15.01.2024 Views

CompTIA A+ Certification All-in-One Exam Guide

  • No tags were found...

Create successful ePaper yourself

Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.

It’s a Polarizing Issue Antennas and the signals that they transmit have an

electromagnetic property called polarization. Without getting too deep into

the weeds, think of polarization as the signal having the same alignment as

the antenna. If the antenna on your WAP or computer is aligned up and

down, your transmitted signal will have vertical alignment. Likewise, if you

tilt your antenna over on its side, the signal will have horizontal polarization.

Of course, you can also align your antenna somewhere between vertical and

horizontal. You may have not thought about it before, but your laptop or

notebook usually has vertical polarization because the antenna goes up the

side of the lid, next to the screen. When the screen is open, it’s generally

open to a near vertical position.

EXAM TIP To achieve a good compromise in supporting connections to

clients with different antenna polarization, orient the WAP antennas on a 45-

degree angle.

For the best connection between a client and a WAP, the wireless signals

should have the same polarization. The worst connection strength between

WAPs and clients happens when one has vertical antennas and the other has

horizontal. While it is pretty easy to make sure the antenna on a desktop

computer is optimally aligned, it is more challenging to dictate antenna

orientation in laptops, notebooks, smartphones, and tablets. If your WAP has

more than one antenna, consider orienting them differently to accommodate

different client configurations. What is the right orientation? The best way to

determine that is with testing; try one vertical and another horizontal and then

sample the clients throughout the coverage area to check connection strength.

Then try some other orientations until you achieve the strongest coverage.

EXAM TIP If you want to know whether your local café, bookstore,

airport, or other public place has a Wi-Fi access point (a hotspot), you can

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!