WiFi Tx power question

[Heinz Diehl]

On 20.09.2014, Doug wrote: 

> First: Higher power does NOT increase noise in the signal. It just increases the amount of 
> radio frequency energy in the general area, which may be "noise" to some _other_ piece of equipment.

Yes, you are right. I was imprecise. What I meant is that barely
increasing Tx power is not verly likely to help. Increasing it over
the limit does more harm than good, leading to unstable connections
and data loss.

The Tomato firmware wikibook says: 
"Transmit Power: Sets the transmit power in milliwatts. High settings
may cause nonlinearity in the transmitter causing loss of data,
interference to other users and channels, and a high “noise floor”. It
may also overheat and shorten the life of the transmitter."

I have experienced that myself while experimenting with it. A subtle
increase did no harm, but was no improvement either. Increasing the Tx
power further lead to a big amount of retransmissions and decreased
speed.