We just purchased two RouterBoard 532s and two ubiquity SR-5s, as well having a test RouterOS/WRAP board AP up and running with a few customers on it (which works great, by the way).
Anyway, we have a Berkeley Varitronics System’s Wi-Fi Power Analyzer that does 2.4 - 2.5 & 5.1 - 5.9. When we use a RouterBoard 532 with the SR-5 on 5.x, we get around 23 dBm on the default power settings. We can manually raise the power, since it is a 400 mW card. The power reading on the analyzer goes up accordingly when we manually raise the Tx power settings.
However, we also have a Ubiquity SR-2 400 mW card (SWX-SR2 ). We can swap out the SR-5 with the SR-2 and on default Tx settings, we get around 15 - 17 dBm (keep in mind this is a 400 mW card). We can manually increase or decrease the Tx power, and the power stays the same as if we never changed anything.
We also have two Senao NL-2511MP Plus 200 mW cards we are running on WRAP boards. The cards also put out exactly 15 - 17 dBM, even though they should also be getting around 23 dBm. Thinking the WRAP boards were an issue, we placed them in the RouterBoard 532s we just got. They get the exact same power readings, and manually adjusting the Tx levels also fails to make any difference. In fact, when we set them on anything but default, the power levels actually dropped.
Why would a 400 mW SR-2 only put out 15 dBm and why doesn’t manually changing the rates affect the card’s power output.
We very much want to use RouterOS, but we are spending all this money for high-powered cards, and getting the performance of a 100 mW card out of it regardless of our power settings.
frequency-mode (regulatory-domain | manual-tx-power | superchannel; default: superchannel) - defines which frequency channels to allow
regulatory-domain - channels in configured country only are allowed, and transmit power is limited to what is allowed in that channel in configured country minus configured antenna-gain. Also note that in this mode card will never be configured to higher power than allowed by the respective regulatory domain
manual-tx-power - channels in configured country only are allowed, but transmit power is taken from tx-power setting
superchannel - only possible with superchannel license. In this mode all hardware supported channels are allowed
country (no_country_set) - limits wireless settings (frequency and transmit power) to those which are allowed in the respective country
no_country_set - no regulatory domain limitations
antenna-gain (integer; default: 0) - antenna gain in dBi. This parameter will be used to calculate whether your system meets regulatory domain’s requirements in your country
No I haven’t. When we got our first RotuerOS license, I e-mailed support about this same issue. The general reply was to leave the settings on default and the cards would put out the maximum power possible. Obviously, this isn’t always the case.
Right now the setting is: manual-tx-power
I almost wouldn’t mind just saying we have a bad card, but we have had so many cards putting out 14 - 15 dBM, that I’m not sure I can buy that.
The one RouterOS AP we have up and running has a 200 mW card putting out 23 dBm and it is doing the best we have ever experienced in the field. It did that with all RouterOS settings on default, too. I just want to get the process down to something scientific instead of just trial and error…and luck.
For those following this, here is the reply from support:
-=-=-=-=-=-
Hello Jay,
You have to use ‘rate-set=configured’ for the wireless interface and the
lowest rate available for the interface, that will make to use maximum
tx-power, run bandwidth test ‘direction=transmit’ for the wireless interface
to measure tx-power.
As well we recommend to use 3.0beta7 for these tests.
obviously, this is always the case. by using manual power,
you can damage the card and make the output power low.
Well, I messed around with this for a couple of hours yesterday with no luck whatsoever. We have three different 200 mW cards, getting exactly 15 - 17 dBm, when they should be getting in the 20 to 23 dBm range.
Since I always ran them on default, I’m going to have to rule out damage to the cards. But I will say all of the cards are a little older, and I can’t rule out that one may have accidentally been powered up without an antenna (but I doubt that it happened to every card we have).
Because the cards are older, though, I’m going to recommend we order a brand new card and see what it does right out of the box.
Note this, however: the 5.x card we have is a 400 mW card and running on default, it is putting out around 23 dBm. We can manually set the power higher and get it put out what the card is rated for (or actually, our power measurement device stops at 30 dBm, so we cut it off at around 30 dBm).
Someone please explain to me how manually raising the power level on a 400 mW card that is actually putting out the power of a 200 mW card (running on default power settings) can damage the card?
Is everyone wasting their money buying higher power cards, are am I just really, really misunderstanding how this is supposed to work?