azazel1024
Very Senior Member
1) inSSIDer shows what channels each network is on. They also have a lovely graph of both channels, SSIDs and signal strength for each network. As pointed out to me recently, and I agree, its less about what networks are on your frequency and more about how often those networks are used...which is difficult to know. The best you can do is set your channel to the one that has the weakest SSIDs. So for example there might 2 networks on channel 1, 2 on channel 5 and one on channel 11, but the channel 5 and 11 networks are at -60dBi and the channel 1 networks are at -80dBi...you'll want to set your's to channel 1 because the competing networks are much weaker there.
2) Your router will not switch between frequencies, your clients will. No, they will NOT sense how congested a channel is. They will switch based on signal strength of YOUR network. If you have a concurrent dual band router, it broadcasts and works on 2.4 and 5GHz at once and the clients decide which one to connect to (you can tweak this in the wifi client driver settings in Windows and on Macs at least).
3) Yes, and if those older adapters are in active use, they'll slow everything else on the network down significantly as your router switches between 802.11b/g/n/ac modes. The perk here is that any of your AC clients are likely on 5GHz only, so nothing on b/g would slow it down...since that is 2.4GHz only...hence the concurrent bit, nothing on 2.4GHz will impact 5GHz at all. Active use I don't mean that, say, your Xbox 360 is on or something, I mean it is actively using the network connection by, say, streaming a movie, or transfering a file or something. A quick webpage load or just sitting their idle occasionally saying "hi, I am here" isn't going to impact Wifi at all.
4) That really depends on their locations relative to the router and also any competing networks. Ideally, yes, but possibly not if they are far from the router or they are far AND there are competing networks. Wiring as much as you can is always a safe bet.
5) It doesn't really. Your router is only as fast as the fastest client and no faster. So if you have a 150Mbps 11n client, a 300Mbps 11n client and a 867Mbps 11ac client all on 5GHz connected to your router, all trying to transfer a file as fast as they can, depending on how the router works out bandwidth allocation, your 150Mbps will get roughly 1/3rd "airtime", the 300Mbps will get 1/3rd air time and the 867Mbps will get 1/3rd air time. Resulting in actual speeds of about 50Mbps, 100Mbps and 232Mbps respectively (minus protocol overheads, signal losses, etc). Current routers are not what are called MU:MIMO, that is Multi User: Multi Input Multi Output. So right now, they can use all of their antennas at once, or some number of them at once, but ONLY for one client at a time. MU:MIMO routers can dedicate some of the antennas to each client. So a 4:4 radio MU:MIMO router with a pair of N300 5GHz clients, could dedicate 2 radios to one client and 2 radios to another client and get a theoretical 300Mbps to each client, no speed reductions. Where as a regular MIMO router would be limited to the 2:2 setup that each client has, using only 2 radios at a time, with the other 2 sitting idle, for 150Mbps per client since they are sharing air time. This is an ideal, I am sure due to physics and wireless being HARD, realistically its going to be more of a penalty than multiple radios usually incurrs, but it should still mean that a 4:4, or 8:4 or 8:8 router can have significantly higher throughput with multiple clients than a single MIMO router can. This is part of the reason why there is no point in "over buying" on a router. If you think you'll never have faster than a 300Mbps 2.4GHz 11n client or a 867Mbps 5Ghz 11ac client in the life time of your router, it is silly to get one that is capable of 450Mbps 2.4GHz or 1300Mbps 5GHz...because you'll never have clients OR a wifi environment in which that full bandwidth can be utilized. Now in a MU:MIMO router, it would possibly make sense. MU:MIMO is in the 11ac specs and it is coming, but its slow to come, because it is difficult to implement. Figure another year or two before we start seeing it in any real kind of way.
6) The WAN port gets plugged in to the modem and goes out to the internet. It is the Wide Area Network port. The LAN ports, yes, are for your local network.
2) Your router will not switch between frequencies, your clients will. No, they will NOT sense how congested a channel is. They will switch based on signal strength of YOUR network. If you have a concurrent dual band router, it broadcasts and works on 2.4 and 5GHz at once and the clients decide which one to connect to (you can tweak this in the wifi client driver settings in Windows and on Macs at least).
3) Yes, and if those older adapters are in active use, they'll slow everything else on the network down significantly as your router switches between 802.11b/g/n/ac modes. The perk here is that any of your AC clients are likely on 5GHz only, so nothing on b/g would slow it down...since that is 2.4GHz only...hence the concurrent bit, nothing on 2.4GHz will impact 5GHz at all. Active use I don't mean that, say, your Xbox 360 is on or something, I mean it is actively using the network connection by, say, streaming a movie, or transfering a file or something. A quick webpage load or just sitting their idle occasionally saying "hi, I am here" isn't going to impact Wifi at all.
4) That really depends on their locations relative to the router and also any competing networks. Ideally, yes, but possibly not if they are far from the router or they are far AND there are competing networks. Wiring as much as you can is always a safe bet.
5) It doesn't really. Your router is only as fast as the fastest client and no faster. So if you have a 150Mbps 11n client, a 300Mbps 11n client and a 867Mbps 11ac client all on 5GHz connected to your router, all trying to transfer a file as fast as they can, depending on how the router works out bandwidth allocation, your 150Mbps will get roughly 1/3rd "airtime", the 300Mbps will get 1/3rd air time and the 867Mbps will get 1/3rd air time. Resulting in actual speeds of about 50Mbps, 100Mbps and 232Mbps respectively (minus protocol overheads, signal losses, etc). Current routers are not what are called MU:MIMO, that is Multi User: Multi Input Multi Output. So right now, they can use all of their antennas at once, or some number of them at once, but ONLY for one client at a time. MU:MIMO routers can dedicate some of the antennas to each client. So a 4:4 radio MU:MIMO router with a pair of N300 5GHz clients, could dedicate 2 radios to one client and 2 radios to another client and get a theoretical 300Mbps to each client, no speed reductions. Where as a regular MIMO router would be limited to the 2:2 setup that each client has, using only 2 radios at a time, with the other 2 sitting idle, for 150Mbps per client since they are sharing air time. This is an ideal, I am sure due to physics and wireless being HARD, realistically its going to be more of a penalty than multiple radios usually incurrs, but it should still mean that a 4:4, or 8:4 or 8:8 router can have significantly higher throughput with multiple clients than a single MIMO router can. This is part of the reason why there is no point in "over buying" on a router. If you think you'll never have faster than a 300Mbps 2.4GHz 11n client or a 867Mbps 5Ghz 11ac client in the life time of your router, it is silly to get one that is capable of 450Mbps 2.4GHz or 1300Mbps 5GHz...because you'll never have clients OR a wifi environment in which that full bandwidth can be utilized. Now in a MU:MIMO router, it would possibly make sense. MU:MIMO is in the 11ac specs and it is coming, but its slow to come, because it is difficult to implement. Figure another year or two before we start seeing it in any real kind of way.
6) The WAN port gets plugged in to the modem and goes out to the internet. It is the Wide Area Network port. The LAN ports, yes, are for your local network.
