Why Use an Antenna with Wi-Fi?

Depending on your wireless access point, you can add an external antenna to it. For example, in Chapter 12, “Buying a Wi-Fi Access Point or Router,” I showed you an example of an external antenna attached to an access point.

Antennas are used with access points to add range to the access point's radio broadcast. They are also an integral part of a Wi-Fi network that covers a substantial area. The use of antennas with your access points can greatly reduce costs in deploying a wireless local area network because you can use fewer access points than you would need without the antennas.

Directional antennas can be deployed with great effectiveness with wireless bridges. For example, you could use wireless bridges combined ...

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