Could I possibly do this? I don't want to completely disable them but put them to a lower dbm when there is not much traffic.
This comes up from time to time. The short answer is no.
Why? You could end up with a chicken or egg situation in that after the last device disconects, the power level would drop. Then, as a result of the low power, it might present problems because some devices may not be able to connect again, especially if they are not in very close proximity.
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Would it also not work to drop 5G and 6G network and just keep the 2G running?
So if the bandwidth is below a certain setting only keep 2G alive and if bandwidth gets higher 5G/6G kicks in?
I guess it is plausible that the shutdown of 5G/6G radios could be implemented while keeping the 2G radio alive, but it still will cause problems. Don't forget that many devices -- notably those with batteries -- will sleep the radio most of the time (in human terms it seems like it's always awake, but under the hood its s actually disconnected and in a low power state most of the time)... so there would be lots of churn here.
Ultimately, though, if the goal is to reduce electrical power, an idle radio doesn't really use that much... the real power consumption occurs when there is high bandwidth running through the radio system.
…and a lot of roaming disconnections while trying to ramp up, causing an absolutely miserable user experience. Keep in mind that DSA scanning takes at least one minute, before the interface may come up - and can take up to 10 minutes.
An AP has to run continuously or it's effectively broken.
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One thing to add - if idle, only the beacon is being transmitted, rest of the time the channel is idle from the transmitting AP, so the average power transmitted over time is very low in any event.
One should keep the Tx power levels the same, as when clients wake up...
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