WiFi disables with Country Code 00

Installing and Using OpenWrt
1

Hello,

I just found out that when I set the option country to "00" in /etc/config/wireless the WiFi shows as "disabled" in LuCi (and does disappear in the real world too!).
If returned to "driver default" (which simply means deleting the whole "option country" line from /etc/config/wireless) it comes back on.

In a different thread (R7800 21.02.2 wifi entered disabled state - #4 by Frood42) they discussed occasional drop outs but I believe these are two different issues.
The drop out I put down to weather channels https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/wifi/wifi_countrycode#wi-fi_channels_and_weather_radar_detection

But why does this happen when the country code is set to "00" (world)?

2

The "world" regulatory domain (00) restricts wifi to channels that are available to be used in all countries, 1-11 on 2.4GHz and 36-48 on 5GHz. Are you trying to use a channel outside of those ranges? Also, your logfile may give you a hint or two why your wifi isn't starting.

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3

Recently, since one instance of wpad now controls both (all) radios, all radios must be set to the same country for operation. Use your actual country.

Code 00 the default since the same distribution of OpenWrt is used without knowing what country the user is in on first installation. and much hardware is not coded with a default country. Code 00 is the very limited set of operation possible that would be legal in every country. Setting an actual country is always better.

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