Should the router be mounted on the wall or placed on the table? I hung up and took off the one at home before I figured out which kind of wall and which machine could be hung on it.

There used to be a Xiaomi AX3000T on the TV cabinet in my living room, with a photo album underneath to protect it from scratches, and a set-top box and a child's picture book stand squeezed next to it. Last month, a child was tiptoeing to reach for a picture book and used the antenna as a handle to pull the machine. The machine almost hit the ground. My wife said: Can this thing be hung on the wall? I answered quite happily at that time: able. Only when I started to put it into practice did I realize that it was not as simple as driving two screws - which wall to hang it on, how high to hang it, whether there are hanging holes on the back of the machine, and how to place the antenna after hanging it. There were a lot of pitfalls during the trip. At the end of the struggle, I took off the machine that had been hung for three months. This article will break down the entire issue of “to hang or not to hang”.

Let’s first talk about which machine can be installed: Turn over and count the holes

Not all routers can be mounted on the wall. If you can hang up without reading the advertisement, look at the back. Turn the machine over and count two things:

One is whether there are wall hanging holes. The proper wall-mounting holes are "cross-slots" or keyhole-shaped long slots cut out on the back, usually two to four, with the slots wide at the top and narrow at the bottom - the screw head fits into the wide slot, the machine sinks down into the narrow slot, and the weight rests on the screws. My AX3000T is turned over and the back is smooth without any holes. Xiaomi has basically omitted this design in its home models in recent years. On the other hand, the old Mercury D191G from eight years ago has clearly four cross-slots on the back. The old machine and the new machine are reversed in this matter.: The older they are, the more holes they have for hanging, and the newer they are, the more they want you to place them on the table.

Second, there are no hanging holes but they are in a crooked position. Some machines have no holes, and all four holes are squeezed into the upper half of the back. The whole machine is top-heavy when hung up, and the antenna is even more wobbly when it is removed. The judgment method is simple: The cable connecting the hanging hole cannot pass through the center of gravity of the machine. Like the ASUS RT-AX56U, which has a square body and four holes at the four corners, it is stable when hung up. ； Some Mercury Tengda flat box models have narrow hole spacing, and two antennas are mounted vertically. The head is so heavy that it looks like it is about to jump off the wall at any time.

If your machine has no holes like my AX3000T, don't rush to buy a bracket to stick to the wall - read the following sections before deciding. I took it off because it was not cost-effective after some calculations.

Which kind of wall can be screwed?: wall by wall

The router plus power supply weighs less than one pound, but when it comes to wall-mounting, the wall is more important than the machine. There are four types of walls in your home::

The living room side of my house is made of light steel keel partition wall with gypsum board on the outside. The first time I tried to find the keel by tapping it with my hand, I drilled a hole where there was a solid "dong dong" sound, and when the expansion tube was halfway in, I found that the back was empty - the knocking sound deceived me, and the spot was filled with sound insulation cotton between the two keels. The second time I learned my lesson, I spent 15 yuan to buy a small tool called "Multi-Function Wall Detection" and stick it on the wall to sweep it. It scanned the position of the keel exactly. The screws ate into the wood of the keel and did not move at all when I hung it. If you are too lazy to buy tools, you can do it yourself.: Put a strong magnet against the wall and move it slowly. The place where it can attract is the light steel keel, and drive the screws there.

There is another detail that is easy to overlook: How far is the wall mounting location from the socket? The router occupies a socket. There is no socket within half a meter of the wall location, so you have to run an open power cord along the wall. Not only is it ugly, but children can pull the cord if it hangs down. The hanging point I chose is just 30 centimeters above the socket on the side of the TV cabinet. The power cord runs along the corner of the wall. Once the tie is fixed, the cord is basically invisible to the eye.

How high and where to hang: The signal account and altitude account are calculated together

The higher the wall, the better. The signal emitted by the antenna is strongest in the horizontal direction, and the "top" and "foot" of the antenna are blind spots - this rule I have learned The article about breaking off the antenna I drew a donut diagram. Therefore, if the router is hung too high, such as 2.4 meters close to the ceiling, the downstairs or downstairs bedroom will suffer. ； It is hung too low and is close to the top of the TV cabinet, so the furniture cannot be blocked.

The sweet spot I measured is 1.2 to 1.5 meters above the ground , which is consistent with the conclusion that I measured after moving five times - one meter to one and a half meters is the height range that cannot be blocked by furniture or the human body. This positioning logic I am using Where should I place the router to get the best signal? I wrote down the whole process in that article. The advantages of hanging on the wall are revealed at this time: I couldn't find any space this high on the table, so I just picked it up on the wall.

