how do I lower the power of 2.4GHz ?
I could see that most of the clients refers to 2.4Ghz and connects there by default instead of 5GHz
CLI interface and set antenna gain higher → make real 2.4 radio power lower…
But better is create access list for 2.4G and 5Ghz, and allow 2.4G connection only for bad RSSI (like < -70) , while allowing
5Ghz connection for good RSSI >-70).
You will need to play around which values you can use for this.
What are the cli commands?
Sent from my SM-A705FN using Tapatalk
Go to wireless, switch to advanced mode, set regulatory domain, your county and then try to set antenna gain from 3 dB higher.
/interface wireless
set [ find default-name=wlan1 ] antennagain=0
Put it to 10dBm and play a bit around with it. But your total range (distance to connect to hapac2 in 2.4G) will decrease.
There is no more antenna-gain in Winbox since recent FW updates. You must use CLI…
Definitely not true. I use that in 6.45.9 with winbox.
Jarda, ok in the “long term” release this is still there, but in 6.47+ and V7 its no more in the GUI only CLI.
None should use any other than long term version unless he knows what he does.
jarda correct and GURU
Final notes 6.47.1 isnt good ?
Whats the difference between long term to stable release?
Long term they don’t add any new features that might break things
Stable has new things but probably no problems
Beta everything but probably broken
Stable best for everything unless you’re doing crazy stuff or have 10000000000000000000000000000000000000 customers and don’t want to break things.
How do you do this exactly and is it effective?
How do you do this exactly and is it effective?
Example:
/interface wireless access-list
add allow-signal-out-of-range=30s comment="laptop on 5G Wifi" interface=Wifi_if_5G mac-address=XXX signal-range=-80..120 vlan-mode=no-tag
add allow-signal-out-of-range=30s comment="laptop on 2G4 Wifi" interface=Wifi_if_2G4 mac-address=XXX signal-range=-120..-70 vlan-mode=no-tag
It works very well.
Keep the “out of range” time at 30seconds (10s is the default).
You ideally need to measure the RSSI values.
In above case 5G connection is only done when “good signal”. Good is defined by the lowest number, here -80. This is still fairly good in 5G.
But if you prefer you could put this at -70. this would then only use 5G when its pretty good connection.
2G4 is only allowed when the device is far aways (from -120 to -70). This makes sure you normally should have then always some connection.
The values and then resulting “band steering aggressiveness” depends on those values and:
Do you have crowded / many 2G4 clients (I do), do you want as much clients on 5G as possible (I do).
If you have only few you can be less stringent.
You will need to do a couple of measurements of various clients and locations to see if you get good connection and what the RSSI values are for that.
And YES, this is NOT real band steering!!! But it is the best you can do with ROS today, and yes we all wait for ROS to offer embedded native band steering… !!!
Till then this is the best you can do…
Antenna gain should only be used for setting…antenna gain. Hence why it can’t be set for most devices anymore.
Use the transmission power to set transmission power (and make sure it is set 7dBi lower than 5GHZ radio).
You should really change output power only in three cases:
- Your coverage goes way outside your home and you want to avoid people seeing your network
- You have many AP or cap in a place (Hotel, conf center) and you want to avoid interference
- You sit close to the AP and you don;t want to get all that RF power in your face 24/7 (like when you do lab testing the whole day)
In above cases you can use as a normal user antenna-gain via CLI.
- Increasing antenna-gain up, means you scale the power down across all data rates/modulations correctly and equally.
- This is way simpler than fiddling around with data rate power per modulation etc.
- And in my experience in 11ac devices (hap ac2, cap ac) it's not possible to simply reduce the output power.
Tx power does not even show up correctly in the TX power tab.
- Changing individual data rates power is for super expert who tunes P to P links etc. But not for the
typical access point user.
But for the OP question you should NOT change antenna-gain or power, just use access-list
I forgot to mention in the Access-list example two required assumptions. (I think this is anyhow clear from the beginning):
- Use same SSID on 2G4 and 5G to make handover faster/seamless and both interfaces being in the same bridge
- Your client device must use always same MAC address when connecting to Wifi
New Android and Windows10 use by default now the option to “randomize” the MAC address for each Wifi connection.
You can switch this off in the settings on client side, so that you will always use same MAC address.
This should anyhow be used for security reasons (you will know which device connects to the network).
Did anybody bother to check the following: leave MAC address setting to dynamic (or random or whatever it’s called), connect to wireless network and then roam from one AP to another AP within same ESSID. Do devices keep MAC address when they switch to another AP?
I’d say they actually change MAC address when making “initial” connection to ESSID, but keep it when roaming to another BSSID within same ESSID. Surely they are free to select different MAC when they connect to (previously visited) ESSID after previous connection broke (for any reason).