Which wireless channel to use

For your issue about not getting 5GHz to other parts of the house due to range, you can add a second WAP wired to the first. First off, yes! You are correct. When given the opportunity, you should try to avoid competing wireless networks at all costs. Relax and be free from anxiety Take back good sleep and help alleviate pain. What does that mean, though? Your dual-band wireless router operates between a range of wireless frequencies—roughly MHz to MHz for your 2. Each of these ranges is divided into wireless channels:.

Still with me? If either of these situations sounds familiar, there's a high probability your wireless network is experiencing interference.

But before you seek out a Black Friday deal to upgrade your WiFi network, consider adjusting the WiFi channel width settings on your router first. Before we discuss WiFi channel width, let's recap what WiFi channels are. Essentially, WiFi channels are smaller bands within WiFi frequency bands that are used by your wireless network to send and receive data. Depending on which frequency band your router is using, you have a certain number of WiFi channels to choose from:.

The key takeaway here is that some WiFi channels are better to use than others because of interference, specifically Co-Channel interference and Adjacent-Channel interference. In the former, devices are competing for time to talk on the same channel. In the latter, devices from overlapping channels are trying to talk over each other. You can avoid such interference by choosing to use a non-overlapping, uncrowded WiFi channel.

Additionally, there are reasons to use one frequency band over the other; learn more about these reasons here! WiFi channels are each allotted a 20 MHz segment in the frequency band they're in, and can also be bonded together to form wider segments.

The width of a WiFi channel dictates how much data can pass through and at what speed , where the wider channels are usually associated with more data transferred at faster speeds— at least, when they aren't impacted by interference.

Interference is more common in certain frequency bands and on certain WiFi channels than others. The following 5 GHz channels are supported with 20MHz channel width:. If using 40 MHz channel width, the bandwidth of the following channel is used:.

If using 80 MHz channel width, the bandwidth of the following channel is used:. This means the wider the channel width used, the higher the chances that access points will overlap each other in the same radio spectrum.

If you have a sparse network with a few access points and not a lot of users, such as a home or small office, you should probably use 80MHz channel width to maximize per-client performance. Meanwhile, if you have a dense network with a lot of access points and clients, then using 40MHz channel width may help reduce the chances that access points and clients interfere with each other.

While 5 GHz offers greater performance, its distance is reduced compared to 2. DFS allows the access point to switch channels if it detects military or weather radar already in use on the channel. DFS is live as of access point firmware version 6. If you do not want to manually set your own channels, you may be better served by enabling Auto Channel Mode. Skip to Navigation Skip to Main Content. Toggle SideBar. Datto Help Center.

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