[FS#4065] WD mynet n750 experiences wifi hw failure with default TX power setting on all OWRT builds

OpenWrt Bugs openwrt-bugs at lists.openwrt.org
Wed Oct 6 11:40:56 PDT 2021


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A new Flyspray task has been opened.  Details are below. 

User who did this - apassiou (apassiou) 

Attached to Project - OpenWrt/LEDE Project
Summary - WD mynet n750 experiences wifi hw failure with default TX power setting on all OWRT builds
Task Type - Bug Report
Category - Base system
Status - Unconfirmed
Assigned To - 
Operating System - All
Severity - High
Priority - Very Low
Reported Version - All
Due in Version - Undecided
Due Date - Undecided
Details - **Devince:** WD mynet n750 

**SW versions:** All openwrt builds (latest tried: OpenWrt 21.02.0-rc4, r16256-2d5ee43dc6)

**Severity:** High, due to difficulty to diagnose (took months of experimentation), and catastrophic outcome for most users (deeming router broken and throwing it away). Moreover the fix should take a few minutes (see below).

**Summary:** Default Wifi TX strength of 20dbm or higher causes wifi failures within a few weeks. Default value should be changed to 19dbm.

**Description:**
This has been verified on 3 WD mynet n750 routers. The WD mynet n600 series does not exhibit this problem.

Default setting of WiFi TX power 20dbm on World setting and especially 22db setting on USA setting make the WiFi hardware in these routers unstable. They fail within a timeframe of 1 to 14 days.

Symptom of failure is that while WiFi connection to the router is stable it does not send any traffic to the device. Recovery can be done via power cycling the router or running "wifi off && wifi on" via SSH. This failure appears to be isolated to WiFi hardware as RJ45 connections to the router continue to operate without any issues.

**Fix:** Set default value of OpenWRT for these routers to 19dbm TX power. Most will never play with this setting and wont know to change it, instead when their wifi fails they will throw away the router as broken. Seeing how most wifi cliets transmit in 14-16dbm range this change should not make any difference on wifi range/strength. So this change should only improve stability and has no downsides.

More information can be found at the following URL:
https://bugs.openwrt.org/index.php?do=details&task_id=4065

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