MR45 maximum gain for Europe

[Ihatemerakis]

I have a questions for anybody using MR45s in the EU. What is the maximum power level it lets you set? I recently brought over some from our American office and changed the regulatory domain like a good boy, but now the maximum level 14 db, which I do not think is correct. This is severely under powered even when compared to APs bought off the shelves here in the EU. They become almost worthless.

Thank you

[NolanHerring]

Do you have the power set manually or are you using an RF Profile that is setting the power?

14dBm isn't weak at all, most of my designs revolve around 11 or 14dBm for 5GHz. You don't really want to go much higher because you end up with power mismatch between your AP and your clients. Most clients don't go over like 17dBm at their peak because it uses too much battery power to do that.

Take a look here: https://documentation.meraki.com/MR/Radio_Settings/EU_Compliance_Information

[GIdenJoe]

In the EU you follow the ETSI rules and these are as following:

For the 2.4 GHz ISM band you are allowed 20 dBm EIRP.

For the 5 GHz bands it's a little more complicated:

UNII-1 and UNII-2 (channels 36 through 64) are allowed 23 dBm EIRP.
UNII-2e (channels 100 through 140) are allowed 30 dBm EIRP.

The power levels you configure in Meraki and Cisco gear for that matter are the IR values (intentional radiator) so the antenna gain is not added to it to come to the EIRP.

So in case of a MR45 which has in 2.4 GHz a gain of 5.4 dBi, you would be able to go no higher than 14 dBm Tx power.
And for 5 GHz there is a gain of 6 dBi so if your channel is below 100 you would not be able to set it higher than 17 dBm TX but go up to 24 dBm if using channels 100 and above.

However in a good Wi-Fi design you should keep your AP Tx power as close as possible to the Tx power most of the Wi-Fi clients have which usually varies between 12 and 14 dBm for 5 GHz clients.  And since you want 2.4 GHz to be less desirable you usually keep that one at least 5 dB lower so 8 dBm is a good value there.