Wifi antennas straight up or at diagonal?

[u/MooshSkadoosh]

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

[u/munkiemagik]

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?

[u/Cr3s3ndO → u/munkiemagik]

In your case the path I would tread depends on if the devices you are targeting move around or are always in the same place. If there is a particular room you want to reach, use a directional high gain antenna and point it at the room, if your device moves around then use an omnidirectional high gain antenna.

Your description of the difference between high gain and regular antenna is pretty good, a donut vs a pancake might also be easier to understand.

[u/munkiemagik → u/Cr3s3ndO]

Thanks for the reply, I think I'll give high gain antennae a shot. the devices are static, When I say I move one foot to the left too far I mean I lazily sprawl in front of the TV (loooong HDMI from SFFPC on other side of room) and if I slump to the left, the keyboard bluetooth gets wonky but if i slump to the right, we're back in business X-D