I'm planning to buy a TP-LINK Archer C7 Router. This model has three fixed antennas (2.4 GHz band) and three external antennas (5 GHz band).
Can I replace the external antennas with 8 dBi antennas? What maximum range (in meters) would this configuration achieve?
TP-Link provides a handy calculator at Wireless Calculator:
The TP-LINK wireless calculator contains three different functions:
- Distance Calculation
- Link Budget Calculation
- Antenna Selection
Which function should you choose?
If you want to see the possible maximum separation of the transmitter and receiver while maintaining a certain link quality at different data transfer rates, you can choose the distance calculation function.
If you want to see the reliability of your wireless connection while the transmitter and receiver are working at a certain distance, you can choose the link budget calculation function.
If you want to find suitable transmitter and receiver antennas from our various antennas of which can meet the need of getting a good performance at a given distance, you can choose the function of antenna selection.
Look at the Specifications for your router and feed in the data ...
5Ghz is optimized for speed, not range (penetration), so from the get go do not expect much.
Secondly, TX power is limited to 50mw/1w depending on channel used, so the gains (pun not intended) from going from already quite good antennas to better ones is usually very limited.
With 802.11x its better to add more TX points than trying to make one "Super AP" in one location.
