To use the volume example again, let's say you wanted to pipe music throughout your entire home. Raising Transmit Power Can Decrease PerformanceĬounter-intuitively, cranking up the power can actually lead to decreased performance. There are much better ways to address your Wi-Fi problems, which we'll discuss in the next section. Given that increasing the transmit power doesn't automatically equal a better experience, it's not really worth decreasing the Wi-Fi quality for all your neighbors just to, theoretically, get a marginal performance increase in your home. If your home is close to other homes also using Wi-Fi, be it tightly packed apartments or just a neighborhood with small lots, cranking up the power may offer a small boost for you but at the expense of polluting the airspace all around your home. Raising Transmit Power Increases Interference Your phone can "hear" the tower, but it struggles to talk back. This is not unlike when you're using your cellphone in an area with poor coverage, and while your phone says you have at least a bar of signal strength, you're unable to make a phone call or use the internet. This means there will come a point where the client is close enough to the Wi-Fi router to detect the signal but not strong enough to talk back effectively. The router is much more powerful than the device it is paired with unless the other device happens to be another access point with equal power. Generally speaking, the power level between the Wi-Fi router and the clients the router is communicating with, however, is asymmetric. More power doesn't automatically mean you get better coverage or speed. Turning up the transmit power on your router would seem to be a pretty handy trick, no? However, the relationship between the transmit power of a given Wi-Fi access point and the corresponding user experience isn't a 1:1 relationship. And others offer an absolute setting corresponding to the milliwatt output of the radio, usually labeled just mW (not dBm,) with whatever range is available for the hardware, such as 0-200 mW. Others offer a menu with relative power, allowing you to adjust transmit power anywhere from 0% to 100% power. Some have a simple low, medium, and high option. Depending on the manufacturer and model in question, it might be labeled Transmit Power, Transmit Power Control, Tx Power, or some variation thereof. How the transmit power is displayed and adjusted varies between manufacturers. If your router allows for transmit power adjustments, you can turn the volume up or down, so to speak, in the configuration panel to increase the power output. Much like sound energy is measured in decibels (dB), Wi-Fi radio energy is measured similarly with decibel milliwatts (dBm). The transmit power of your Wi-Fi router is like a volume knob on a stereo.
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