How Easy Is It To Choose The Right Wifi Antenna?
Choosing the right Wifi Antenna is the starting point, and probably the most difficult part of your process. This artice will look at the different types of Wifi antenna and help you to choose the right one for your system requirements. This can get fairly complicated so we will simplify it as much as possible. Note, that if you are simply a home user you are in luck. These are always the easiest types of antenna to setup and install.
Directional Wifi Antennas
Directional Antennas are normally used for point to point systems, (with a few exceptions, where they may be used with multi point systems also). As the name suggests, this is where you are going from one point, your router for example, to another.
Omni Directional Wifi Antenna
An Omni Directional Antenna is slightly different. This type of antenna is used for point to multi-point setups.It is the main one you would use for transmitting siganls to your other computers or devices, such as PDA's, laptops, or wireless printersprinters. It is possible to use 2 of this type antenna in a point to point system but is not generally recommended. The reason for this is that there is no real need to transmit your signal everywhere when you are only trying to get from one point to another.
Point To Point Wifi Antennas
This type of antenna will normally have two wire points, say from one building to another. A good example would be, if you are sharing a netwrok with your next door neighbour. Of course there are a few exceptions to complicate things for us. If, for example you were one side of a valley and wished to share your connection with multiple users who were on the other side, you would then need to look at having a multi point setup but using directional Wifi antennas. All this may seem very confusing, but there is an abundance of help available on the internet. The Wifi Antenna is not as complicated as you might think. In fact, many people are now beginning to actually make there own Wi-fi antennas out of recycled household waste. I recently read about a few people who done just that. One chap made his own antenna from a pringles tube. Another had made one after 'borrowing' one of his wife's Tuppaware containers, and a third, had made one simply by using 3 39oz coffee can. This one turned out to be the best design of all.
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