WiFi question for AC86U gurus (it’s hard!)

[princi]

The AC86U has an internal WiFi antenna and 3 external antennas.

Is it possible to disable the 3 external antennas and just use the internal one?

The reason being I want to disconnect the antennas so the unit doesn’t stand out so much (I have 4 of them).

Under Tomato, it was possible to uncheck the WiFi interface and disable it. Anything like that possible under Merlin?

I don’t need range, or even speed, because the main devices are all physically connected - but it would be good to have simple WiFi access to the router.

I can’t just disconnect the antennas otherwise I risk damaging the RF amp that drives them.

TiA

 

[Gedeon30]

You can disable the WiFi at all.
Or only the 5ghz (or the 2.4ghz ) and setting the wifi power to minimum. Not sure if you can even let only the 11b available with WPA2/AES, to minimize the WiFi footprint in your environment while keeping security.

Those settings are available in the config pages. If you have Ethernet access you can play with then and perform a few tests without danger.

 

[thiggins]

You don't want to do what you propose. If a router thinks it is a three stream router, it expects to receive signals on all three transmit/receive chains. If it doesn't get them, it won't be able to adjust its rates properly and you'll get lousy performance.

 

[princi]

Thanks. Appreciate your input.

I just remember from Tomato days how it was possible to enable / disable select WiFi interfaces. That would be helpful.

The other option is that I just disable WiFi entirely - but occaisonally I might want to watch something on an iPad.

My application is streaming video, using tunnels to multiple countries - and multiple routers to get the best performance, eg. 4K streaming.