The location also pays attention to "centering". When hanging on the wall, don’t hang it on the corners. Again, give priority to the center of the house. The living room of my apartment is in the middle, and the TV background wall looks the most pleasing to the eye, but it is located in the south, and the signal in the north bedroom drops by two bars when it is mounted. What has been decided is the partition wall between the living room and the hallway. Not being centered is a bit of a compromise, but it is better than the TV wall. If you want to "hang the wall next to the weak current box" in your home, first take a look at the position of that wall on the house plan - the weak current box is naturally located at the entrance corner, and hanging it next to it is equivalent to sending the router to the frontier.

After hanging it up: Antenna and heat dissipation are two new accounts

When the machine is installed on the wall, two things change.

The antenna needs to be broken off again. After hanging on the wall, the machine is more than one meter above the ground. The original vertical antenna on the desktop now serves the devices "diagonally below" - the mobile phone is on the sofa and the bedroom is next door, all diagonally below the router. What I did was to press two of the antennas forward and downward at about 30 degrees, facing the sofa area in the living room. ； The other one is kept vertical to take care of the far side of the same floor, and the other one is placed diagonally towards the bedroom. Which tube is which tube? I tried it by looking at the signal bars on my mobile phone. It happened in one night. How to try it specifically? I am here The antenna angle article I’ve written it before, I won’t repeat it.

The heat dissipation is better than the desktop. This is the most real bonus of hanging on the wall. The machine is suspended against the wall, with air flowing through the bottom and back, which is better than pressing it on the table and letting a layer of dust fall on it. I used a temperature measuring gun against the AX3000T mounted on the wall for three days. The top was about 3 degrees lower than when the TV cabinet was originally placed. The temperature scale and the complete three-step guide for cooling are here. The article about router heating I wrote about it in the article - but the trick of hanging on the wall is only half-measured in that article, because it also solves two unique desktop problems of "dust on the desktop + children touching it". For old machines that get hot in the summer, read that article before hanging them on the wall. Don’t expect to hang them on the wall to save a really overheated machine.

There is a certain type of position that you should never miss.: In the weak current box or behind the door of the weak current box. The signal is cut in half as soon as the metal door is closed, and the temperature inside the box is 40 or 50 degrees in summer, both of which are flaws. What should be put in the weak current box and how to organize the wires? My process of packing up my own box is written in The article on sorting out weak current boxes Inside, the box is left for the optical modem and switch, and the router comes out.

Why did I take it off again?: Three types of machines not suitable for hanging

After hanging it for three months, I took the AX3000T back to the desktop. It’s not that it’s not good to hang it on the wall, it’s that the wall-mounting of this machine is unfair.:

The first type has no hanging holes and can only be glued by brackets. The AX3000T has no holes. I bought a third-party "hole-free wall mount", the kind with 3M VHB adhesive. After hanging it up for the second month, there was a "pop" in the middle of the night, and the machine and its bracket hit the floor - the glue had aged under the heating. Fortunately, it was not the machine that hit the ground first, but the antenna line that hit the ground first. If you want to mount a machine without hanging holes on the wall, you have to either install expansion screws through cable ties (ugly but strong), or don't hang it at all. The adhesive bracket has a nominal load-bearing capacity of two kilograms, and the router has a load capacity of 400 grams. The figures seem to be sufficient, but the glue is afraid of heat and moisture, so the figures cannot calculate its life.

The second type is a vertical machine. Standing machines like the Xiaomi AX9000 and ASUS are designed to stand, and the cooling air ducts are vertical. Hanging them on the wall means they are lying on their sides, but they block the cooling holes on the back. The correct treatment for a vertical machine is to provide a ventilated tabletop position. I am Xiaomi fever article I have recorded the actual measurement of the temperature drop when placed vertically.

The third type has the interface on the back facing downwards. After some machines are wall-mounted, the network cable port and power port are all facing the wall, and the cable has to be bent at a 90-degree angle to enter the gap. The network cable is bent too much and damages the core wire. This is a problem for me. Crystal head wiring article I have eaten here - the four-core virtual connection starts from bending. Before hanging up, squat down and take a look at the direction of the interface. Whether the cable can come out comfortably is a hard indicator.

The direct reason why I took it off was the first one: Machines without holes rely on glue, but glue is unreliable. I took it off and changed my mind - adding a vertical stand to the storage space on the desktop, and punching the machine away from the desktop, achieving 80% of the goals of heat dissipation and anti-drag. And that old Mercury D191G, with its four hanging holes clearly visible on the back, is now hanging on the wall of my mother's entrance at a height of 1.3 meters, running 2.4G steadily to feed her smart sockets. That's how it should be when hung on the wall.

wrap up: Calculate the accounts with one table

In order, I suggest this:: First, open the back of the machine and count the holes. If there are holes, look at the wall. After passing the wall, choose a location - 1.2 to 1.5 meters, centered in the whole house, and within half a meter of the socket. If you can't meet two of the three conditions, just add a vertical stand to the desktop. Hanging it on the wall is the "icing on the cake". Don't add signals and machine security just to save half of the desktop. The final answer for my house now is to mount the main router on a desktop vertical stand and the old router to hang in the entrance hall of my mother’s house. Each has its own place.