I understand to set the distance in K to the farthest node you would like to contact and have performed this operation.

What actually does this setting do is my question?

As perhaps not setting it correctly could hinder operation etc. I have no idea as to what it changes,

Thanks,

Marc

Km6b

It tells the lower layer hardware (wifi chip) how long it should wait for reply on messages it sends.  Time is calculated based on the fact that RF takes time to travel through space.  Internally the hardware has some items it expects to happen within a certain time window and that is usually based on the signal being within a short distance of the hardware (feet vs miles.). Providing this value let's the hardware know it needs to wait longer. 

Too low and you can end up where data either gets sent multiple times or that the connection doesn't establish.