Oh woah, seriously? I use Tomato and it seems like the default is 17, no wonder I've been having some issues with range. I just thought it was because my neighbors were setting up more wifi routers. Will try that out, thanks!
The one thing I'm worried about though is whether that setting of 63 is worse for shorter distances. From my limited experience with building a simple radio transmitter/receiver and amplifiers, if your received signal is too strong it'll just saturate and turn to crap, and as it happens my bedroom is right next to the room with the router in it, so boosting the signal might screw up reception on my phone. But at least now I know that there's room to play around here, thanks for letting me know!
The one thing I'm worried about though is whether that setting of 63 is worse for shorter distances. From my limited experience with building a simple radio transmitter/receiver and amplifiers, if your received signal is too strong it'll just saturate and turn to crap, and as it happens my bedroom is right next to the room with the router in it, so boosting the signal might screw up reception on my phone. But at least now I know that there's room to play around here, thanks for letting me know!