Other Wi-fi Channels shadow me

In order to find the best channel for my home wi-fi I did some research. I read that channels 1,6 and 11 don't overlap and found that my router used Channel 1 as did all my neighbours. I therefore switched to channel 6 but the next day I discovered that everyoine else was using channel 6. I tried Channel 11 and the same thing happened. I note that all the other users are BT (wifi-x, wifi-with-Fon* and a BT hub - next door neighbour). How do they do this and is there any way I can stop it?

Assuming what are you seeing is correct and not some strange bug whatever then no, ultimately if they are changing channels to match you you can't stop that. I wouldn't worry about it tbh, as long as you have good signal strength to your own kit...

Home Hubs have got something called "Smart Wireless". What that does is automatically choose the least congested channel. It can be turned off and a specific channel chosen, but I doubt many people do that. I wouldn't have thought it followed anybody around as such. My one has certainly chose a channel (6) which isn't being used by any other WiFi transmitters in the area.

Short of persuading neighbours to lock their WiFi to specific channels, there's nothing you can do about it.

Also, each BT HH will have 3 different SSIDs (in both 2,4Ghz and 5GHz if the latter is supported), However, they don't actually compete with each other in the sense of causing WiFi congestion as it's only one antenna. In most cases two SSIDs will be idle as it's to do with FON support.

nb. the other WiFi channels round me are 1 & 11m so it looks like they are all choosing the non-overlapping channels, probably automatically.

Edited by deleted (Sun 08-Mar-15 16:10:33)

Try Channel 13, they won't follow you there

Thanks for the channel 13 information - it worked like a dream! Some neighbours wi-fi's have returned to channel 1 the others have remained on 11 and I'm the only one on 13. I don't know why it works but it does. Thanks also to everyone for the information.

Channel 13 is illegal in the US so it is possible the BT auto channel doesn't use it because of this. It also doesn't have clear gap from channel 11 which the auto sense probably uses instead.

In reply to a post by ian72:

Channel 13 is illegal in the US so it is possible the BT auto channel doesn't use it because of this. It also doesn't have clear gap from channel 11 which the auto sense probably uses instead.

No, use of Ch12 & 13 is not actually illegal in the US. Use is however, restricted to very low power devices and low gain antennas due to potential interference in the allocated frequency band. To minimise the chance of a low power setting being hacked, manufacturers totally disable the channels.

From experience, use of 1, 5, 9, 13 in the UK is perfectly adequate for spacing adjacent WAPs - I use those here and when running Ch5 at full speed before starting transfers on 1 and 9 I see almost no change in the achieved data rate.