That's what iwconfig shows!
Does anyone else have one of these netbooks with the new native 2.6.27 ath5k wireless drivers installed? iwconfig is showing 27dbm transmit power. That can't be right, but my wireless router is showing a 13db stronger signal compared to my other laptops. That would put it around 500mW.
Unfortunately, the iwconfig txpower setting doesn't seem to lower the power. I don't need to transmit to the entire neighborhood. And when I send large files for half an hour or more, I need to reboot by taking out the battery to reset the wireless module. It gets that hot.
The reception on the card is quite good too. Very good signal to noise ratio.
localhost dattaway # iwconfig wlan0 wlan0 IEEE 802.11bg ESSID:"ilikecheesereallyido" Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412 GHz Access Point: 00:14:BF:04:F6:2F Bit Rate=12 Mb/s Tx-Power=27 dBm Retry min limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr=2352 B Encryption key:off Power Management:off Link Quality=40/100 Signal level:-76 dBm Noise level=-102 dBm Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0 Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0
Did you try *iwconfig wlan0 txpower auto *or *iwconfig wlan0 txpower fixed* the man page indicates that one of those would enable power control, but it's not 100% clear which.
On Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 11:50 AM, Duane Attaway dattaway@dattaway.netwrote:
Unfortunately, the iwconfig txpower setting doesn't seem to lower the power. I don't need to transmit to the entire neighborhood. And when I send large files for half an hour or more, I need to reboot by taking out the battery to reset the wireless module. It gets that hot.
The reception on the card is quite good too. Very good signal to noise ratio.
localhost dattaway # iwconfig wlan0 wlan0 IEEE 802.11bg ESSID:"ilikecheesereallyido" Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412 GHz Access Point: 00:14:BF:04:F6:2F Bit Rate=12 Mb/s Tx-Power=27 dBm Retry min limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr=2352 B Encryption key:off Power Management:off Link Quality=40/100 Signal level:-76 dBm Noise level=-102 dBm Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0 Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0
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On Mon, 13 Oct 2008, Monty J. Harder wrote:
Did you try *iwconfig wlan0 txpower auto *or *iwconfig wlan0 txpower fixed* the man page indicates that one of those would enable power control, but it's not 100% clear which.
I didn't know about that. Interesting, auto resets it to 27dbm.
iwconfig wlan0 txpower 1 does this:
*snip!* *snip!*
Bit Rate=12 Mb/s Tx-Power=1 dBm
but the signal level shown on my router shows unchanged and that I have a huge advantage over all other laptops in the house. Still appears to be 500mW. I believe many Atheros cards may do this with the newly released kernel.
I'm sure the madwifi drivers work the power setting properly, but I found this odd. There was a posting lately on the lkml about an open source kernel HAL that would go out of its way to enforce local regulations in an attempt to encourage hardware developers to open up. Intel did this with their open source drivers and they could be bypassed, but it took some hacking. This is a hot radio! I just want the option to turn it down some!
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Duane Attaway -
Monty J. Harder