Here is the basic guide of what to consider when deciding if you need to purchase an external or additional 5G antenna for your router and basically covers the principal that if you have the same signal strength outdoors where you are thinking about installing the antenna as you do indoors where the router is located then there is not a valid reason to purchase an external, outdoor 5G antenna.
Of course antenna selection is not as simple as the video demonstrates but it does raise the point quick simply that buying a 5G antenna and ASSUMING that it will BOOST your signal is not the automatic assumption you should make. Of course, sites like Amazon and Ebay are full of products that promise to boost your signal and give you 2x, 2x and even 10x speed improvements for 4G and 5G and then after reading this customers want to find a UK supplier that can deliver next day and when the product they purchased does not live up to the promises offered by these Amazon sellers they expect a refund, even if the supplier does not make these promises for their antennas. This is why we like to try and change the assumptions of antenna buyers with the basics such as checking the available signal outdoors if you are intending to purchase an outdoor 5G antenna.
One you have made a quick check, if you think that you want to investigate further then we can start to look at the signal strength information provided in your router iterface. In this example we will use the RAPID NR550 5G router to show the signal information and provide examples of the performance differences with different antennas. But first, a look at the Cellular signal information and what it means and how it relates to improving your 4G/5G signal and of course the thing we really want and that is the fastest download and upload speeds rather than the strongest signal, because the strongest signal does not always mean the fastest download speed.
When you are logged into your router and are checking your 4G/5G WAN Status you may see 4 measurements:-
RSSI, RSRP, SNIR and RSRQ.
The important ones are RSRP and SNIR.
As a very rough guide, If it’s RSRP anything lower than – 99dbm is good, the lower the number the better. For SNIR anything better than 9 is good the higher the better.
Some 4/5G Routers only report RSSI, this info is purely Signal Strength and has no relevance to the Signal Quality which is ideally what your looking for, but as a very (and a very) rough guide the RSSI normally hovers around -22 to – 28dbm below RSRP, again the lower the number the better as its a negative value.
4G CA Download does rely on a reasonable Signal Strength before it can drop out, same goes for the 5G Signal Layer relies on a more strengent 4G Signal, so next question is what make (and model number) of 5G Router do you have and does it have External Antenna Sockets?