Setting Your Regulatory Domain

Dec 21, 2016

Regulatory domains and restrictions can vary between different countries and regions. To ensure that you’re compliant to your local regulatory restrictions, you can set your country in your configuration.

This will apply restrictions to your maximum transmission power, and channels available, based on the region you select.

SSH to your OpenWRT device

If you are using Windows then start PuTTY and click Session on the left side, select SSH from the options, and then enter in the IP Address of your OpenWRT box into the Host Name field.

Once you’ve done this just click on Open to start up the SSH connection.

If you are connecting via terminal, then just SSH to your OpenWRT device using the following command, where 192.168.1.1 is your OpenWRT device’s IP address.

ssh [email protected]

Configuration

First we need to access the wireless config file to make changes. So run the following command:

vi /etc/config/wireless

Once this is open, you will need to find the device that your network is using. This is relatively simple, just look for the SSID of your network.

config 'wifi-iface'
        option 'device'     'wl0'
        option 'network'    'lan'
        option 'mode'       'ap'
        option 'ssid'       'CountryWiFi'
        option 'encryption' 'psk2'
        option 'key'        'IAmTheLaw'

Above, we have found the interface for the SSID ‘CountryWiFi’. We can see that the device in use is wl0 so we need to look for the device with that name. You should find something similar to the below:

config 'wifi-device' 'wl0'
        option 'type'    'broadcom'
        option 'channel' '6'

Once you have found it, we need to add/edit in the following:

option 'country'    'GB'

In this example, using a broadcom device, this needs to be the two letter country code. Once you’ve set the country, you should be left with something similar to the below:

config 'wifi-device' 'wl0'
        option 'type'    'broadcom'
        option 'channel' '6'
        option 'country' 'GB'

When you are happy you will need to reboot your device, by running this command:

reboot

Once your device has rebooted, you can confirm which regulatory domain it is configured under by running the following command:

iw reg get

CT WiFi is a cloud based WiFi management platform for businesses. The firmware gives consumer-grade WiFi access points enterprise-like capabilities. Or you can utilise the captive portal solution with your existing infrastructure. Create a free account and check it here ct-networks.io