Starting to despair

[sfx2000]

Being "neighbor friendly" - that doesn't really hold water, mostly because your neighbor gives zero-f**ks about your wifi, so why bother worrying about them?

I say try wide channels - worst case, no change in performance, best case is you'll increase performance - it won't double, but it will improve...

And why I say this - they likely don't have the tools to check bandwidth/channel widths anyways - they're just setting up their router with the "setup wizards" and they're done with it...

One can spend a lot of time agonizing and what not, optimizing, however questionable that effort leads to...

Or just do a quick scan and set channels...

WiFi has always been about proximity to the AP, not what channels/modes it is set to...

 

[drinkingbird]

And why I say this - they likely don't have the tools to check bandwidth/channel widths anyways - they're just setting up their router with the "setup wizards" and they're done with it...

One can spend a lot of time agonizing and what not, optimizing, however questionable that effort leads to...

Or just do a quick scan and set channels...

WiFi has always been about proximity to the AP, not what channels/modes it is set to...

In reality most of them are unpacking and plugging in the ISP router and that's it. In those cases it is the ISP manufacturer that really shouldn't be enabling it by default. But those with the ability to make a choice, well, personally I think the right thing to do is set it to 20. But obviously that's my opinion on it, YMMV.

 

[sfx2000]

I've also seen 1/3/7/11. In reality, unless you control the entire environment, none of the "rules" apply. I'd love to coordinate my neighborhood's channels and limit everyone to 20 mhz but pretty sure I'd get more than a few doors slammed in my face.

Given the saturation and challenges, I still think 40mhz never should have been introduced and certainly shouldn't be a default (even if the router supposedly checks before enabling it). At the very least, it should not kick in until a device capable of using it is present.

Funny how this always evolves back to SuperG, Afterburner, and airgo's Channel Bonding back in the pre-11n days... I suppose holy wars leave a lot of scars perhaps...

Do you think for a moment that the standards guys post 11n didn't consider all that nonsense?

It's been what 15 years or more, and these old wives tales still exist...

Best thing that could happen in 2.4GHz is to get rid of 11b support - it's been highly deprecated in the standards bodies for a while now, and OpenWRT defaults to OFDM only for 2.4 (11g/11n/11ax) now for a while...

People would rather talk about old-days and 40 MHz channels and not just getting rid of 11b...

 

[drinkingbird]

Funny how this always evolves back to SuperG, Afterburner, and airgo's Channel Bonding back in the pre-11n days... I suppose holy wars leave a lot of scars perhaps...

Do you think for a moment that the standards guys post 11n didn't consider all that nonsense?

It's been what 15 years or more, and these old wives tales still exist...

Best thing that could happen in 2.4GHz is to get rid of 11b support - it's been highly deprecated in the standards bodies for a while now, and OpenWRT defaults to OFDM only for 2.4 (11g/11n/11ax) now for a while...

People would rather talk about old-days and 40 MHz channels and not just getting rid of 11b...

Just because there is better coexistence now (though N still isn't great and nothing much uses AX 2.4) doesn't mean channel hogs don't have an impact. I've watched that impact first hand on my own stuff over the last 10 years. When everyone is fighting for a tiny piece of bandwidth that extra noise and overhead certainly doesn't help matters.

In reality most of what is using 2.4 is single or 2 stream IOT stuff with minimal bandwidth needs and no 40mhz support anyway, so enabling it isn't actually benefitting anyone anyway.

 

[TheLyppardMan]

Yes they do. Routers set to auto change channels all the time. If you find a clean fixed channel use it but be aware any neighboring router can join you there at any second. This is why wifi analizers are useless. What you see one minute can change the next. Often AP will find each other because being on the same channel is better then cross splatter from another. 2.4Ghz should just be avoided period unless you live in the forest. It's simply not needed today and should be disabled.

Unless of course you still have some devices that can only connect to the 2.4 GHz band, like my TomTom satnav, my Canon TS8250 printer/scanner, my Honeywell evohome TRV system, my Amazon Kindle, my Canon Powershot camera and my Dixons JVC TV, which for some unknown reason will no longer conenct the 5 GHz band.

