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Forum Discussion
What are the transmit powers from the RBRE960 and RBSE960?
Hi. I’m in the UK, and have the Orbi RBRE960 and RBSE960 system at home. I’m trying to determine what power the RBRE960 and RBSE960 transmit at within each of the frequency bands. Do these APs dynamically set the transmit power, or do they transmit at maximum permitted power as regulated within the UK? If the former, can you advise how I can determine this?
I do have the little booklet that states what the maximum transmit power is for the different frequency ranges which aligns very closely with the Ofcom limits imposed within the UK for maximum EIRP, so I can only assume that the “Max. Transmit Power” levels listed are the maximum EIRP levels. Can Netgear please confirm that “Max. Transmit Power” is the maximum EIRP as detailed within Ofcom regulations? As you know EIRP includes the power conducted into the antenna plus the antenna gain (gain is typically 3 dBi at 2.5 GHz, and 6 dBi at 5 GHz and 6 GHz).
Hope you can help. Thanks in advance.
Regards.
5 Replies
Good luck understanding radio power regulations. I have looked for the FCC filing (US) for the 960 and not found it.
My understanding is that Netgear WiFi radios are set to the maximum allowed in each regulatory domain. There is a setting in the Orbi web interface to reduce the Transmit Power of the user facing WiFi radios to less than 100%.
The FCC filing for a different Orbi system explains how it was tested:
Hi, Thanks for that, That seems rather useful. I've got a reasonably good handle on UK's regulations as it's part of my job to understand this (one of my tasks is to rollout Wi-Fi infrastructure for thousands of people), and I've had recent meetings with the UK regulator (Ofcom). Ofcom regulations for these Wi-Fi frequencies is found online in document IR2030, just look for the sections with the relevant frequency ranges.
I had seen the "TPC" or "Transmit Power Control" setting in the AP GUI but that was one of those unclear items as, in the UK and EU, Transmit Power Control is a term defined in the regulations and standards as the method to use for dynamic power control. Looking at the GUI TPC options I suspected that Netgear's use of TPC was for setting a fixed power output.
If, as you say, the GUI TPC when set to 100% results in the maximum regulated output for my region, then that makes my evaluation rather easy. Hopefully someone from Netgear can provide an official confirmation.
Thanks one again for your help.
silentnomad wrote:
Hopefully someone from Netgear can provide an official confirmation.
Oh, dear. In nearly eight years, I have never seen anyone from Netgear engineering or support participate in the Community Forum. The only Netgear employees we see are specifically tasked with maintaining the forum itself.
It is much more likely that someone at Ofcom would be in contact with Netgear in terms of Netgear's compliance with regulations. Surely Netgear is required to submit the same general sort of documentation they do to the FCC?
