What would be the cons if I put indoor antennas on NetMetal 5? I’ve to admit that I didn’t realize how expensive an outdoor antenna was before I purchased the NetMetal 5, so I used 3 indoor antennas from my previous ap - Netgear WNDAP330. This unit is for residential purpose only. My house is a 5F building and I wish I could have good wifi reception on every floor. Therefore, I have this idea of setting up an outdoor AP on top of my garage about 6M away from the building. Here are the photos.
Since the indoor antennas are not weather sealed, I cover them with plastic bag. I hope they will last longer.
Sure you can, but the device itself might be a little “overkill” for such close range setup. In any case, it should work just fine and you don’t even need the bag over it, since the connectors are sealed.
Thank Normis. You have mentioned overkill, but the actual reception is just merely ok inside the house. The windows close to the NetMetal 5 are bedroom windows on each floor. Inside the bedroom, the reception is fine (mostly over -60 dbm, sometimes -40~-50 dbm), but it gets much lower if I left the room (-70dbm and lower). (I measured the signal through wifi analyzer app on my Samsung S5 and a tablet.) I wonder if 3*7dbi antennas will help? Or, should I increase the power? To my surprise, 5G AC signal attenuates much faster than original 2.4G N.
One of the basic things to learn about wireless, is that communications work both ways. If you increase the antenna size and power, the small antennas on your PC or phone could still have problems talking back.
Yes, I thought about that. However, high gain 5G antenna is very hard to find. Mostly 2.4G only. Can I use 2.4G antenna for NetMetal 5? Will it have too much VSWR for 5G?