 

[eightiescalling]

Yes they do. Routers set to auto change channels all the time. If you find a clean fixed channel use it but be aware any neighboring router can join you there at any second. This is why wifi analizers are useless. What you see one minute can change the next. Often AP will find each other because being on the same channel is better then cross splatter from another. 2.4Ghz should just be avoided period unless you live in the forest. It's simply not needed today and should be disabled.

Might be my (bad) understanding but I disagree with this.

Where low bandwidth and range is more important (ie the majority of IoT) then 2.4 is better suited.

Not to mention the range of IoT devices mean a good scattering of max supported standards (sometimes far lower than you'd expect). Why would you want that dragging down the max speeds of 5GHz that could be used by the devices you want the speed on?

These days I tend to be quite deliberate on what I let things connect with based on the characteristics they need - if it doesn't move it gets a cable, if it needs speed it get 5GHz otherwise it gets lumped on 2.4Ghz.

 

[Smokey613]

I have 1 IoT device that is 11b. I may eventually look for a replacement solution but for now it’s not an issue.

I like Asus routers, especially using Merlin firmware. This combination allows one to endulge their “tinkering” urges to the max. I know this from personal experience.

As most long time forum members know, I am probably the most prolific network ”change artist” on SNB.

I have played the wifi channel game for years and it can become frustrating in a wifi crowed environment such as apartments or other multi tenant settings.

I live in a retirement community where we have very small lots which are close to one another.

I can do a wifi scan and see 15-20 SSIDs at any given time. Add in wifi printers broadcasting and it’s even worse.

I have used eero units at different times during my equipment testing.

I had a phobia about cloud controlled devices that required talking to the ”mothership” so I kept going back to Asus.

I tried Deco, Synology and even Netgear AP units briefly.

Hands down, the older eero Pro and newer eero Pro 6 have been the most stable, best working wifi router / mesh solution.

No, they are not the speed champs but they simply work and their roaming is only surpassed IMHO, by commercial grade solutions.

My current setup still allows me to indulge my “tinkering” but I have pretty much got the Arista configured like I want it.

I have been helping some of my community friends with their technology needs and by far, installing eero Pro 6 units has proven to be a simple set and forget solution to their wifi network needs.

I have had no complaints and they are very happy with the results as our max available bandwidth is 300/30 cable.

I still enjoy visiting SNB and keeping up with eveyone’s technology journey.

 

[maxbraketorque]

Entertaining to see how this thread has turned into a debate on whether auto-channel is useful. Everyone has their own experiences, but what is universal is that routers set to auto-channel aren't working this out collectively with the other routers in the neighborhood. Instead, each one is following their algorithm without communication with other routers. So your router may gather data for 30 minutes and then switch to a channel what it thinks is better, but then the other routers will all react to this, and maybe some other routers will have already changed channel before yours changed channels, resulting in making the new channel worse. And while your router may be reacting to the routers around it, your neighbors router will be reacting to routers around it, many of which will be routers that yours does not see. So every router has unique forces driving its choice of channel. If data on channel usage as a function of time could be obtained on a neighborhood full of routers using auto-channel, I believe that we would see any given channel randomly going up and down in usage, and I don't think that any given router is likely to be effectively following the lowest usage channel.

Now if a neighborhood consisted of something like just 5 routers, then I'm pretty sure that auto-channel would work, i.e., despite the lack of any purposeful cooperation among the routers, I think the routers would eventually settle down to specific channels that would be overall beneficial to all the routers.

My approach is to use manual-channel, and then let auto-channel on my neighbor's routers cause those routers to select channels other than mine. Or to put it another way, consistent use of a single channel creates a steady impact on the auto-channel selection algorithm of neighboring routers that drives those routers to stay away from the channel I'm using. I believe that this has a better chance of creating a clearer channel than the randomness of having everyone on auto-channel.

What we really need is an auto-channel selection algorithm that allows routers to work together, but even this scenario may not be ideal because every router has its own unique set of neighbors. A truly successful auto-channel system would result in entire neighborhoods (perhaps covering entire apartment complexes or city blocks of homes) working together to create a stable channel environment. It would be fascinating to plot channel usage as a function of time and location for a system like this. I expect that a manual change of status of a single router (e.g., turning it off) would cause local perturbations in channel usage that would die off at some physical distance. And having some fraction of the routers set on a specific channel would help to stabilize the environment like an anchor point.

