Try testing by manually adding to your config wifi-device AX radio:
option he_bss_color '8'
I just tried this, but no dice on my RT3200 - I still see:
[530504.547168] wlan1: Limiting TX power to 23 (26 - 3) dBm as advertised by
This is with 1xRD3200 operating as WDS AP on channel 100 at 26 dBm, and 2xRD3200 operating as WDS clients on channel 100 - they get knocked down to 23 dBm.
Reducing power by 3 dB without a working TPC implementation is a must (and there are none of those in mainline linux, yet - I think Intel is starting to work on that).
But on channel 36 all three stay at 23 dBm...
TPC is independent of DFS channels or not.
Sure.. so why doesn't it reduce the 2x RT3200's acting as WDS clients to 20 from 23 dBm?
As in, if I set my 3x RT3200s to channel 36 then all three stay on 23 dBm. If I set to channel 100 then AP is at 26 and the other two at 23 dBm.
See what I mean?
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It is on the AP. It makes the AP say "dear clients, please all reduce power by 0 dB". And you can see this element in the iw dev wlp4s0 scan dump output:
BSS e8:9f:80:d4:9e:c6(on wlp4s0) -- associated
last seen: 34.486s [boottime]
TSF: 750653241027 usec (8d, 16:30:53)
freq: 5260
beacon interval: 100 TUs
capability: ESS Privacy SpectrumMgmt (0x0111)
signal: -75.00 dBm
last seen: 2909721 ms ago
Information elements from Probe Response frame:
SSID: CENSORED
Supported rates: 12.0* 18.0 24.0* 36.0 48.0 54.0
DS Parameter set: channel 52
Country: PH Environment: Indoor/Outdoor
Channels [36 - 48] @ 17 dBm
Channels [52 - 64] @ 24 dBm
Channels [100 - 144] @ 24 dBm
Channels [149 - 165] @ 30 dBm
Power constraint: 0 dB <-- see this?
...
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I got rid of my linux boxes 
can I do this from Windows or android?
No. You can do it from another RT3200 that is not participating in this network.
Rebooting all three devices fixed it. So your setting works fine.
In my particular case, increasing the power from 23 dBm to 26 dBm doesn't alter transfer rate much (only from about 680 to about 720 Mbit/s or so for the two worst-connected devices). Only just for the numbers since the rates are way more than I need at 700Mbit/s.
But I think that is expected because in my case the RT3200 devices show strong signal strength between them (one pair around -55 dBm and the other around -45 dBm).
Your advice is very much appreciated because my neighbour has 2x RT3200's that are connected with a much weaker signal strength (around -75 to -80 dBm), and I think this is where the power increase may help?
@patrakov any other tips for improving signal strength in a difficult case where there are thick walls etc? Might 'ac' mode be worth trying?
I found some information on wikipedia that potentially could epxlain the -3 dBm:
So maybe it is intentional, because of regulations.
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Regarding your neighbor's setup, I can't really help. But let's at least collect some information other than RSSI. What's the achieved throughput and latency? What are the expectations? Can your neighbor play https://littlebigsnake.com/ for 10 minutes without the game server complaining about a bad connection, and without obvious lags?
My own experience is that on an empty channel (with Arch Linux and a MEDIATEK Corp. MT7612E 802.11acbgn PCI Express Wireless Network Adapter [14c3:7612] as a client) this -75 .. -77 dBm signal is 100% acceptable and stable (desktop-specific trick, not applicable to OpenWRT: force the BSSID in connection properties so that NetworkManager disables background scanning), and suitable even for video calls and this snake game. But the bandwidth is not that great - the maximum that I can get at this point is 90 Mbps goodput, which is still a win over the over-crowded 2.4 GHz at -50 dBm.
Thanks. I will test and get back if I get an opportunity. Man that's an addictive game. I had to stop otherwise I'd play all afternoon.
It almost seems like Apple devices are getting stuck in power saving mode when RSSI falls below a certain point. I have 1 wall and 1 monitor between my iPhone and RT3200. When the phone is in front of the monitor, LuCI reports the phone’s tx rate is 6mbps. Lifting the phone above the monitor jumps the tx rate to several hundred mbps.
This reflects almost perfectly in speed tests using iperf3
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Thanks. That's exactly the behavior I am observing.
However with a windows laptop (Intel AX210), while it is not as bad as the iPhone, it still performs better with 802.11ac rather tan 802.11ax.
I still have to test with a Macbook laptop.
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I just tested with a Macbook Air M1 in the same spot iPhone has issues. The results are as follows (iperf3 @80Mhz channel, AX6S 22.03.0 stable):
802.11ax upload: 454 Mbits/sec
802.11ax download: 764 Mbits/sec
802.11ac upload: 576 Mbits/sec
802.11ac download: 676 Mbits/sec
So while results are much better with the Macbook, the 802.11ax upload performace is still worse than 802.11ac.
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I've been testing with a MBP M1 and a RT3200. Setting he_su_beamformee = 1 and he_bss_color = 8 seems to slightly improve performance, but I still see a sharp decrease by moving as little as one step away from the router.
From:
signal: -63 [-68, -70, -70, -67] dBm
signal avg: -63 [-67, -69, -71, -67] dBm
tx bitrate: 907.4 MBit/s 80MHz HE-MCS 9 HE-NSS 2 HE-GI 1 HE-DCM 0
rx bitrate: 816.7 MBit/s 80MHz HE-MCS 8 HE-NSS 2 HE-GI 1 HE-DCM 0
to:
signal: -65 [-67, -70, -71, -72] dBm
signal avg: -64 [-67, -70, -70, -71] dBm
tx bitrate: 907.4 MBit/s 80MHz HE-MCS 9 HE-NSS 2 HE-GI 1 HE-DCM 0
rx bitrate: 34.0 MBit/s 80MHz HE-MCS 0 HE-NSS 1 HE-GI 1 HE-DCM 0
Notice how the bitrate drops from 816 to 34 and HE-MCS drops from 8 to 0, with a RSSI drop of just 2dB.
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I've been working on porting OpenWrt to the Xiaomi Redmi AX6000 (MT7986a) and the 802.11ax results are significantly better on this device. With a -86 RSSI on my iPhone and -84 on my MacBook, I see full speeds from my ISP and iPerf3 is 300-400mbit in both directions.
There is 1 wall and 1 floor in between, whereas on my RT3200 there is just 1 wall and the speeds plummet. I'm not sure if this helps narrow things down a bit, but just sharing my 2 cents. Oh and 802.11ax on 2.4GHz is a nice improvement as well 
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