Removing Radiation from a Router

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Vlad Kotenko
DD-WRT Novice


Joined: 28 May 2017
Posts: 4

PostPosted: Sun May 28, 2017 11:54    Post subject: Removing Radiation from a Router Reply with quote
Hello,

I am using TL-WR941ND and want to turn off the antennas in order that the router may not emit radiation. The model does not have a way to switch off the antennas.

From what I understand, a router with the antennas removed manually will emit more radiation at close range than a router with antennas on, because it seems that the radiation field will be more focused at close range, although it will be weaker at a longer distance.

If I open the case of the router and cut the wires of the antennas at the places where they are attached to the internal part of the device, will the radiation be totally removed, or will it become stronger (more focused) at close range?

If new firmware is installed in the router, will it have the option to turn off the radio signal from the antennas?
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Alozaros
DD-WRT Guru


Joined: 16 Nov 2015
Posts: 6409
Location: UK, London, just across the river..

PostPosted: Sun May 28, 2017 12:40    Post subject: Reply with quote
yep, if there is a DD-WRT version for your router
be careful what you are uploading....
few links to make it easy
last firmware ftp://ftp.dd-wrt.com/betas/2017/
make sure your unit is supported and find witch version is it first http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Supported_Devices

all you need to know about installation and others
http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Installation

http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

once you are running DD-WRT you can go to:
Wireless>Basic Settings>Wireless Network Mode> select Disabled ....
I do believe you can do it with stock firmware too but i don't know how to..
to find out there is an emulator http://www.tp-link.com/resources/simulator/941_v5/Index.htm

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Atheros
TP-Link WR740Nv1 ---DD-WRT 55179 WAP
TP-Link WR1043NDv2 -DD-WRT 55303 Gateway/DoT,Forced DNS,Ad-Block,Firewall,x4VLAN,VPN
TP-Link WR1043NDv2 -Gargoyle OS 1.15.x AP,DNS,QoS,Quotas
Qualcomm-Atheros
Netgear XR500 --DD-WRT 55460 Gateway/DoH,Forced DNS,AP Isolation,4VLAN,Ad-Block,Firewall,Vanilla
Netgear R7800 --DD-WRT 55460 Gateway/DoT,AD-Block,Forced DNS,AP&Net Isolation,x3VLAN,Firewall,Vanilla
Netgear R9000 --DD-WRT 55363 Gateway/DoT,AD-Block,AP Isolation,Firewall,Forced DNS,x2VLAN,Vanilla
Broadcom
Netgear R7000 --DD-WRT 55460 Gateway/SmartDNS/DoH,AD-Block,Firewall,Forced DNS,x3VLAN,VPN
NOT USING 5Ghz ANYWHERE
------------------------------------------------------
Stubby DNS over TLS I DNSCrypt v2 by mac913
Vlad Kotenko
DD-WRT Novice


Joined: 28 May 2017
Posts: 4

PostPosted: Mon May 29, 2017 16:54    Post subject: Reply with quote
Thank you for the explanations. A person who repairs routers once told me that turning off the WiFi through the web interface prevents any data from being transmitted, whereas the antennas continue emitting radio waves without data.

Do you know whether the DD-WRT firmware can disable the radiation completely, or will it only turn of the transmission of data, whereas the antennas will continue emitting radio waves as usual but without data?
Alozaros
DD-WRT Guru


Joined: 16 Nov 2015
Posts: 6409
Location: UK, London, just across the river..

PostPosted: Mon May 29, 2017 17:01    Post subject: Reply with quote
well, radio is used only when there is a data to be transmitted anyway..
so no data to send radio turns off, and if it is (disabled), radio does not stay active at all and goes off, so no power, no channel use or so....i think your friend didn't really know what was on about....to be honest, there might be an old idiotic router where it does that, but most of the modern routers are energy efficient and radio goes totally off...

