Post deleted for language that may offend

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

My take on that is that they are ruling out the top Band A frequencies to avoid overlapping with Band B, and for some reason don't want to use Band B. Possibly to do with the power level. Cutting out half the Band A channels does however seem a little drastic.

Most people here are only looking at N66U at 5 GHz. On 2.4GHz there is not sufficient spectrum free in most built up areas for many people to run "dual channel" mode (40mhz). At 5GHz there is generally space, unless you live in flats and have two 5GHz routers side by side through a wall (yes, I've seen this).

I have the AC68U which is where the industry is heading, as AC WiFi uses many more mhz, bonding 4 or more channels to get 900megabit or higher theoretical speeds.

My parents have the N66U and running wl -i eth2 channels shows 36 40 44 48 running Merlin's software, with the wl country command returning "EU (EU/5) <unknown>"

My AC68U is different, and the same commands show 36 40 44 48 52 56 60 64 100 104 108 112 116 132 136 140 and "DE (EU/13) GERMANY"

Yes, these devices are running Merlin's version, but the wireless stuff didn't change. Merlin in fact exposes a setting in the web interface on my AC68U and I think on the N66U on the professional tab to set the regulatory domain, mine is 80211d+h and I'm pretty sure all my settings are factory defaults.

I would just like to apologise to you MrSaffron, Bill and everybody else here for my offensive post.

DrT

The higher Band A channels (52 to 64) require the use of DFS and TPC in the UK, don't they? And if the pro 5Ghz gear I use is anything to go by, this is a major pain in the bottom to implement in a way that doesn't cause problems. This may be another reason why they don't tend to get implemented.

It is pure laziness. All legal channels can be enabled with a few lines of code. Also, at the (fake) EU setting, the power of both 2.4 and 5 GHz is half the legal limit.

thanks, thats a lot more commands than was given on merlin's forums.

before your commands wl country gave me EU
now it gives GB, hopefully my wireless will perform better now.

MErlin still refuses to add this to the GUI tho so it remains cLI only, I have added them to a script on my router usb stick should I need to reapply this again.

it seems whenever I make a change in the GUI, the country is reverted back to EU.

Thought id take a look on my rt-ac68u before & after the latest "Merlin" update.

ASUSWRT-Merlin RT-AC68U_3.0.0.4 Sat Jun 7 16:32:17 UTC 2014
mitch@RT-AC68U:/tmp/home/root# wl -i eth2 channels
36 40 44 48 52 56 60 64 100 104 108 112 116 132 136 140
mitch@RT-AC68U:/tmp/home/root# Connection closed by foreign host.


ASUSWRT-Merlin RT-AC68U_3.0.0.4 Sun Aug 3 23:40:20 UTC 2014
mitch@RT-AC68U:/tmp/home/root# wl -i eth2 channels
36 40 44 48 52 56 60 64 100 104 108 112 116 132 136 140

All i have done is loaded the latest firmware, and everything has remained the same regarding the wireless channels. I do not know if this is due to merlin or not.

The reason the upper channels are not accessible is because this part of the 5GHz band contains radar systems. These channels are subject to DFS requirements.

These DFS requirements are complex and costly to get regulatory certification from FCC/ETSI. Following are the typical requirements for access points (AP) operating on 5GHz DFS channel:

Before starting operation on DFS channel, scan the channel for Radar devices for 1 minute. If radar is detected follow step 4 otherwise start operation of DFS channel.

Must detect non-Wi-Fi Radar devices with pulse width as small as 5us

When radar device are detected stop operation on the channel within 500 milliseconds.

For AP vendors, this also means informing wireless clients to move away from this channel.

Do not become operational of this DFS channel for at least 30 minutes and after that go to step 1 before becoming operational again.

Given the above complexity many small office-home office vendors as well as some enterprise AP vendors don�t allow operation on DFS channels in the 5GHz band at all. Many client devices are also not certified for DFS band operation. Even when APs are certified and support DFS channels AP vendors often recommend operation exclusively on non-DFS channels given the uncertainty of DFS channels support at the client device level.

I am ok now I typo'd on the commit command.