I was asked in a recent WLAN class whether you can adjust the power level in a Wi-Fi radio. The answer is yes (if you have the right operating system), and here is how.
For this demonstration, I am using Kali Linux but this should work on any Linux. Comment below if you can confirm or deny that.
OK – so here is how you can do this.
Start with the ‘ifconfig’ or ‘iwconfig’ command to display current settings:
Shut down the wlan0 interface: ‘ifconfig wlan0 down’ and verify
We can change the country with the ‘iw reg set US’ command where you can replace the US two letter code with any other country.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-2 for all country codes.
A note here – different countries have different Wi-Fi regulations, and you could be in violation of your conutry laws. So stop here if that is an issue.
For fun, we will change ours to Great Britain and bring the interface back up:
Now let’s change the power level: ‘iwconfig wlan0 txpower 18’
You may or may not be allowed to up your power level.
Imagine for a moment if you lowered someone’s power level to 5 dBm or less – hmmm.
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