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Atheros
TP-Link WR740Nv1 ---DD-WRT 55179 WAP
TP-Link WR1043NDv2 -DD-WRT 55303 Gateway/DoT,Forced DNS,Ad-Block,Firewall,x4VLAN,VPN
TP-Link WR1043NDv2 -Gargoyle OS 1.15.x AP,DNS,QoS,Quotas
Qualcomm-Atheros
Netgear XR500 --DD-WRT 55460 Gateway/DoH,Forced DNS,AP Isolation,4VLAN,Ad-Block,Firewall,Vanilla
Netgear R7800 --DD-WRT 55460 Gateway/DoT,AD-Block,Forced DNS,AP&Net Isolation,x3VLAN,Firewall,Vanilla
Netgear R9000 --DD-WRT 55363 Gateway/DoT,AD-Block,AP Isolation,Firewall,Forced DNS,x2VLAN,Vanilla
Broadcom
Netgear R7000 --DD-WRT 55460 Gateway/SmartDNS/DoH,AD-Block,Firewall,Forced DNS,x3VLAN,VPN
NOT USING 5Ghz ANYWHERE
------------------------------------------------------
Stubby DNS over TLS I DNSCrypt v2 by mac913
Malachi
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Joined: 17 Jul 2012
Posts: 7209
Location: Columbus, Ohio

PostPosted: Mon May 29, 2017 17:07    Post subject: Reply with quote
You could just wear foil on your head.
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Alozaros
DD-WRT Guru


Joined: 16 Nov 2015
Posts: 6409
Location: UK, London, just across the river..

PostPosted: Mon May 29, 2017 19:13    Post subject: Reply with quote
Malachi wrote:
You could just wear foil on your head.


or around your router and ground it with wire outside sticked in to the ground/earth, then for sure there will be no chance to boil an egg around your router Razz

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Atheros
TP-Link WR740Nv1 ---DD-WRT 55179 WAP
TP-Link WR1043NDv2 -DD-WRT 55303 Gateway/DoT,Forced DNS,Ad-Block,Firewall,x4VLAN,VPN
TP-Link WR1043NDv2 -Gargoyle OS 1.15.x AP,DNS,QoS,Quotas
Qualcomm-Atheros
Netgear XR500 --DD-WRT 55460 Gateway/DoH,Forced DNS,AP Isolation,4VLAN,Ad-Block,Firewall,Vanilla
Netgear R7800 --DD-WRT 55460 Gateway/DoT,AD-Block,Forced DNS,AP&Net Isolation,x3VLAN,Firewall,Vanilla
Netgear R9000 --DD-WRT 55363 Gateway/DoT,AD-Block,AP Isolation,Firewall,Forced DNS,x2VLAN,Vanilla
Broadcom
Netgear R7000 --DD-WRT 55460 Gateway/SmartDNS/DoH,AD-Block,Firewall,Forced DNS,x3VLAN,VPN
NOT USING 5Ghz ANYWHERE
------------------------------------------------------
Stubby DNS over TLS I DNSCrypt v2 by mac913
Wildlion
DD-WRT Guru


Joined: 24 May 2016
Posts: 1407

PostPosted: Mon May 29, 2017 21:33    Post subject: Reply with quote
Malachi and Alozaros, now you are just being silly Very Happy...
Everything emits radiation because that is a form of heat transfer and so as long as there is a higher temperature it will emit radiation.

In the world there are so many wi-fi, cell phones, tv/radio stations, electronics all emitting E/M waves, that the only way to truly prevent it is to build a faraday cage (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cage)
Vlad Kotenko
DD-WRT Novice


Joined: 28 May 2017
Posts: 4

PostPosted: Tue May 30, 2017 17:06    Post subject: Reply with quote
Thank you for explaining how the router uses WiFi. I had previously thought that antennas continue emitting signals without data after turning WiFi off in the software.
Vlad Kotenko
DD-WRT Novice


Joined: 28 May 2017
Posts: 4

PostPosted: Sat Jun 03, 2017 11:43    Post subject: Reply with quote
There are, of course, a lot of radio waves in cities. WiFi routers apparently emit a small amount of radiation. If there were serious problems, people would have been made aware of that. But for those who are very close to a router all the time and have some concerns, buying a non-WiFi router is a good option.
pigtail
DD-WRT Novice


Joined: 26 Oct 2015
Posts: 22

PostPosted: Sat Jun 03, 2017 16:47    Post subject: Reply with quote
Wireless -> Basic Settings -> Wireless Network Mode
Select "Disabled" in the drop down menu.

http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=309414
danielwritesback
DD-WRT User


Joined: 29 Aug 2011
Posts: 240

PostPosted: Mon Jun 10, 2019 22:12    Post subject: Reply with quote
It is a switching technology; thus, not doing work = Not switched on.

