68U and TX Power Doubt

[wsarahan]

Hi guys how are you?

Let me ask you something:

I see images here at the forum from diferent people with diferent tx power values at the router.

The factory value at my 68U is 80, but i already saw people with 100, 110....

So, what value do you recommend to use?

Sorry if it`s a simple question but i do not know much about it

Thanks

 

[TonyH]

Hi,
Is your router working well for you? Then just let it be. Raising power like from stock 80mW to 110mW is just number game, won't make a whole lot of difference in most cases. But if you are curious and want to experiment, why not? When you do something
make sure you can get it back to where it was. Raising power can cause heat problem, noisy signal problem,etc. when gone over board....I played with RF signals in my working days, as low as <1mW, as high as 500KW. Or in the case of radar peak power is let's say some thing like thousands of KW.

 

[RMerlin]

Personally, I'd say leave it to the default value. It was probably chosen as the default value because it was optimum. And if you are in a situation where you need a higher power output, that won't help you unless you are also able to increase the power output of the devices which are having difficulties reaching the router, or get higher gain antennas on these.

 

[wsarahan]

Hi,
Is your router working well for you? Then just let it be. Raising power like from stock 80mW to 110mW is just number game, won't make a whole lot of difference in most cases. But if you are curious and want to experiment, why not? When you do something
make sure you can get it back to where it was. Raising power can cause heat problem, noisy signal problem,etc. when gone over board....I played with RF signals in my working days, as low as <1mW, as high as 500KW. Or in the case of radar peak power is let's say some thing like thousands of KW.

Personally, I'd say leave it to the default value. It was probably chosen as the default value because it was optimum. And if you are in a situation where you need a higher power output, that won't help you unless you are also able to increase the power output of the devices which are having difficulties reaching the router, or get higher gain antennas on these.

Thanks guys, but in the real world , will be diference? I mean, in a home with a router like this.... we can really fell and see the improvments?

And if yes wich value is the most commom to start playing with?

Thanks

 

[jim769]

Thanks guys, but in the real world , will be diference? I mean, in a home with a router like this.... we can really fell and see the improvments?

And if yes wich value is the most commom to start playing with?

Thanks

If your dead set on playing with it then go for it,do some testing and see if it makes a difference for you. Myself i have changed the values many times and dont really see much difference what so ever. I am not convinced it even really works.

 

[sfx2000]

Personally, I'd say leave it to the default value. It was probably chosen as the default value because it was optimum. And if you are in a situation where you need a higher power output, that won't help you unless you are also able to increase the power output of the devices which are having difficulties reaching the router, or get higher gain antennas on these.

I agree - and putting higher gain antennae on the STA's might make the situation worse - more gain, more noise from the neighboring AP's...

in many cases, it's a net-zero gain...

sfx

 

[drabisan]

Increasing the power may help, especially for "helping" the clients choose 5G instead of 2.4.
Increasing the power on 2.4 most of the time make things worst due to interference with other APs of your neighbors.

In 5G it may make things better by marginally increasing range, but there are 2 big BUTs!
1. You should have no other AP on the same 5G channel.
2. You should not use a channel with power restriction or DFS. And those are by standard and you cannot overwrite it! You may choose a channel and increase the power on it and you won't get any improvement due to power restriction on that channel or you may loose the connection from time to time due to DFS.

It's a complicated try&fail game...

 

[L&LD]

I just played with my settings again for my RT-N66U and decided to revisit the power settings.

I was standardized at 100mW before for both bands and while the tests I had done at that time indicated they were the best settings for my environment/devices, I still found the network slowing down at different times of the day.

Today, I have set my power settings to 200mW and this is what I have found testing with the Ookla speedtest site.

Maximum speeds do not increase significantly if at all.

Consistency when moving around to different spots on the property is much better - like I've knocked down a few walls or so.


Consistency of the Ookla results is obviously much better too vs. the old power settings.

Temperature of both bands has not been affected significantly (55/56 celcius).

For those looking for inssider or similar reports: I have none. I don't need them to see the difference in how the network responds to me now.

While measurements and theoretical musings may indicate that increasing the Tx power will be a net zero gain - I have found otherwise in my own environment (and I was very happy with where the performance was before).

