I get this question in almost every deployment: why not just run every access point at maximum transmit power?
The logic looks sound on paper. More power should mean more coverage, and more coverage should mean a stronger network. It is why running every radio at full power is such a common default.
In the field, this decision quietly costs you more than it gives back. The client on the other end of the link almost never has the power to answer back at the same level.
What Cranking Power Actually Buys You
I get pushback on this one, fairly. More transmit power does reach farther. That part is true.
Where it goes wrong is what people think that buys them. The appeal is usually financial: crank the power on each access point, cover the same space with fewer of them, and save money on hardware. It reads as a shortcut to the same coverage at a lower price.
That shortcut has a cost, and it does not show up on the coverage map. It shows up on the client side of the link and on the overall performance of the Wi-Fi network.
It Starts With the Uplink
The piece that gets left out of the conversation is the client radio. A laptop or a phone does not carry the same transmit power budget as an access point, and it never will because they are battery-powered.
When you push the access point to its maximum power, the downlink gets stronger, but the client still answers at its own, much lower power. That creates an asymmetric link: you get excellent data rates going down to the client, and a weak uplink data rate coming back, because the client does not have enough power to talk back at the same level.
A weaker uplink means a lower SNR at the access point, a lower MCS index, and more retries on every frame the client sends. None of that shows up when you only look at the downlink.
What It Costs You On the Network
Once you multiply that asymmetry across every client and every access point, the costs show up in a few predictable places:
- Faster battery drain. Clients tend to match the power level they perceive from the access point, so they push harder to talk back, spending more energy per frame.
- More co-channel interference. In an open environment with many access points, running everything at maximum power sends each cell's energy farther than it needs to travel, which increases contention between neighbouring cells as the network fills up with clients.
- Stickier clients and lower data rates. A strong downlink convinces the client to stay attached to a distant access point instead of roaming to a closer one. The client ends up operating at a lower SNR, a lower MCS index, and a lower data rate than it should, and it spends more airtime per frame to get its traffic through. That is the opposite of what you want in a high-density environment.
Where I Set Power in the Field
The right target is not the maximum the radio allows. It is the level that keeps the downlink and the uplink reasonably balanced for the client devices actually on the network, so the access point is not offering more than the client can answer.
That target is not the same across bands, since path loss and regulatory limits differ between 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, and 6 GHz. In my own designs, I usually land between 10 and 17 dBm on 5 GHz, and about 3 dB above that on 6 GHz to compensate for the additional path loss at those frequencies. I pick the low end of that range in dense environments and the high end when coverage matters more than capacity.
The caveat is that this is a starting point, not a fixed rule. Dense deployments call for tighter power and tighter channel reuse, while sparse, coverage-driven deployments can tolerate more.
What power levels do you usually used by default on your enterprise deployments?