NWA50ax Pro - Decrease transmission power at night

Steve_k2400

Hi! I just bought an NWA50ax Pro AP and started to set it up (in Standalone Mode).
I would like to lower the transmission power of the 2.4G radio and turn off the 5G Radio at night. The AP is operating in a private hause and it's not necessary to have full power over night.
How can I achieve this?
Thanks.

Zyxel_Lynn

Hi @Steve_k2400,

Thank you for reaching out!

I understand you have two requirements for your NWA50AX Pro at night: reducing the transmission power of the 2.4 GHz radio and disabling the 5 GHz radio. Here's how to configure both:

1. Reduce the Output Power of the 2.4 GHz Radio

To lower the transmission power of the 2.4 GHz radio:

Navigate to Configuration > Wireless > AP Management > WLAN Setting > Radio 1 Setting

Manually adjust Radio 1's maximum output power (for example, from 30 dBm to 15 dBm)

Please note that the AP GUI currently does not support automatic power scheduling. You will need to manually adjust the output power each time you want to change it, as there is no scheduled power adjustment feature available in the interface.

2. Disable the 5 GHz Radio at Night

To disable the 5 GHz radio during specific hours:

Navigate to Configuration > Wireless > AP Management > WLAN Setting > Create New Object > SSID Profile

In the configuration window that appears:

Select 5 GHz as the band

Enable the Schedule SSID option

Set your desired time schedule (for example, Monday to Saturday 8:00–17:00)

With this configuration, the SSID will only broadcast during the scheduled hours. Outside of this time period, the 5 GHz radio will be disabled.

What’s more, if your AP is powered by a PoE switch, you can also configure a PoE schedule on the switch to power the AP on or off at specific times. Note that this method will turn off both the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz radios.

Please feel free to reach out if you have any other question!

Best Regards,

Lynn

Steve_k2400

Thanks for the information. 5G is then solved but the power reduction manually is not feasible.
I see in the CLI Reference that the Power Setting is available from the CLI Interface.
I have a home automation PC running Linux so I could create a cron entry sending a CLI command to the router but I'm not familiar with this interface.
Could you show me an example how to connect to the router and send CLI commands from another host? That would be very helpful. Thanks.

EDIT: I managed to log in with SSH and with the following commands I was able to set the output power in the Radio 1 and Radio 2 Profiles:
configure terminal → wlan slot1 → output-power 0dBM
I the AP Management WEB screen this change is reflected correctly but when I check the Monitor page for the AP Information they still show the radios with a power of 3 and 5.

So, I understand how to log in with ssh, go trough the configuration levels and issue a command. I just need some info on how to correctly set the power and what it eventually needs afterward to apply theses changes to the running configuration.

Steve_k2400

I spent days now trying to figure out things and I'm pretty frustrated.
1) I don't have a "Configuration > Wireless > AP Management > WLAN Setting > Create New Object > SSID Profile" entry. I only have Radio Profile and WDS Profile.
I can make a new Profile in "Object > AP Profile > SSID" where I could set up a scheduled profile for 5G but this would have a different SSID as the 2.4G and so it's not useful. Therefore I can't see a way to turn on or off one frequency for the same SSID and leave the other on.

2) I spent ages to figure out a way to auto login and execute some commands. This is a consumer product and most consumer have no knowledge of certificates. Importing certificates was not possible as some steps needs to be done before a certificate can be installed and I didn't understand how. Very complex and in my opinion not user friendly at all.

The only way I was able to log in and execute a command was with sshpass which is not a good solution as the password is not encrypted:
echo -e 'configure terminal\n wlan slot1\n output-power 0dBm \n exit \n exit \n exit' | sshpass -p 'password' ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -tt admin@ZyXEL_AP

Now here is the next strange and not very satisfying thing: even if I set the power to 0 (which should be possible as it is stated in the UI) it will not turn off the power but instead it sets it to 3dBm for the 2.4G and 5dBm for 5G. Even if I set 0 in the UI, it will keep 3 and 5dBm respectively. Why?

All in all a very bad experience for now. The hardware might be great but the software is overly complicated and not user friendly at all. (Consumer user, NOT network technician.)