Wireless channel router setup

A number of subtle factors can come into play, including the way your router is set up, the presence of nearby interference, whether you live in an apartment building or a stand-alone house, where your microwave sits in relation to the rest of your network, and how far your devices are from the router.

But many of us have looked through that list of a dozen or so channels and wondered what they are, and more importantly, which of the channels are faster than the others. After All versions of Wi-Fi up to and including These MHz are separated into 14 channels of 20MHz each. On a non-MIMO setup i. If you use If you want maximum throughput and minimal interference, channels 1, 6, and 11 are your best choices.

But depending on other wireless networks in your vicinity, one of those channels might be a better option than the others. In that situation, you would have to change to channel 11 to completely avoid the interference though 6 would be pretty good as well. All the Wi-Fi scanners listed above are powerful tools to scan your network area. Step 1 — Go to the online Microsoft Store. Step 3 — Install the application on your Windows machine. When the installation is completed, open the application.

On the right side, you can select extra filters. I recommend not changing the default settings. The last 3 options are rather advanced options, which are not applicable for now. You will see a graph with visuals, indicating what networks are performing best and worst.

Below the graph, WiFi Analyzer leaves a recommendation based on the scan results. In this example, the tool recommends using channel However, we can also draw a different conclusion here. As we know, the closer RSSI is to 0, the better. So, that makes CH1 matthafner. As mentioned before, the closer to 0, the better. Linux users have two options when it comes to detecting Wi-Fi channels: you can either run a command line in Terminal, or you can choose to download a more visually-enhanced tool, like WiFi Radar.

Installing software tools on Linux always takes a bit more effort compared to Windows and Mac. So, I recommend using the Terminal utility to scan for the best Wi-Fi network channel in your area. The command line groups the results, so you can see how much each channel is used. Earlier in this guide, I recommended Wifi Analyzer for Windows users. I also recommend this tool for Android users, because the tool is also compatible and available for mobile devices.

In the example, channel 11 appears to have the best statistics. Step 3 — Check the dBm signal strength and the graph to visually compare all the available networks. That way, once you adjust your router explained below , you can connect to the new channel — no fancy footwork with the iPhone necessary. So, by now, you should have been able to successfully identify the best Wi-Fi channel in your area based on the signal strength, least users on a channel, and width 2.

This way you can get the best performance out of your wireless connection. Which brings me to my next point, how to find which one is suitable for you? Noise Noise Floor refers to the summation of all the unwanted signals and sources of noise within the range of your connection.

On the other hand, the Noise value should have a low number. But for both of these numbers, you have to remember that the value is negative. You can remember the thumb rule that the RSSI value should be closer to zero.

But for Noise, the reverse is true. Think of it like the channel having a Noise value furthest from zero is better. The higher this ratio, the better the WiFi connection is. This window shows a complete overview of the analysis of the WiFi channels in the area as well as the best WiFi channel in the area of your router.

Even though the window will have a suggestion for the best channel, it is better to make some calculations and find out on your own which channel is the best.

By now, you know that the best channel is one that has the best SNR value. Unlike Mac, you will have to use an app or software to find out the best Wi-Fi channel in your area on Windows. Here are some suggested apps:. All these apps are pretty powerful and can help you with scanning and finding the best channels in your area. But if the graph seems too complicated, you can also simply check the bottom left side of the dashboard where you will see the recommended channel.

However, you do not need to rely on the readings. You can check for yourself. As I have established before, the closer RSSI of a channel is to 0, the higher performing the channel is. You can download it from the Play Store. After that, follow these steps:. But before I explain what exactly WiFi frequency bands are, you need to understand how routers work. Your router is basically a network device that is used to transmit data to your devices through radio waves.

The router transmits radio waves in all directions and your devices connected to the Wi-Fi or the router receive this data. This is the simplest explanation of how a router works. The next concept that comes into play is bands and channels. Both 2. On the other hand, 5GHz frequency has higher bandwidth but a shorter range, which means that it has better performance than 2.

In other words, a 5GHz wireless connection is good for getting faster internet speed at a small distance, whereas the 2. This also means that a 5GHz connection is not as good as the 2.