 

[Smokey613]

My approach is to use manual-channel, and then let auto-channel on my neighbor's routers cause those routers to select channels other than mine. Or to put it another way, consistent use of a single channel creates a steady impact on the auto-channel selection algorithm of neighboring routers that drives those routers to stay away from the channel I'm using. I believe that this has a better chance of creating a clearer channel than the randomness of having everyone on auto-channel.

I too have used this method on my Asus routers and had good results. It may take a few days, but my neighbor’s routers usually move off my manually selected channels.

 

[TheLyppardMan]

So how far down the list (by signal strength) of local Wi-Fi channels do we need to go before interference becomes negligible? This is a snapshot of most of the nearby Wi-Fi networks around my home. Mine are the top 3, currently using channels 7 & 52:

 

[drinkingbird]

My approach is to use manual-channel, and then let auto-channel on my neighbor's routers cause those routers to select channels other than mine. Or to put it another way, consistent use of a single channel creates a steady impact on the auto-channel selection algorithm of neighboring routers that drives those routers to stay away from the channel I'm using. I believe that this has a better chance of creating a clearer channel than the randomness of having everyone on auto-channel.

Does not work that way in my experience, at least not with the FIOS and Xfinity routers around here. Most are running 40mhz and never change their channels, and I know most of them are in houses where nobody knows how to get in the GUI or what the GUI even is.

Most routers are pretty sticky and only change channel upon a restart. So if you're lucky and your neighbors are having poor performance and reboot frequently maybe they'll move away, maybe they won't.

I gave up, I tried changing static channels all the time and even coordinated channels with neighbors that I do "support" for, then finally just joined the musical chairs game. Honestly I see people using/overlapping my channel much less now with auto than I did with static and performance has been as consistent as 2.4Ghz in suburban area can be.

 

[drinkingbird]

So how far down the list (by signal strength) of local Wi-Fi channels do we need to go before interference becomes negligible? This is a snapshot of most of the nearby Wi-Fi networks around my home. Mine are the top 3, currently using channels 7 & 52:

View attachment 51765

Obviously the top 3 are you (I'm assuming one of the 2.4 is a guest SSID).

-90dbm is where it becomes "negligible". But -80 should have pretty low impact as well.

 

[TheLyppardMan]

Obviously the top 3 are you (I'm assuming one of the 2.4 is a guest SSID).

-90dbm is where it becomes "negligible". But -80 should have pretty low impact as well.

Thank you for that. It's roughly what I thought.

 

[TheLyppardMan]

Just to add more confusion to the mix, I'v just tried using a Wi-Fi analyser app on my phone and it's currently reporting channel 7 as being one of the worst to use at the moment and that just happens to be the one that my router has chosen to use.

 

[Morris]

When you walk on a sand beach, do you leave foot prints?

 

[drinkingbird]

Just to add more confusion to the mix, I'v just tried using a Wi-Fi analyser app on my phone and it's currently reporting channel 7 as being one of the worst to use at the moment and that just happens to be the one that my router has chosen to use.

View attachment 51777

It is also saying 11 is one of the best. Obviously that app is not very good. Regardless, these apps just look at neighboring networks, not interference etc. Believe the real world results not what some random app is telling you. It is probably counting your own very strong channel 7 network in its calculation thus seeing it (and the ones on either side) as a bad choice.

 

[TheLyppardMan]

It is also saying 11 is one of the best. Obviously that app is not very good. Regardless, these apps just look at neighboring networks, not interference etc. Believe the real world results not what some random app is telling you. It is probably counting your own very strong channel 7 network in its calculation thus seeing it (and the ones on either side) as a bad choice.

Yes, I was wondering if it was using my own connection in that way. What a useless app.

 

[bennor]

What a useless app.

The app isn't necessarily useless rather it is just showing the information on what it's programing thinks is best at that particular moment in time. You'd likely have to run it multiple times over multiple days to get a more accurate picture of the WiFi channel usage in your location.

 

[L&LD]

The app is useless. And a possible security issue too. Uninstall.

The programming is exactly why it is useless (or more specifically, the lack of solid programming, in this case).

It will report in the same 'style' each time it is used. And who knows what it is doing in the background on your phone?

 

[TheLyppardMan]

I uninstalled it straight away once I knew it was no good, but thanks for the reminder.