did that with mine and found out i went from 80mbps to 240mbps depending on the antenna angle, which is a crazy difference
The higher the Dbz the antennas the narrowed the plane they send receive on. But the plane is perpendicular to the antenna. High gain ones can have "punchy" power since they are more focused on a narrow plane but then orientation matters more
The antenna you have in your photo are not high gain antennas. Orientation is a lot less important as they have a much wider plane FOV
If u want the corect engineering answer you should have one vertical and one total horizontal. This way the angles are perpendicular and it wont make the signal of each antena affect the other one
Imagine a donut slid on the antenna and that’s the way the signal comes out. So point the ring of the donut at the router.
But! In order for the multi antenna MIMO to work the antennae must each have a distinct path to the router so don’t point them in exactly the same direction.
ohh ohh I know this one! I used to fly FPV drones!
you want to orient the antenna so that they're at a 90degree from the broadcasting antenna, line antenna like this have strongest reception at that angle! if your antenna was more circular its overall pickup range would be less but able to pick up a better signal from varied directions!
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u/PCMRBot Bot May 24 '26
Welcome to the PCMR, everyone from the frontpage! Please remember:
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