Posted: Sun Apr 10, 2022 19:22 Post subject: [SOLVED] TX Power Setting Not Working?
I have a Linksys WRT1200AC running DD-WRT v3.0-r48607. I use the 5 GHz wireless channel 149 which the European legislation assigns for use by SRDs and limits the EIRP to 25 mW. I have therefore set the TX Power on the Wireless/Basic Settings page to 14 dBm (which roughly equals 25 mW) and left the Antenna Gain field at zero.
Then I experimented a little bit with different settings but I could not see any difference in strength/quality or range of the signal. So, for the hell of it, I tried the TX Power settings of 300 dBm and also of 0 (zero, which defaults to 1 when applied) dBm and still saw no change whatsoever. My signal strength, its quality, range or the speed/bandwidth and S/N ratio achieved on the client devices were practically unchanged.
Am I missing something here? Is there something more I should do in order to modify the TX power?
Joined: 04 Aug 2018 Posts: 1489 Location: Appalachian mountains, USA
Posted: Mon Apr 11, 2022 15:50 Post subject:
It has been awhile, but I have done similar experiments with my WRT1900ACSv2 and have concluded that the transmit power level cannot actually be changed by the user. (For measurement I used the Wi-Fi Scan feature of the AirPort Utility app on an iPhone to get RSSI receive power in dBm at a fixed location near the router.)
And thanks for the chuckle: 300 dBm is 10 to the 18th Gigawatts, which per the numbers floating around the internet (correct?) is a bit more than the power output of the sun. _________________ Dynalink DL-WRX36, Netgear XR500, and 3x Linksys WRT1900ACSv2 on 57200: VLANs, VAPs, NAS, station mode, OpenVPN client (AirVPN), wireguard server (AirVPN port forward) and clients (AzireVPN, AirVPN, private), 3 DNSCrypt providers via VPN.
Indeed. If you look at the Status/Wireless page it will always show TX Power of 13 dBm regardless of your input on the Wireless/Basic Settings page. Even if you aim for the sun
If I'm not mistaken in version 2 of WRT1900ACS and 1900ac the transmit power can not be modified and is build in the firmware to comply with regulatory requirements. I have 1900ACSv1 but I can't test now. I found that EU regulations lower the max transmit power (23 dBm) and resorted to using US region 30 dBm.