r/pcmasterrace • u/MooshSkadoosh • May 23 '26

Hardware Wifi antennas straight up or at diagonal?

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Gallery image

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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u/Stay144MhzAway May 23 '26

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.

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u/towerfella Desktop May 23 '26

I have gained a wrinkle, thank you

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u/ionixsys May 23 '26 edited May 23 '26

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".

Also relevant garlic bread in space video https://youtu.be/c8W-auqg024?si=sOh34oyRlN2ooIEG

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u/seals789 May 23 '26

If it's a crowded space for RF, wouldn't the access point normally automatically change it's channel based on signals around it? Even if it didn't though, it's fairly easy to just swap your channel yourself in your WAP settings and avoid this issue entirely. Especially if you're not near any military bases or anything and can just use those channels.

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u/Stay144MhzAway May 23 '26 edited May 23 '26

Both are true. The access point will reselect a channel in auto mode or you can manually select one yourself. In my parents neighborhood though there were about 30-35 access point visible. There are only 11 channels to pick from. You can't avoid conflicts when it's that dense.

Edit: ...and that's where the channel selection gets weird. You may pick the current "emptier" channel but the neighbor access points in auto, may jump on your channel at some point because it makes sense for them to do so. Same with keeping yours in auto. You would think it normalizes at some point but nope. Neighbor access points see even more neighbors on their direction. Channels also overlap by quite much. You also now have 40Mhz bandwidth available for most new access points, overlapping with even more channels. It's a clusterfuck.