The only additional tests I will make in the next couple of days is actual wireless LAN throughput - if that hasn't changed or better yet; if it has improved, indicating to the router that you want the maximum signal it is capable of will be my recommendation going forward.


Note: I was able to read about 40 webpages with my old settings in less than 20 minutes. The internet was fast and responsive and I did not seem to be missing anything.

With the Tx power at 200mW, I read 5 more web pages (different pages, same site) in less than 14 minutes. The difference in how much faster the pages were loading was easily noticeable to me.

Setting the power back to 100mW confirmed the lag I didn't know was there before.


If the wireless LAN throughput tests prove positive, I will be switching all the routers I control to their max Tx values.

This was a good try&win game.


Btw; I deleted the profile each time and re-associated the client to the router after each change I made.

 

[Paralel]

I upped my transmit power, along with equipping my 68U with 12 dBi antennas and I can practically see the 2.4 Ghz band from the moon.

 

[TonyH]

Hi,
When higher gain antenna is mentioned it means the antenna is no longer omni directional. It may improve coverage to certain direction where main lobe of radiation
is pointing but other direction's coverage may suffer. At the same time vertical radiation angle of lobes will change. It is all "case by case". Once I had a home brew
indoor antenna I was using on my HAM radio. It's performance was outstanding. Friend
took it to his place, set it up on his radio and he was very disappointed.

 

[wsarahan]

I just played with my settings again for my RT-N66U and decided to revisit the power settings.

I was standardized at 100mW before for both bands and while the tests I had done at that time indicated they were the best settings for my environment/devices, I still found the network slowing down at different times of the day.

Today, I have set my power settings to 200mW and this is what I have found testing with the Ookla speedtest site.

Maximum speeds do not increase significantly if at all.

Consistency when moving around to different spots on the property is much better - like I've knocked down a few walls or so.


Consistency of the Ookla results is obviously much better too vs. the old power settings.

Temperature of both bands has not been affected significantly (55/56 celcius).

For those looking for inssider or similar reports: I have none. I don't need them to see the difference in how the network responds to me now.

While measurements and theoretical musings may indicate that increasing the Tx power will be a net zero gain - I have found otherwise in my own environment (and I was very happy with where the performance was before).

The only additional tests I will make in the next couple of days is actual wireless LAN throughput - if that hasn't changed or better yet; if it has improved, indicating to the router that you want the maximum signal it is capable of will be my recommendation going forward.


Note: I was able to read about 40 webpages with my old settings in less than 20 minutes. The internet was fast and responsive and I did not seem to be missing anything.

With the Tx power at 200mW, I read 5 more web pages (different pages, same site) in less than 14 minutes. The difference in how much faster the pages were loading was easily noticeable to me.

Setting the power back to 100mW confirmed the lag I didn't know was there before.


If the wireless LAN throughput tests prove positive, I will be switching all the routers I control to their max Tx values.

This was a good try&win game.


Btw; I deleted the profile each time and re-associated the client to the router after each change I made.

So i think i`ll try 200 and see what happens, if i see some problem or nothing improved i come back to 100 or 80

But did you change at both radios or just 5Ghz?

Thanks

 

[L&LD]

I change both bands when I do my tests.

 

[boxst]

I added a high gain antenna (the middle antenna) and upped to power to 200 and can now get a signal all over the house. Even with the antenna, leaving it at 100 would give dead spots.

 

[Paralel]

Hi,
When higher gain antenna is mentioned it means the antenna is no longer omni directional. It may improve coverage to certain direction where main lobe of radiation
is pointing but other direction's coverage may suffer. At the same time vertical radiation angle of lobes will change. It is all "case by case". Once I had a home brew
indoor antenna I was using on my HAM radio. It's performance was outstanding. Friend
took it to his place, set it up on his radio and he was very disappointed.

The ones I used are omnidirectional, although, of course, the vertical radiation angle is smaller.

 

[whsbuss]

I have my RT-AC68U set at 100mw (both bands) and 5G gives me a nominal -72 RSSI on my macbook pro and emit rate of 162. I'm only sitting downstairs from the router about 45 ft away. Using the wireless diag I see noise at -92

I don't think transmit power does anything to improve throughput.