wl antdiv in post-boot

[Joern]

Hello,

according to recommendations from this forum I set wl antdiv 3 and wl txant 3 in the post-boot file of my wl500gp. Firmware is latest Oleg's 1.9.2.7-10.
After booting the router I can check these values (via LAN) using wl antdiv and wl txant. Both are correct.
However after connecting with the notebook via WLAN to the router the antdiv value changes to 0, thus disabling the internal antenna. The txant value remains 3.

Does anybody now this behavior? How can I fix it? I have no idea!

Thanks for any help,
Jörn.

[newbiefan]

This is a normal behaviour, wl txant does'nt make any sense when antdiv is set to 3.
3 means, that the router can select the best antenna by himself. txant remains to that number you've choosen. txant 3 means, that the router use the txant which is selected by router for rx.
Valid numbers are 0,1,3 do a

wl > /tmp/mnt/wl.txt

and read the file /tmp/mnt/wl.txt to get more informations.

ahhh.., the router has 2 antennas - internal and external. It's not that way, that the external antenna must have the best signal or quality. Usually the external is better, but sometimes a better antenna gain makes the signal worse. Particulary when your channel interfere with a channel of your neighbourhood. Think about the circumstance, that bandwidth of wireless is 22 MHz, but channel pitch is just 5 MHz, so just 3 channels should be used at one location (1,6,11)
have fun

[Joern]

Well, I actually thought, i could use a directional antenna as external antenna and the internal antenna for the nearby computers. But this doesn't seem to work since the router switches to antdiv 0 as soon as a notebook is connected to the router by WLAN. Thus only the external antenna works and the internal antenna is switched off.

[newbiefan]

You're right - switching rx ant and tx ant to different antennas makes only sense for long distance. By law it's not allowed to have a higher power as 100 mW with a regular, ideal 1 dbi antenna for tx, but there is no limitation for rx!
Hence it makes a lot of sense to have a regular tx antenna (total < 100 mW) and for rx a sat-dish (or better) with gain > 20dbi on a different antenna.
For instance: with a wrt54 router you can install very easy a long distance connection (broadcom wl).
Well and there is no way to have 2 antennas for one direction, except you built an external dual :eek:
Anyhow, have a nice evening........

[Joern]

Thank you newbiefan, but as long as the internal antenna is disabled there is no way to use both antennas simultaneously. Other example: if I disconnect the external antenna from the router, I can connect by WLAN for a short moment (via internal router antenna), then the router switches to antdiv 0 and the connection will be lost.

So this seems to be a bug in the firmware. What a pity :( no way to avoid it.

btw, this behavior only occurs if I call wl antdiv 3 from within bost-boot. If I call it again from shell, the router stays at antdiv 3.