iwconfig wlan0 txpower 1000mW - how is this possible?

[Jouni Malinen]

On Thu, Jul 10, 2003 at 09:04:32PM -0700, Jun Sun wrote:

> I just tried that.  To my surprise, no error.  And even more,
> it reports the txpower as if 1000mW were set (30dBm).
> 
> I know my card has 100mW maximum power.  Is ther a bug in the
> driver or driver can't read txpower correctly?

TX power setting is a hack in the driver. The units are not correct in
most cases and anything over 100 mW is mapped to the maximum raw value
in the wlan card and the returned value is just calculated directly from
the value you used.

In addition, it will only set the raw value in the baseband processor
which is not the best way of controlling TX power. In most cases, I
would not use this configuration item since the default (let the
station firmware control TX power) is better option. I'm mostly using
this item to limit the power to minimum so that the range of the AP gets
smaller.

-- 
Jouni Malinen                                            PGP id EFC895FA