max safe power for WRT54GS and exposure time

snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com hath wroth:

Yep. Two of my friends locally. Lasted about 2 weeks and blew. I have one of these V4 routers but haven't had time (or inspiration) to do an autopsy.

Oh, any one of these will work:

So if I move from the standard antenna to a 14 db flat panel on the remaining 'stock' linksys, will that give me more than a 10db improvement? What's the rating of the stock antenna?

If so, then will I get equivallently the same 'reception/transmission' quality if I reduce the transmission power from 200 mw on both ends to just 20 (rather, 28 mw, the stock).

--Now, I'm still getting fade during the day. How high can I put the transmitters for general use? 40 mw? 48 mw? 50 mw?

It should -- the gain of a stock "rubber ducky" antenna is about 2 dBi.

As an alternative, see

The stock antenna is essentially a coaxial vertical dipole antenna. Gain is about 2dBi. A 14dBi flat panel will give a maximum of 12dB gain over the stock antenna. However, don't forget to subtract coax cable and connector losses from the 12dB.

Most non-reflector antennas have the same gain in transmit and receive. 14dBi gain in transmit and receive. However, if you use a dish, the gain is somewhat different betweeen transmit and receive depending on how well the feed illuminates the dish surface. In general, the transmit gain of a dish is slightly less than the receive gain because the feed's tendency to "overspray" the dish.

Going from 200mw to 20mw is a factor of 10. In dB, that's a change of: dB = 10 * log(10) = 10dB

Are you sure it's fade and not inteference from other networks that only operate during the day?

I really don't know. My guess is 50-100mw max. I know that 250mw will eventually blow up the transmitter, but I don't know exactly what power is safe. There's also the not so minor issue of FCC type certification. I'll pass. Anyway, going from 35mw to 100mw is wasted. It's only dB = 10 * log (100/35) = 4.6dB I suggest you work on the antenna part of the puzzle and leave the power alone.