Question External antenna for pce card

[Alberto555]

I recently got asus ac68 1900 pce card, and it ended up being worse then my old no-name usb cheap wifi..... Which is at least to say criminally disappointing considering the price vs return. I have no clue why is this, they didn't seem to post the dbi of the antennas they provide, so i measured it in a program and it turns out that my old no-name antenna scores -65 to -68 dBm 73% connection, meanwhile my new wifi scores from -72 to -82 dBm and 18-32% connection... That's just horrible, no excuse, makes me want to return it, but before i do that i wanna try to get some strong antennas and attach them to the new pce wifi, still despite junk connection it's faster than my no-name wifi, but it loses connection more then few times a day. I was thinking to get some strong 12-2x 22dbi antennas, but these are designed for routers and despite the cable being most likely the same before i get one, i wanna make sure that they will work, because i lost more time than i should on this thing.

If someone does know what in the wold is going on with the stock antennas than he can answer as well, but i just think they are either a scam(if you market it as 150% range increase and some cheap no-name beats you, then that's not even a failure, that's just a scam)or i got bad model, or i got either a extremely weak access point(still the no name can catch it with 1 short antenna and it's still more stable meanwhile here i got 3 bigger antennas and the signal is junk) or my house has something that prevent it from working, idk what it could, but still it's not acceptable, so at this point i care more to get some custom strong antennas and put them over there, as i said they are all marketed for routers.

Also btw, what about radiations because i heard something that keeping it close in the house might not be the best thing to do (They should be most likely attached outside the house), i don't have time to also check this.

 

[bill001g]

This is a very complex topic with lots of not so simple variables.

It is surprising that you have issue with that asus card. That is one of the more recommended devices. I assume you have the one with the remote antenna mounts rather that attaching the antenna directly to the card.

You can't directly compare DB levels between devices really. There are all kinds of things that affect that number and unless you are using exactly the same number antenna (ie mimo) and the exact same radio bands you can't even think to compare them.

Part of the issue you have is the distance the signal goes is a function of the router radio output which is the same. If your walls absorb 90% of the signal a different nic card will not fix that. The main difference is how much data they attempt to put into the signals. In some ways a simpler card might work better on a weak signal because it is not trying to cram as much data into the bandwidth.

Bigger antenna likely will do very little. If you used directional antenna maybe but your signals inside a house may not be taking a direct path they may be bouncing off walls and ceilings.

There are a couple issue with bigger antenna. The first is it is likely not legal since you now will exceed the legal transmit power. The larger problem on the receive side. You might get more signal but you also get more noise. So the router signals is still being buried. In addition the amplifiers in the card are optimized to function with the db range of the antenna that are included. It greatly degrades the ability of the amplifier to function if you put too much signal into it. Again this is combination of the actual router signal all the noise signals power level together.

In general you will see very little difference messing with the antenna when you are talking about indoor installations.

You are better off spending your time and money on a solution that does not use wifi if you can. MoCA if you have coax cables in both rooms is almost as good as ethernet. You can also look at powerline networks. It can be slower than wifi but most people get over 100mbps and it has much more stable latency if you are playing online games.

 

[kanewolf]

recently got asus ac68 1900 pce card, and it ended up being worse then my old no-name usb cheap wifi.....

Is this the card with the plastic triangle that you connect the three antennas or are the antennas connected directly to the card? I see two different configurations when I search based on your description.

 

[Alberto555]

Is this the card with the plastic triangle that you connect the three antennas or are the antennas connected directly to the card? I see two different configurations when I search based on your description.

Yes with 3 of them, you have to connect them, they are not fixed, i used just my hands to attach them, on both sides, they are clunky as hell, but i tried to use some tools on the side of the card(not antennas) and it didn't seem that i was able to attach them any stronger.

 

[Alberto555]

This is a very complex topic with lots of not so simple variables.

It is surprising that you have issue with that asus card. That is one of the more recommended devices. I assume you have the one with the remote antenna mounts rather that attaching the antenna directly to the card.

You can't directly compare DB levels between devices really. There are all kinds of things that affect that number and unless you are using exactly the same number antenna (ie mimo) and the exact same radio bands you can't even think to compare them.

Part of the issue you have is the distance the signal goes is a function of the router radio output which is the same. If your walls absorb 90% of the signal a different nic card will not fix that. The main difference is how much data they attempt to put into the signals. In some ways a simpler card might work better on a weak signal because it is not trying to cram as much data into the bandwidth.

Bigger antenna likely will do very little. If you used directional antenna maybe but your signals inside a house may not be taking a direct path they may be bouncing off walls and ceilings.

There are a couple issue with bigger antenna. The first is it is likely not legal since you now will exceed the legal transmit power. The larger problem on the receive side. You might get more signal but you also get more noise. So the router signals is still being buried. In addition the amplifiers in the card are optimized to function with the db range of the antenna that are included. It greatly degrades the ability of the amplifier to function if you put too much signal into it. Again this is combination of the actual router signal all the noise signals power level together.

In general you will see very little difference messing with the antenna when you are talking about indoor installations.

You are better off spending your time and money on a solution that does not use wifi if you can. MoCA if you have coax cables in both rooms is almost as good as ethernet. You can also look at powerline networks. It can be slower than wifi but most people get over 100mbps and it has much more stable latency if you are playing online games.

They are absolutely legall where i live and there are many models i can buy. I care if the antenna will at least try to catch the signal with the current pce card i got, if it doesn't work then i can return them with no problems, using the powerline networks solution isn't the best thing, and if i am not mistaking my power cabbles are messed up, there are 2 rather than standard 3, and from what i read for this method to work good there are 3 cabbles needed, it will be more problematic than trying some other cards, it can't be that this damn signal can't be reached.

 

[bill001g]

There is a difference between legal to buy and legal to "use". You can use a 20 db antenna with a 10db radio for 30db total which when you convert this to watts you get the 1 watt limit. Problem is if you put a 20db antenna on a very common 24db wifi card you get 44db which is about 25 watts so you are 25 times the legal power.

Again that is not really your problem the government seldom enforces this unless you interfere with someone. The penalties though are very high, you can actually get jail time but that would be for intentional interference. The problem is the received signals. You are pounding 20db of signal into a amplifier that is only designed for 5db. In many cases it will work much worse that with the proper antenna. Again the problem is all the random energy in the same radio bands even with no signal from your router.
I know you can damage the radio chip with too much input but I am unsure if this is possible with just antenna, I know when they tested wifi chips in a lab where I used to work they would connect the transmitter directly to the receiver with a cable and always put a attenuate in the circuit to reduce the signal levels.

Note this is the card with external antenna mount.

https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-PCE-AC68-Dual-Band-Wireless-Adapter/dp/B00F42V83C

It makes a huge difference to connect this to the card and then connect the antenna to this block rather than put the antenna on the card directly. Your computer case will block massive amounts of wifi signal.