Which Wifi Channel

I recently moved house and now seem to pick up silly amounts of wifi traffic. To top it off i have neighbors with wifi channels like 2+6 and 7+11.

I've been through a few different channels trying to get an uninterrupted connection. By that i mean on some channels loading web pages very slow, i assume from all the interference. I can't stream airplay music from itunes on channel 1 without drop outs for example but yet it appears to be the lowest powered channel on the following graph. It's just about 10 different AP's use channel 1.

I've been using channel 7 for days perfectly and yesterday it started exhibiting the same slow behavior.

[IMG]http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8065/8181820254_fd9035...[/IMG]

Switch to 5GHz?

My billion 7700n only operates on 2.4ghz

I have a 3 storey house and i need it to reach the top floor too.

thanks

Don't know if you get on with your new neighbours yet, but may I suggest you have a get together and discuss the wi-fi channels situation. They will be getting same interference/poor performance problems too. Its in everyones best interest to stick to channels 1,6 or 11 so as to reduce interference. I suspect like the majority of folks your neighbours may not be techies and don't understand the implications of the channels they have their routers set too. Worth a try.

Work out a scheme with the neighbours - I would guess that they have 2 WAPs each and similar problems in reaching the whole house.

From experience, it is possible to use 1, 5, 9 & 13 without any interference issue.

Put a scheme to your immediate neighbours that you will use Ch1 on the ground floor and Ch9 on the top floor. A neighbour on one side will use Ch5 on the ground and Ch13 on the top and the other neighbour Ch13 on the ground and Ch5 on top. They then agree with their neighbours to use Ch9 and Ch1 ...

I have a 3 storey house and i need it to reach the top floor too.

try laying the aerials on the router flat, so at least some of the signal goes between floors.

they /do not/ radiate in the direction they point

Why like so many others do you perpetuate the 1, 6, 11 settings? It is quite feasible to use 1, 5, 9, 13 without problems.

Take a peek at our router reviews.

I leave antenna in the config manufacturer shows and get decent up/down results. Wooden floors mind you, if concrete then problems are to be expected

I'm not a great expert on this topic but I had similar problems with neighbour wifi interference. I Googled and came up with some free sofware called inSSIDer from a company called Metageek. (see www.metageek.net)

I read some of their tutorials and using the inSSIDer software it shows you graphically what is happening with the surrounding wifi networks to you.

What I learned if I can explain myself clearly is that each wifi channel uses I believe a 20Mhz spread of frequency. When you look at this shown on the inSSIDer software if a wifi network is using channel 1 for example it is using 10Mhz of frequency to the left of channel 1 down the frequency scale and 10Mhz to the right of channel 1 up the frequency scale which in the 2.4Ghz band takes you to the channel 3 frequency.

Which ever channel you pick to use for your network you use frequency spread of two channels to the left and two channels to the right

so channel 1 uses left of 1 and up to 3
2 overlaps 1 and up to 4
3 covers 1 to 5
4 covers 2 to 6 and so on up channel 11 covers 9 to 13

When you are in a congested area there are only the 3 channels of 1, 6 and 11 that dont overlap and therefore can not cause any interference.

What you said is correct you can use any channel you like when you have no neighbouring networks, if you want to use channel 7 thats fine and it will use frequencies from channel 5 to 9, but you neighbours must not be using any channels at either end to overlap with these or you might get interference.

Hope that explains not too technically what I learn't recently. I regularly use inSSIDer on laptop and Android app to see what is going on in the wifi world around me.

The other influencing factor is how physically close the neighbouring routers are to each other. If you live in suberbia in detached houses you will get less chance of interference because there will be weaker signals than if you live in a block of flats where neighbouring routers might only be a few feet apart the other side of the wall to your neighbours flat.

Edited by deleted (Tue 13-Nov-12 13:45:52)

Thanks

The image i posted was from inssider app

No matter which way i cut it, i seem to get strong signals from other AP's.

I can't believe it really, it's a 5 bed 3 storey detached house. I have neighbours left and right but nothing behind and in front they are across the road.

Our rooms are divided by thermalite block too and the router is in the hall which being a 3 storey has an open stairwell which i assume helps the signal travel up but the interference and wifi congested despite being detached is something i've never experienced outside of big cities.

I'm still trying to find a decent channel but it seems some AP's around me have dynamic channel allocation and these are the ones that spread over 40mhz. I've noticed them changing channel.