Increasing the Power Output of your Alfa AWUS036H

July 01, 2016 — metalkey

Warning: Check the laws in your region before adjusting the power output of your wifi adapter. Increasing the power above 20dBm can be a breach of regulations in some countries.

OS: Kali Linux

Checking the Current Power Output

In the example below Tx-Power is set to the default value of 20dBm for the current locale.
Information on how this value is determined is explained in-depth at Linux Wireless (http://linuxwireless.org/en/developers/Regulatory/)




root@kali:~$ iwconfig



wlan0 IEEE 802.11bg ESSID:off/any

Mode:Managed Access Point: Not-Associated Tx-Power=20 dBm

Retry short limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off

Encryption key:off

Power Management:off

Increasing the Output to 1-Watt (30dBm)

To increase the power output of the Alfa AWUS036H to 1-Watt (manufacturer specified maximum) you will need to change your locale to a region with different regulations (e.g. Belize – BZ) and set txpower manually.




root@kali:~$ ifconfig wlan0 down

root@kali:~$ iw reg set BZ

root@kali:~$ iwconfig wlan0 txpower 30

root@kali:~$ ifconfig wlan0 up

root@kali:~$ iwconfig



wlan0 IEEE 802.11bg ESSID:off/any

Mode:Managed Access Point: Not-Associated Tx-Power=30 dBm

Retry short limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off

Encryption key:off

Power Management:off

We have successfully set txpower to 30dBM (1-Watt).
Higher values can also be set and detailed instructions are available at Null Byte (http://null-byte.wonderhowto.com/how-to/set-your-wi-fi-cards-tx-power-higher-than-30-dbm-0149606/).

Tags: wifi