Do you reduce your WiFi Router's Transmit Power
To WiFi users.
Do you reduce your router's WiFi Transmit Power to the bare minimum as required by you?
I'm an electrical engineer and into ham radio. WiFi is the last of my concerns, health-wise.
To even begin to worry about that I should first start eating healthier, work out more than once a week, and so something about all the microplastic in my brain, I guess. I'm not a medical processional, but it's pretty far down the list. And regarding power consumption.. This thing uses like 10 W, of which probably <1 is influenced by the radio power.
I just like keeping it at a minimum, thinking that maybe it would reduce noise for others. Not that it really matters to anyone. Just a "feel good" thing.
Your neighbors probably appreciate it
I just looked at my router, it supports max transmit power settings somewhere deep in the menu, I just leave it at maximum/automatic.
I know from debugging my wifi drivers on my laptop that at least that one does adjust its power, I am guessing it works with most other modern devices as well.
I live in a 10-ish story apartment building and according to my router, channel utilisation is <20% for both 2.4 and 5 GHz. So, I guess it just works.
Do you downvote all of your comments yourself, or do you just leave them at zero and some other guy is downvoting them?
Fair point
is there any device that can be used to check the router actual transmit power. It feels like changing that setting doesn't do anything.
Relative power? A phone and an app that shows you the received signal strength. Wifianalyzer on F-droid for example.
For me, setting it from max power to 6% (lowest value) took it from -30dBm on my couch to -50 dBm, so 20 dB difference, which is ca. 1/100. So it roughly checks out.
Keep in mind that radio waves are magic, and the higher in frequency you go, the darker the magic gets.
Absolute power is hard, especially if you are interested in average power for, like, health concerns. WiFi works in short bursts over a pretty large part of the spectrum, and you'd need calibrated equipment as well. I knew a guy who did radio wave strength mapping for like government, telcos and concerned residents, and he had a car full of tech. Simple field probes can be reasonably priced, but you need to know how to operate and interpret them.
The only devices I've ever used that allow that were super high powered Ubiquity devices that could shoot signal several miles away in a straight line that I installed for a WISP. Even my fancy ASUS router doesn't have any way of lowering the power. 🤨
And the answer is no. Especially when I setup a few Ubiquity Nanos on my own network to shoot my home wifi all across town. I could go down to the city park and still be on wifi. Shit was dope.
You just went over 9000% instead!
fancy ASUS router doesn’t have any way
Maybe it's just the ATPC, that's why they thought they didn't need to add the setting.
Mine is a pretty old, cheap 2.4GHz only model from the days when 5GHz had just entered the market.
Mine does, you can change it per band too:
The bare minimum required by me is past the default my ISP-provided router allowed and I ened up having to do a bunch of extra stuff to get full coverage.
So no.
No but I live in the middle of nowhere.
I lived in an apt building that the only service provider was att, with a required, unique router. Ever person had the same router, and the routers default settings was to blast at full over 2.4ghz with a 40hz spread.
It was completely unusable. Everyone was jamming everyone else.
I bought a router solely so I could turn off 2.4ghz and use only 5ghz.
It was completely unusable. Everyone was jamming everyone else.
The companies deserve all the flak they get in this case. They know it is congested because they are the ones who did it, but don't care to think about it.
The least they could do is to let the user change the settings, but "oooh nooo PICNIC!"
Ideally they should use a WiFi analyser while setting up the device and if there are too many APs of their own company, send a report to their nearby office so that it can be rectified.
Never thought about it. If we did that, we'd probably lose connectivity since we have massive concrete walls.
The house I live in is all brick walls and my 12-year-old phone (Sony Xperia Z) has connectivity issues just 5 m and one wall away, RSSI of -70 dBm and below unless in specific places and orientations. Radios have improved quite a bit since.
I'm in bed on the outer edge of our flat right now, meaning there are two walls and maybe 4-5 m between my phone and the router. If I turn the wrong way I lose signal on my 4 year old phone. 🤷
(Which reminds me to get up)
No.
The router doesn't reach everywhere on the default setting.
While you may be able to turn up the transmit power on the router, remember that devices have to be able to transmit back that same distance so you may have mixed results.
You only need to reduce it if it will interfere with another one of your WAPs. In most cases, auto power settings are fine.
Typically you'd reduce it if you had a high density environment with lots of devices (IE office building) because one WAP and network cable can only handle so much traffic, so the WAPs can load balance or have reduced coverage to split the load.
When I lived in and apartment, I used a WRT wifi router as my bridge, for the sole purpose to boost the signal strength to the maximum, just to power through the interference from other apartments. My house came prewired with Cat-6 cables, so now I have small wifi hubs at minimum strength on each floor for my phone and home automation.
just to power through the interference from other apartments
Yeah, it would have helped for your neighbours to have reduced their power a bit.
I let the APs auto manage their tx power. Aerohive firmware does a decent job of not running wide open when it doesn't need to. I also have 1 AP per floor to get adequate coverage.
My cable modem doesn't have Wi-Fi. I turned it off on my router since it's in the basement and there's a dedicated AP down there.
Always love to see others making nice house-wide setups.
I mounted mine to the outdoor TV antenna mast, added an open SSID and set it to 100%. If I'm covering the entire sports oval next to me I might as well share it.
(And yes, I know how to isolate the subnet)
Sha-ring is Ca-ring
I reduced max power, but keep my AP’s set to auto manage up to that max level.
