Alfa AWUS036H 500mW high tx power

[xCPPx]

Originally Posted by alan-smithee

So, whenever I connect the Alfa 500 to my laptop with BT3 on it, the tx-rate is automatically set on 360 mW ?

No. He is trying to tell you that the exact mWatt transmit power of the Alfa is not known very well.
You set your Alfa's transmit power with iwconfig wlan1 txpower (somenumber), but unfortunately the exact relationship between somenumber and the mW output is not defined and you would need some expensive equipment to experimentally determine it. The best available result is that of FCC.
When you plug your Alfa in, the txpower is automatically set to it's default value, which is 5 in most cases.

[alan-smithee]

And this isn't the best tx power that the Alfa 500 can run "safe" ? Does the tx power "5" matchs with 360 mW ?

(to compare, when I do iwconfig, the tx power of the Intel 4965AGN is set on 27 ; to what amount of power can I run my Alfa 500 without damaging it ?)

Edit : I've just read the topic and seen how much I'm stupid with this question lol

Hu, I think I should better don't use this setting or use it by increasing level-by-level from 5

A french guy have reported that his Alfa 500 had been damaged using highpower mode on a forum, but I can't find the topic :-/

[xCPPx]

We do not know what mW output the tx-power of 5 matches, read my previous post. Remember that different cards have different mW output power... meaning that setting your Alfa's tx-power to 27 will yeld in a higher milliwatt output than the same tx-power number of some other wireless card.

A tx-power setting of 0 is least while 35 is most powerful. Some people report that they've been using their Alfas on the highest possible tx power without any problems (read the thread). Personally I have never set it past 20 as I rarely need that much power.

[alan-smithee]

It's really embarrassing...

Do you think tx-power 0 to 35 is a linear scale or a logarithmic scale ?

Is it possible to contact the team who's wrote the driver ?

[alan-smithee]

Up!
Anyone for help ?

[M1ck3y]

The right thing to do should be to measure the Tx power from the card with the right equipment, so that we could have a real value (not any of those cheap values from softwares) and make comparisons with or whithout highpower mode, and with other cards...

That's very interesting, I will get a wifi champ meter soon to test this by myself, and to know the exact Tx power of the awus036h, I'll let you know when I will test this

[alan-smithee]

Mickey, pleased to meet you again
I've seen posts from Hirte himself on tinyshell.be. He said he thought the dongle transmit power is put up of about 1 dBm if set on 35 while setting the txpower on 0 makes the card transmitting 3 dBm lesser.

[M1ck3y]

Ok, I will check this, I ordered something today, it should be useful: that's an electrosmog meter (wifi champ meter), so that I will be able to know the exact Tx power from my wifi cards...

[alan-smithee]

It's great ; I'm looking forward to your results

[alacrityathome]

Originally Posted by M1ck3y

The right thing to do should be to measure the Tx power from the card with the right equipment, so that we could have a real value (not any of those cheap values from softwares) and make comparisons with or whithout highpower mode, and with other cards...

That's very interesting, I will get a wifi champ meter soon to test this by myself, and to know the exact Tx power of the awus036h, I'll let you know when I will test this

Any testing feedback?

Thanks,