There are lots of articles about how to increase the range of your wi-fi network, but there are reasons to decrease the range. Perhaps you are worried about EMF levels and their impact on your body. Or perhaps you want to stop your neighbours hacking your wireless network. So how do you decrease the range of your network? Most routers don’t allow you to change the output power of your router, but there is a way around this. A lot routers have a ‘region’ setting. This adjusts the output power of your router to match the maximum allowable legal EMF level in your country. The USA has very high power levels. Australia and Europe have much lower allowable levels. So if you live in the USA but select ‘UK’ or ‘Australia’ as your region, it will potentially lower the power output of your router to 1/10th of the level.
Here are the wireless settings panel on my TP-LINK Archer C7 wireless router. Notice the ‘Region’ setting.
FYI: I run my Apple Airport base station at 10% power and it’s range is sufficient.
I run my Apple wi-fi base station at 10% power.
After you change the region setting the wireless router will adjust the maximum power level to what is allowed within the region that you specify.
Here are some of the legal limits in different regions.
Note that it would be illegal to set your router to a region with a higher setting than where you live. (e.g. if you live in Australia you should not set your region to ‘United States.’)
USA, Canada, New Zealand, Tiawan.
Austria, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, UK, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Norway.
Australia, Japan.
For a full list of regions see this table.
Make’s sense to lower output power if you can. In some cases I believe too much power can add in amplifier noise and stability issues. The chip will run hotter which could also contribute to a early failure, or that it could reduce performance overall.
Good points John.
My router will allow me to change my output which was preset by the tech at 100%. I would like to try it at 10%. Will I experience any problems by changing that one setting? I am not a tech savvy person. Any help would be appreciated.
Joni
It will reduce the range.
You can put it back to 100% later if you need to.
Where can I see this info to change it? On the phone or the computer’s wireless setup page?
On the wifi router’s home page.
So you connect to your router using a web browser and it should have a settings page.
Not all routers have it.
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