Boost txpower on intel ultimate n 5300

rijo79 · 02-05-2015, 10:01 PM

Hey @ll. My wifi reception is rather week so I'd like to boost the txpower setting. iwconfig shows it as being currently set to 15 dBm. The wifi card is an Intel Ultimate N 5300 and all the specs I can find on this card say that it should be capable of 20dBm/23dBm. Not sure which is the max for my card but I'm attempting to set it to 20 for now. The regs for Canada where I am say up to 30 is legal and 'iw reg get' shows that the card is using Canadian regs. I've tried running

Code:

iw dev wlan0 set txpower fixed 20

and I get

Code:

command failed: Operation not supported (-95)

Would anyone know what the problem is here and what I can do about it? I'm running debian testing on a HP Elitebook 8530w.

rijo79 · 02-05-2015, 10:31 PM

I've tried using a script which takes down wlan0 before doing the operation to change the txpower.

Code:

#!/bin/bash

echo " taking down wlan0"
ifconfig wlan0 down
sleep 2

echo "setting Region to Bolivia"
iw reg set BO
sleep 2

echo "setting TxPower to 30"
iw dev wlan0 set txpower 30
sleep 2

echo "starting wlan0"
ifconfig wlan0 up ion
echo "pulling wlan0 interface up"
iwconfig
sleep 2

echo "Goodbye"

After "setting TxPower to 30" I get

Code:

Invalid parameter: 30

I get the same result if I change the value to 20 or even something below 15. Setting the region to Canada gives same results. If I add the 'fixed' parameter, I get 'Operation not supported' again. iwconfig shows that the TxPower is still set to 15. Something is preventing changes...