I just received the new AX3000 router and love it. Amazing speed and the VPN client works perfectly. I plan to test Tailscale this week.
One question I have that seems pretty obvious for a travel router, but I don’t see any information about it.
I live in the US, but travel to UK and Europe frequently. Never thought about Wi-Fi frequencies before now - my US devices always worked on the local Wi-Fi, but I never traveled with a router before. Are the Wi-Fi radio frequencies all the same around the world? Do I have to change any settings on the AX3000 to use it in different countries?
Europe limits the transmit power of the 149-161 channels of 5G Wi-Fi. It is therefore recommended that you use the 36-48 or DFS channels when in Europe.
So, are you saying that if I pick one of the lowest channel numbers (options are 36, 40, 44, 48) for 5G it should be OK?
Should I also reduce the power setting? The default seems to be Max, but I can also select High, Medium or Low.
Is this change required only for the 5G settings, or do I also have to worry about the 2.4G channels/settings?
I’m a little confused about the DFS channels. The AX3000 only allows me to select a specific channel, but I thought DFS was supposed to be “dynamic.” I mean, isn’t the router supposed to identify used/unused DFS channels, and automatically change to an unused DFS channel?How does that work if I have to randomly pick one of the 16 options? How would I even know which DFS channel to pick?
I am only knowledgeable about the limits that regulations place on devices for sale and am not sure if they will regulate use by personal users.
For reference, the EU sets Wi-Fi transmit power limits at
<= 23 dBm (36-48 channels)
<= 20 dBm (DFS channels)
<= 14 dBm (149-165 channels)
On GL routers sold in the US, Max corresponds to 30 dBm, High to 21 dBm, Medium to 15 dBm and Low to 9 dBm. Since the 14 dBm range is too small, it is recommended by regulation that you set it to High for 36-48 channels or Medium for DFS channels. You can also go to LuCI to set a more accurate value.
Similar to the above, the EU limits 2.4GHz WiFi transmit power to 20 dBm.
In addition, the EU uses channels 12 and 13, whereas the US does not use these channels. You may therefore experience problems when repeat Wi-Fi using these channels.
It will automatically switch when avoiding radar models, but you still need to select one when setting up.