You could take an antenna for every desktop computer (in laptops, it comes with 1 built in) and simply have one router to send the wireless signal to all of your computers immediately. That means you do not have to worry on extensive cords and wires all over your office or house.

In particular, a wireless router antenna is used to get radio waves, which are produced by the router, and converts them back to electric pulses, which the PC could translate into data.

Types of Wireless Router Antennas

Basics

There are 2 types of this type of antenna.

The first type the omni-directional antenna. This could boost signal a bit higher on all directions. This would be great if you are either setting up a business where in you provide free wifi or you just want to set up the router in the middle of your office or house. You can freely utilize your wireless devices all through your home.

The second type of antenna is called the directional antenna. This antenna is used to broadcast a very strong signal in a direction.

Assuming you wanted to set up a business and you only utilize wireless devices on a particular side of the building. Since omni-directional antennas are not as powerful like the directional antennas (the reason for this is because they have to distribute the signal equally in all directions), you can simply set up a directional antenna anywhere in your house and point it in that direction.

Range Extender

A range extender is a directional antenna. The advantage of this type of antenna from that of the first one mentioned is that it could be applied to both omni directional and directional antennas. This antenna as well operates with the antenna that you already have.

The way it works is just like a mirror. You just have to plug in your router like the usual way of setting it up. However, this time, the signal it produces would bounce-off and the range extender shoots it back out on a higher frequency.

Say for instance you have a restaurant and you don't only want to offer your customers a free wifi access, but you as well want to offer the entire surrounding of your restaurant a free wifi (for whatever reason). You could easily do that because the range extender could generally pickup signals up to 1 to 3 miles.