A DIR-857 located in an area containing high radio congestion from neighboring routers (e.g. metropolitan/urban region), may experience frequent signal loss with wireless devices and periodic connectivity issues with wired devices. Lowering the DIR-857 Transmit Power setting to Low may correct this issue.RationaleReducing the transmit power may seem counter-intuitive, since lowing the signal strength will enable neighboring routers to overpower the DIR-857. Lowering the Transmit Power will reduce the DIR-857 range, but will also significantly reduce the amount of signal negotiation and processing involved since fewer wireless devices and competing routers will be within range of the DIR-857. The wireless protocol has a finite number of channels from which to balance signal sharing with competing routers.
A router located in an apartment building in a heavily congested urban area (e.g. New York City), may have well over 100 routers and countless wireless devices in-range. The DIR-857 must engage in heavy back-end processing to manage those competing signals and devices. A router located in this urban setting is functioning in a
three dimensional world (i.e. a sphere), where competing routers and wireless devices are located not only on the same plane (circle), but also
above and
below the router.
A router located in a rural area is effectively functioning in a
two dimensional world (i.e. a circle), where competing routers and wireless devices are located on the same plane as the router. Reducing the signal strength will effectively reduce the radius of the circle and further reduce the number of in-range devices.
Reducing the size of a circle (two dimensional, rural area) will reduce the number of in-range wireless devices by a factor of the second-power 1/n
2. Reducing the size of a sphere (three dimensional, urban setting), will reduce the number of in-range wireless devices by a factor of the fourth-power 1/n
4. Reducing the size of the sphere of influence for the urban router will have a substantially greater impact than reducing the size of the circle for the rural router.
Procedure- Log into the web UI
- Navigate to ADVANCED > ADVANCED WIRELESS
- Set Transmit Power to Low