4.8.4
US Wireless Country - reboot after changing - next room over, hallway in between, doors shut:
UK Wireless Country - reboot after changing - next room over, hallway in between, doors shut:
DE Wireless Country - reboot after changing - next room over, hallway in between, doors shut:
US & UK seem comparable, but the factory default seems to be ‘DE’ - whenever this is set, either left as the default or set again after, wireless performance/coverage suffers.
Given that there doesn’t appear to be a way to set wireless country in the GL UI (?) only in LuCI and if DE is the factory default, presumably most/many (certainly non-techy-fiddly-users) will default to DE.
No matter which country code you set for wireless, the max transmit power drop-down in LuCi always remains at 20dBm.
I’d assume that EU and UK countries would be more or less aligned in terms of regulations, need to research this further.
Possible bug then:
Wireless country code defaults to DE - even when the user is not in Germany - 4.8.4 out of the box/factory reset, lower power seems to apply to (at least) DE country code. But not UK nor US, if set/changed in LuCI.
If you leave it as the default, DE, and flash 4.8.3 over the top (keeping settings) WiFi coverage/power is restored.
Problems seem to relate only to DE (not UK, nor US) which seems to be the factory default wireless country code (even on a fresh-flash of 4.8.3) but only problematic when on 4.8.4 with the DE country code set (as it is by default).
EDIT: Setting France/FR and rebooting, data is comparable to that of US and UK. Not conclusive, but seems DE specific - which just so happens to be the out-of-the-box default.
- Why do devices default to DE?
- Were the Wireless power changes supposed to be DE focused?
- How is GL.iNet going to fix this moving forward?
It’s fair to say that ‘less techy’ users are not going to go into LuCI and change the Wireless country.
Which means they’re going to be stuck on DE, the default, unless GL.iNet steps in and changes it in an update - users on the DE default are going to see terrible WiFi performance, assuming most are NOT in Germany, when they don’t need to?!