Bug 13098

Summary: Tx Power on wlanap.cgi does not work
Product: IPFire Reporter: Jon <jon.murphy>
Component: ---Assignee: Michael Tremer <michael.tremer>
Status: NEW --- QA Contact:
Severity: Minor Usability    
Priority: Will only affect a few users CC: arne.fitzenreiter, bbitsch, carlo.fusco
Version: 2   
Hardware: unspecified   
OS: Unspecified   
URL: https://community.ipfire.org/t/tx-power-lower-setting-from-the-wui-is-ignored/8028
See Also: https://bugzilla.ipfire.org/show_bug.cgi?id=11870

Description Jon 2023-05-11 00:02:50 UTC 
The Tx Power setting on the wlanap.cgi WebGUI page stopped working.

It looks like there was a change made near 16 Apr 2021 that removed the needed line.

https://git.ipfire.org/?p=ipfire-2.x.git;a=blobdiff;f=src/initscripts/packages/hostapd;h=7aee84e52046ec683b27811067a9868d1d660ea4;hp=5945375f3c43f9835e7c0e309a1cb6b7e2fdafa4;hb=1d681743eba054e648bff189e9a4378a770f4551;hpb=9f2ee0e9bf4708cb899cd7e3b7bef6af5f18956a

```
-  /usr/sbin/iwconfig $INTERFACE txpower $TXPOWER 2>/dev/null
```

See:
https://community.ipfire.org/t/tx-power-lower-setting-from-the-wui-is-ignored/8028

@ms - if you let me know where this should be added I can create a patch.  I am guessing it should not be in the initscript for hostapd.


tested on:
IPFire 2.27 (x86_64) - Core-Update 174
APU4D4
Comment 1 Michael Tremer 2023-05-11 08:54:09 UTC 
Yes, this is very outdated and we should remove the setting.

There is no way to control this in a reliable way since the AP will always send all beacon frames with maximum transmit power and reduce its transmit power for each client if it thinks it is near enough.

There is no way to reliably configure this with hostapd and so we should simply remove the setting. I am not sure what a benefit of this could be in the first place. What is the use-case for this?
Comment 2 Jon 2023-05-11 14:40:03 UTC 
for me it is because I am testing the wi-fi in one room and I didn't want to send RF throughout the entire house.

I would imagine other people might want something similar and not send RF to their neighbors (e.g., apartments, condos, dorms)