Router Antenna Positions - What You're Doing Wrong

In this video, I detail how to position the antennas of a router to optimize the WiFi signal strength in a home or office.


0:00 Introduction
1:35 How do router antennas work?
3:45 How you should configure your router’s antennas
8:25 How to measure the WiFi signal from your antennas
9:39 Summary and conclusion

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How to position your router’s antennas
When it comes to your router’s antennas, it’s important to understand a few key concepts:

-Your routers are omnidirectional, meaning the wireless signal from your router is broadcast in all directions with an equal amount of signal strength

-The wireless signal is broadcast from your router’s antennas in a direction that’s perpendicular to the alignment of the antenna. In other words, if a router is aligned vertically, it’ll broadcast its wireless signal on a horizontal plane. If an antenna is aligned horizontally, it’ll broadcast its wireless signal in a vertical plane

Understanding the basics of how a router’s antennas work will allow you to position the antennas in a configuration that maximizes the wireless signal in your home. With that said, everyone may have a slightly different antenna configuration based upon the patterns of internet usage in the home.

Conclusion
If you have any questions about how to orient your router’s antennas, or you’d like to share your experiences with the WiFi signal in your home, please leave a comment below.

[darkguardian]

I knew this from being a radio operator in the military.
Talk about taking your time to deliver three minutes of information.

[cadillaccasper]

Play at 1.25x for normal speed. Play at 1.75x or more to still have time in your life to catch your kids baseball game

[dolan-duk]

Good information but had to watch the video at 1.5x speed.

[robertv]

Why is everyone in such a big hurry. The man is informative. Slow down and smell the roses !

[richarddaugherty]

Ham radio operator here. We call this antenna polarization (vertical vs. horizontal vs. sloped). Another factor can be that many routers are multi-band, most are dual (at least older ones) and mine is a tri-band with six antennae. It's hard to know which antenna is on which band. I don't think I've ever seen a label. I'm pretty sure it's one antenna per band (2.4 GHz vs. 5.8 GHz). As you say, experiment, but expect that your first test may not give the best results.

I once worked a New Years Eve activation at an EOC (Emergency Operations Center) where an agency stuck a magnetic mount antenna on a steel door (horizontal polarization) and couldn't talk to their dispatch center 6 blocks away. They asked me to look at it and I moved the antenna to a vertical polarization in a better location. Magic! They were solid into the dispatch center because the antennae over there were vertically polarized.

[MrMikesMondoVideo]

Unfortunately, you're just guessing, and you're guessing is incorrect. RF propagation does not work the way you think it does. What you're doing is attempting to change the polarization of the antenna which is not the same as its takeoff angle or its radiation pattern relative to the antenna or its ground plane. Moreover, omnidirectional antennas are not 100% omnidirectional, even in free space, much less the conditions that routers are being used in. There are far too many variables.

If you really want to know what's occurring, there are antenna modeling programs. It's a relatively steep learning curve and it's going and it will take time to model the antenna that you have, but that's what you will have to do to even approach understanding what's actually occurring here. And that still will not account for other variables in the environment.

I have no doubt that you've had success in reorienting the antennas, but there's a difference between correlation and causation. The good news, outside of the engineering principles here, the prescription is the same. Reorient the antennas until you have better connectivity and bandwidth, but it does not work the way you are claiming it does.

[GurudattSinha]

Was literally looking for this information for my entire work life, nearly 20 years. Finally I got the information I was looking for. Thank you so much

[ricardojeske]

What I got from this vid is how many people pop up to criticize! From the way you present these tips, to the flaws in your technical knowledge. Your vid is useful and helpful without getting too technical. Keep up your good work!

[raoulcoZA]

My goodness! 10:22 to say something that could've been said in two minutes. Play back at 1.75x

[ctsibius]

Even though I'm pretty familiar with how RF works and how power is transmitted, I really enjoyed your video. You did an awesome job breaking it down in a way that's super clear and helpful for everyone. Thanks!

[Mary]

Glad you explained it so thoroughly, but you went 10 minutes for a 3 minute information. It is really exhausting to listen to.

[lzoxl]

Thank you thats great but i have a question..

Ihave a poor coverage in my apartment and my router goes from 0.5mbs to 600mbs!! Because i live kinda in the border of the 5G tower..so which cheap router option with high catching signal do you offer?

I even don’t know how to measure and compare different routers in catching signals and I prefer to change router instead of trying antennas

[brucefay]

Is the signal from the antenna polarized? If so, that would play into decisions about orientation.

[jimallen]

Thanks for sharing that 3 minutes of info in 10 minutes...I actually do appreciate your effort, but you should just hit the summary, we're not engineering satellite coms to Saturn. :)

[charleshadden]

I am also a HAM with over 40 years experience n radio antennas and NAVY trained in AVIONICS and this guy is just lick he got any results at all. there is no such tech as slopped antenna orientation. Radio waves do well either vertical for omnidirectional and horizontal for directional but radio signals get confused at angles as their orientation is dictated by the magnetic fields of the earth. SO, do what you want but this guy is full of it. he knows noting about electronic engineering.

[concepmorales]

talking too much .. can you go direct to the point...

[bernieflyer]

Thanks muchly! I moved two of my 4 antennas to work for downstairs. A very noticeable improvement in speed and signal strength.

[octoberentertainment]

Finally thanks, the basics is what I needed. The router antennas send signals to the nearby devices. The router antennas do not receive wifi signals. Thanks for explaining. I almost bought a $300 lpda antenna that I was going to connect to my TpLink routers antenna jacks.

[jabezhane]

I had a similar router and would angle one vertically, one horizontal and one to the side. Worked fine.

[joescheller]

Any particular way to overcome penetration have 4 cement block walls to penetrate. Can that be overcomw without a booster or extender