Except for the beacon! You can slow the beacon rate from 10hz to 3hz or less: https://forum.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=320078

Optic nerve is most sensitive to 2.4ghz microwave radiation, often causing headaches similar to an outdated eyeglasses prescription. SO: Put the router out of sight, away from the bed, and slow down that beacon rate.

Also, you can use Zoltan's wifi phone app to find out what you're actually doing. Making the 2.4ghz wifi much safer to use is easily achieved, mainly because it isn't strong to begin with. Don't guess--Measure for proof.
SurprisedItWorks
DD-WRT Guru


Joined: 04 Aug 2018
Posts: 1444
Location: Appalachian mountains, USA

PostPosted: Wed Jun 12, 2019 15:58    Post subject: Reply with quote
Antenna engineer here.

(1) You can't remove the radiation and have wifi work.

(2) If you remove the antennas, the antenna connector and wire leading to it become the antenna, though a very inefficient one, meaning that less power is radiated and more is reflected back into the transmitter where it ends up as heat. Don't do this. It's not terribly healthy for the transmitter hardware (though they design these things for the clueless, so it shouldn't kill it).


(3) Here I'm using ath0 and ath1 as the names for the wifi interfaces in the router. In many routers they are called something else. Go to GUI>Status>Sys-Info, Wireless block, and check out the menu under "interface" to see what yours are called. Then look a little further down at Tx Power (tx means transmit) to see how much power you are actually radiating (assuming you haven't mangled the antennas, as you described). It's in dBm, decibels above a milliwatt, so changing it by 10 dB changes the power by a factor of 10, meaning 30 dBm is one watt and denotes 10x the physical power as 20 dBm, which is 100 mW or milliwatts. Changing by 3 dB changes power by approximately a factor of two, so 24 dBm is two factors of two below 30 dBm and so about 1/4 W.

The right way to lower the radiated power is NOT to mangle the antenna setup but is (at least in my Linksys router... not sure whether it's available on all dd-wrt routers) is to go to GUI>Wireless>BasicSettings and in the ath0 and ath1 (or whatever) blocks, check Advanced Settings, and a couple of entries down find Tx Power. On my router the default shows as 30 dBm, and it is not possible to set it higher. The power in Status could be lower in some regulatory situations. In the US selecting a channel on the low end of the 5 GHz band will limit (Status) power to no more than 23 dBm, even if you set it to 30 dBm (Wireless).

So... set the power to as little as will give you reliable connections over your usage area. In my travel router I only need 5GHz coverage over a hotel room, so I set power to 10 dBm, which is 1% of the maximum power and certainly not scary. If you are going through walls, you won't be able to do go that extreme, as the wall absorbs a lot of power.

(4) If you use only one of 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz, you can (at least on my router) disable the other interface in GUI>Wireless>BasicSettings under Wireless Network Mode.

(5) Don't sweat this. This is electromagnetic radiation, not radioactivity of the gamma-ray type. The photons have very, very low energy (determined by frequency, not power level) compared to that truly spooky kind of radiation, and they are not capable of knocking molecules apart and damaging cells. All they do is whack them into vibrating very, very slightly, i.e. heat them a teeny tiny bit. Your microwave oven heats foods with 1000 W or more, and your modem is operating at 1 W or less. That power is spread out in lots of directions, so very little ends up in you. If even that scares you, don't go outside into the sunshine, as the sun delivers nearly 1000 W per square meter of direct sunshine, and most of those photons have far higher energy than router output photons. (Seriously, vitamin D deficiency has serious consequences, so don't get zero sunshine. You need the photons.)

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2x Netgear XR500 and 3x Linksys WRT1900ACSv2 on 53544: VLANs, VAPs, NAS, station mode, OpenVPN client (AirVPN), wireguard server (AirVPN port forward) and clients (AzireVPN, AirVPN, private), 3 DNSCrypt providers via VPN.
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