Activate wifi only when a device require it

[Maldades]

Hi,

I'm a little bit worry about the electromagnetic pollution and how it's affect to our health.
I know this is a polemic question but I have enough arguments to suspect that it is not good for us at all.
I turn off the radio of the wifi at night, but I was wondering if there are some option for maintain disconnect the radio all time and only activate it automatically when a device ask for it.

My router is the AC68U, but I'm ready to buy another if this feature is not include on it and the new one can provide me that.

Thanks a lot in advance

 

[L&LD]

If I were to live for forever, I might be concerned about such things too. As it stands, my expiry date will be long before WiFi affects my health.

That would be quite some trick to achieve if the radios could be off and could still be able to sense when a device asks for it's services.

A time based schedule is the only automatic action I can see that would work. But of course, the radios are still on even if the internet is not available for some or all available clients.

 

[RMerlin]

If the radio are off, how can they detect that there's a wireless device trying to connect to them?

It's just not possible.

 

[ChikkSpot]

how sure are you not experiencing all kinds of wifi EM from your neighbors? how about cellphones? you're sure no one else is doing all kinds of wireless communications around you?

it's not possible to get away from EM these days, unless you leave the planet.

 

[Maldades]

Hi,

Thanks a lot for your replies.

Best,

 

[tijaune]

If the radio are off, how can they detect that there's a wireless device trying to connect to them?

It's just not possible.

just wait till they invent WOW, equivalent of WOL. Just kidding

 

[TonyH]

Hi,

Thanks a lot for your replies.

Best,

Hi,
I am 75 now, worked all my life on RF telecomm or large scale mainframes, radar,etc. dealing with TX power of more than 100KW or peak power of 50K KW. From boyhood I dabbled with radios becoming a HAM. I am retired now but
still active on the air. My health is above average compared to peers, I don't wear glasses. I just spent whole day doing
spring chores on our yard. No problem. You shouldn't worry too much. It's bad for your health.

 

[lancer73]

To answer the question of the topicstarter;

If anything affects your health, it is probably the transmission of radiation. When an access point has no clients, it only emits a beacon signal. This beacon packet is only transmitted every 100ms. On the professional page from the WiFi settings, you can increase this timeframe, though your devices will be slower to connect to the Wifi.

Fully turning off any radiation is not possible due to the Wifi standard. Clients expect a beacon before they connect. So a non radiating AP is not something I'd expect to find in the consumer market. Alternatively, you could configure the WPS button to turn Wifi on and off. Turning one band off (either 2.4GHz or 5GHz) also halves the number of beacon frames.

To put things in perspective; the radiation from your cell-phone is much worse than your WiFi.

 

[ryzhov_al]

If the radio are off, how can they detect that there's a wireless device trying to connect to them?

It's just not possible.

I was wondering about this long time ago. You may read about one of approach from this presentation, showed on BlackHat 05. OpenWrt even made a package ten years ago to do that, BTW, those package was written to work with old Broadcom wl driver

The idea is to put WiFi AP to monitoring mode with no any electromagnetic emission. When some client sends probe requests with appropriate SSID, AP is switching to normal mode and client will connect to AP as usual. After last client disconnected, AP is falling to monitoring mode again.

Pro: as side effect, nobody can scan and crack AP as long as it stays in monitoring mode.
Cons: not all clients are sending probe requests, they are passively scanning air for AP beacon before connect.

My router is the AC68U, but I'm ready to buy another if this feature is not include on it and the new one can provide me that.

Not sure any other router can provide this feature. AFAIK, it's out of Wi-Fi standards.

 

[Maldades]

Hi,
I am 75 now, worked all my life on RF telecomm or large scale mainframes, radar,etc. dealing with TX power of more than 100KW or peak power of 50K KW. From boyhood I dabbled with radios becoming a HAM. I am retired now but
still active on the air. My health is above average compared to peers, I don't wear glasses. I just spent whole day doing
spring chores on our yard. No problem. You shouldn't worry too much. It's bad for your health.

Hi Tony,

Thanks for that.
I'm so glad to ear that.
Anyway, my grandfather died at 93 years old. He smoked all his life and his deceased was not related with his habit at all.
So he could said "if still alive" that tobacco doesn't produce cancer...

Not all things affect on the same way to everybody, even food, sun,...
There are "factors of risks" as the World Health Organization say:
"In 2001, an expert scientific working group of WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) reviewed studies related to the carcinogenicity of static and extemely low frequency (ELF) electric and magnetic fields. Using the standard IARC classification that weighs human, animal and laboratory evidence, ELF magnetic fields were classified as possibly carcinogenic to humans based on epidemiological studies of childhood leukaemia.

FYI: http://www.who.int/peh-emf/publications/risk_hand/en/

But, believe me, I don't want to create polemic, neither convinced anybody.
I just wanted for information about a feature that under my point of view will be in the router in the future ;-)

 

[Maldades]

To answer the question of the topicstarter;

If anything affects your health, it is probably the transmission of radiation. When an access point has no clients, it only emits a beacon signal. This beacon packet is only transmitted every 100ms. On the professional page from the WiFi settings, you can increase this timeframe, though your devices will be slower to connect to the Wifi.

Fully turning off any radiation is not possible due to the Wifi standard. Clients expect a beacon before they connect. So a non radiating AP is not something I'd expect to find in the consumer market. Alternatively, you could configure the WPS button to turn Wifi on and off. Turning one band off (either 2.4GHz or 5GHz) also halves the number of beacon frames.

To put things in perspective; the radiation from your cell-phone is much worse than your WiFi.

Very interesting.
Thanks!!

 

[Maldades]

I was wondering about this long time ago. You may read about one of approach from this presentation, showed on BlackHat 05. OpenWrt even made a package ten years ago to do that, BTW, those package was written to work with old Broadcom wl driver

The idea is to put WiFi AP to monitoring mode with no any electromagnetic emission. When some client sends probe requests with appropriate SSID, AP is switching to normal mode and client will connect to AP as usual. After last client disconnected, AP is falling to monitoring mode again.

Pro: as side effect, nobody can scan and crack AP as long as it stays in monitoring mode.
Cons: not all clients are sending probe requests, they are passively scanning air for AP beacon before connect.

Not sure any other router can provide this feature. AFAIK, it's out of Wi-Fi standards.

Wow!! Thanks.
I'm sure this is something that will happen in the sort time: http://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-fr...-wifi-desormais-interdit-dans-les-creches.php