Hi everyone
Ciao tutti.
As many of you know or maybe not, Alfa wifi cards have multiple power settings depends on the country you buy the card from.
Example :
* If you have purchased your Alfa card from Italy, the Txpower will be more likely set to 20 dBm , in some cases 27 dBm , ( 27 dBm=500w)
Many cards clame 1000w but the setting says otherwise !
here is the initial test on Alfa AWUS036H , RTL8187L , 1000w :
$ iwconfig wlan0
wlan0 IEEE 802.11bg ESSID:off/any
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.462 GHz Access Point: Not-Associated
Tx-Power=20 dBm
Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Power Management:offAs you can see is set to 20 dBm , that is clearly less than 500w.
THE FIX :
Now, if you try to increase the txpower to 30 dBm = 1000w , like this : iwconfig wlan0 txpower 30
you might likely get an error due to restrictions in the country!
Error : Error for wireless request "Set Tx Power" (8B26) :
SET failed on device wlan0 ; Invalid argument.
So, what we do ??
Luckely The least restrictive countries are BO and BZ. You can set you Alfa card according to these countries:
ifconfig wlan0 down
iw reg set BO
ifconfig wlan0 up
iwconfig wlan0 channel 13
iwconfig wlan0 txpower 30* Now hopefully you wont get errors and your Alfa is pumping out full power

Disclaimer : It might be illegal in your country, so use it at your own risk .
Good luck
UL