There’s basically a plane of signal that bisects the house where the RSSI of each AP is the same. It intersects with areas where people commonly are on their phones. Depending on humidity, location of people and pets, or even just dumb luck, devices were just bouncing between the AP’s, fishing for whichever had the stronger signal. Dropping the power levels made it so the overlap between the AP’s was less, and adjusting the RSSI at which the AP would hand off clients upward made it so handoffs were less frequent. Small throughput sacrifice in the transition zone, but without the constant bouncing between AP’s (which has no throughput).
I remember someone in the Uni hostel having a similar problem.
All they could do was change the jumpiness in their device. It worked though.
Do you actually require the 100% !?
I don't know and I don't care enough to test.
I just keep it at the lowest power (20%) and am right now getting > -50dB (5 bars).
Of course, if you are doing it for the efficiency, you will also need to make sure that your receiver is not having a hard time with the low transmit power.
So, not caring, definitely works.
I did not know I could reduce it lol
Well, now you do!
I'll consider myself having done a good deed today :P
Back before Mesh and Roaming between APs was a thing I used to adjust the transmit power on my three DDWRT APs so that they didnt overlap fully to force roaming between them. I did this mostly because I didnt want too many devices on the same AP as a lot of devices back then would be stubbonly sticky to the first AP they found and APs could handle a lot less loading that they do now so it was far more important to spread devices out across the APs.
Now I still have three APs but they all WiFi 6 as are the main devices that use it so I do not bother micro managing it as WiFi 6 is much better at congestion and Roaming. I would rather have more range than worry about it, I have good coverage from the back of my garden to the front of my drive, its not essential that I have that but it is very very useful at times.
5Ghz penetrates a lot less than 2.4Ghz so that does not cause as much problems if left at 100%. 2.4Ghz can be a pain for others but I cannot wait to turn that off at some point in the future anyway.
I did reduce the WiFi transmit power of my AP because it used to overheat with 100%
Yes!
The one I bought, doesn't overheat even at 100%, but the ISP one used to overheat even with the WiFi off.
On the other hand, I recently tried connecting my router directly to the ISPs network (trying to lose the NAT) and it was hanging every few minutes. I was running Wireshark and unable to configure it to get internet access.
I would consider the main reason for overheating to be internet traffic, but in some models, the WiFi makes the difference to.
Yes, but only for 2.4 ghz since I live in a small apartment and there's no benefit to high transmit power in those cases. 5 ghz is another story since it doesn't penetrate walls easily anyway, so no harm to others.
Hehe, I am still using my old router with only the 2.4GHz band. Mostly just as a switch, but the WiFi is useful sometimes.
I know that i can reduce the upper limit, but then I would need more access points to cover everything.
Naw. I'm in the burbs, in a big house. The 5G signal doesn't reach everywhere, and the 3G isn't too strong in the far corners.
I can see three of my neighbor's networks. Most of the channels are open and clear, so plenty for everyone and no congestion.
Mine are on different, non-overlapping channels, so there's no need to reduce it.
I have two Wireless Access Points (WAP) and a separate router/ firewall. The WAPs are meshed, meaning as a WiFi connected device moves through my house, it will be automatically handed off to the WAP with the best quality.
Power and channel of the two WAPs use are automatic. I live in a fairly dense neighborhood. Meaning my neighbors are so dense they barely have done any configuration of their WiFi. There are also a lot of them. The main thing I worry about is having just enough transmit power to give a good quality connection within the house, without being so strong it interferes with my neighbors' networks.
I would never leave the management of my home network to an ISP. With that said, I've been an IT professional for 30 years and got my start in networking.
My upstairs WAP often works at higher power, but I don't remember seeing it at 100%. It is fighting all the other WiFi routers that are nearby. There are so many that there are no clear channels on 2.4GHz and very few at 5GHz. The WAP in the basement is better shielded, so I almost never see it at high transmit powers.
My router is a separate unit that provides routing, firewall, IPS/IDS, DNS, and management for itself and the WAPs.
No, you almost never require 100% transmit power out of a WAP. The best thing is to have a good quality WiFi router or WAP and set it to "automatic" for channel and power settings. That way the unit can determine what is best for network quality on the fly. It will be better at it than you logging in multiple times a day doing the same thing manually.
i don't change the power levels, but i have a couple routers (one at home, one at the office) that i've disconnected the (external) antennas to reduce their reach. they're only needed occasionally, and only in the rooms they're located in. the signal that's left is enough.
i think on mine it is labeled as 'max transmit power'. i dunno how often it will try to max transmit, but I set it enough to cover the usual places i chill around.
sometimes i do require 100%, for science. but on day-to-day, nah.
I would assume yours does have ATPC, specially if it is an 802.11ac or later standards compliant.
I don't have much space I roam around in and there's mobile internet for the mobile anyway.
I use my cell data in my bedroom because it's more stable than my router connection. I wish I had control of the router, but it's not my house. I'd just move the router to a more centralized location instead of the farthest corner.
Back before I moved, I kept the router at one of the reduced power modes it had built in(can't remember the exact settings) since the room it sat in was the best room for signal distribution, you still got full signal anywhere you went.
I go balls out on all my APs
Hopefully they're far enough apart then, otherwise you can actually reduce performance.
Different channels, distant enough from each other.
No. the AP will use ATPC to limit itself so why do something manually when it does it automagically.
Ahh. Turns out I asked the question 10 years too late.
It's not like its a well known feature. The only reason I know about it is because I use to be an RF tech.