Increase Wi-Fi TX Power / Signal Strength

[Hitman]

The default TX-Power of wireless is set to 20 dBm but you can increase it with a little trick to 30 dBm but let me warn you first that It might be illegal in your country, so use it at your own risk. Moreover Some models will not support these settings or wireless chip may state that it "can" transmit with higher power, but the device's manufacturer probably did not place the appropriate heat sink in order to accomplish this.

There are also many ways to do it but i will share two simple methods.

1st Method.

iw reg set BO
iwconfig wlan0 txpower 30

If above method gives the following error then go for 2nd method.

Error for wireless request "Set Tx Power" (8B26) :
SET failed on device wlan0 ; Invalid argument.

2nd Method.

ifconfig wlan0 down
iw reg set BO
ifconfig wlan0 up
iwconfig wlan0 channel 13
iwconfig wlan0 txpower 30

For your reading visit the below links
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi
http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/ker...db.txt?id=HEAD

[ltdanno]

WOW awesome this totally worked ! i used option # 2

ifconfig wlan0 down
iw reg set BO
ifconfig wlan0 up
iwconfig wlan0 channel 13
iwconfig wlan0 txpower 30

and when it was done i ran a plain iwconfig and it says tx power 30 hope it dont melt my pci wireless card LMAO dont matter i got a few of them...

[Malachai]

But remember when you change the power of the device it will get hot so try not to run it all night long unless you need too.

[Return0]

sigh Tried to change the regulatory domains (for educational reasons) changed the db.txt to 48 under 00 (card can handle it all day trust me) crda 1.1.3 wouldnt make so I in a half asleep state did a make && make install with the wireless-regdb to try it out as crda is already on kali now my card is locked to 20 ever under BO and BZ. any advice from anyone?

[Nubbix]

ifconfig wlan0 down
iw reg BO
iw reg get <----- just to confirm BO is set

iw dev wlan0 set txpower fixed 30mBm  // replace auto for automatical selecting the best option

if that does not work on your card, do

iw phy wlan0 set txpower fixed 30mBm


In best cases your card is supported and txpower is set, if you keep getting error, your network card is not supported for change and default auto is set

[Needlephreak]

#!/bin/bash

echo "hello, HaVoK!"
echo " taking down wlan0"
ifconfig wlan0 down
sleep 3

echo "setting Region to Bolivia"
iw reg set BO
sleep 3

echo "setting TxPower to 30"
iwconfig wlan0 txpower 30
sleep 2

echo "starting wlan0"
ifconfig wlan0 up 
echo "pulling wlan0 interface up"
iwconfig
sleep 5


echo "                                   "
echo "                 BY                "
echo "       +-+-+ +-+-+-+-+-+ +-+-+     "
echo "               HaVoK               "
echo "       +-+-+ +-+-+-+-+-+ +-+-+     "
echo "                                   "
echo "                                   "

sleep 1

echo "good bye"

[Hitman]

Nice Neeldephreak well done & don't sleep too much :-)

[r3d]

Hey! thank you for sharing this with us. How can i change this permanently because everytime i restar my PC i have to do it again?

[Hitman]

@r3d put the above commands at the end of /etc/rc.local file and at the end dont forget to add one more command exit 0 ok. So whenever you will boot the kali it will set the settings automatically.

[r3d]

thx! nice post.