in the UI of a linksys router, mine is a wrt54g, im sure other linksys router has these, anyway, going into the wireless tab and then it shows wireless channels like so:

what are these different channels for? the default is 6 but is it signal strength or something?

IzzyCraft

United States4487 Posts

January 17 2009 04:03 GMT

It's the channel alot of things use the 2.4GHz band so it's to choose your own channel i believe 3 of those channels are reserved for only router usage.

Then what i would do is choose one none of your neighbors have if your wifi allows you to see what channel they use so you have minimal interference.

Also some bands determe if it's b or g i would recommnded a g band

1, 6, 11 is a perferred channel beucase the other one are really 5 channels in one

Raithed

China7078 Posts

January 17 2009 04:09 GMT

bands as in bandwidth or? so the channels are for router-router, router-hub, etc?

IzzyCraft

United States4487 Posts

January 17 2009 04:12 GMT

Bands its just channels but channels and bands mean the same thing. Channels is what the router will broadcast i believe something like 13 ish signals can be broad-casted on that channel until it becomes all distorted really most people don't have problems with it but i would choose 6 or 11 what ever one has less people using it in your area. Slightly higher GHz will give a very much not noticable boost in performance in terms of penetration power though walls etc in theory and lower ones will be able to cast further but the difference is moot

Raithed

China7078 Posts

January 17 2009 04:16 GMT

ah, your second post is most helpful. but in logic, would the channels(each one) mean for certain somethings? as youve said the smaller the GHz(channels here), the less area it will cover as well as penetration in the air and the higher it is, the further the signal can go, but what is the different in channel 10 and 11? i mean, the different would be really really slight, right? its only 5 difference in terms of GHz.

Ziph

Netherlands970 Posts

January 17 2009 06:15 GMT

You wouldn't notice any difference between 1 and 11 just pick one.

Raithed

China7078 Posts

January 17 2009 06:25 GMT

On January 17 2009 15:15 Ziph wrote:
You wouldn't notice any difference between 1 and 11 just pick one.

well yeah but then again why are there many channels, then? heh.

Ziph

Netherlands970 Posts

January 17 2009 06:34 GMT

Well if you have multiple Wireless networks you want the radio frequencies not too overlap eachoter

if you have 2 routers for example and they would both have the same channel the packages send through the air would "collide" as they would use the same frequencies this is why you can set multiple channels.

Pengu1n

United States552 Posts

January 17 2009 07:29 GMT

Sometimes other things such as your phone frequency can interfere with your wireless router. This happened to me where I would play starcraft and have lag spikes every 20 seconds or so. I couldn't figure out for the life of me wtf it was but then i changed my channel from 6 to 11 and problem solved. I think 6 and 11 are the recommended ones. Sometimes it can interfere with your connection if you change it. If your not having any problems just leave it alone.

Not_Computer

Canada2277 Posts

January 17 2009 07:34 GMT

#10

Example:
Apartment building with 17 wireless routers to choose from.

On default frequency setting: slower
Randomly choose another frequency: faster

from my experience

Kennelie

United States2296 Posts

January 17 2009 07:38 GMT

#11

From my experience it can depend if you have any cordless phones running in the house. Sometimes you can interfere with your cordless phone and cause interference between the wireless card and router/modem.

On January 17 2009 15:34 Ziph wrote:
Well if you have multiple Wireless networks you want the radio frequencies not too overlap eachoter

if you have 2 routers for example and they would both have the same channel the packages send through the air would "collide" as they would use the same frequencies this is why you can set multiple channels.

This is what im trying to say in more simplier terms.

Myrmidon

United States9452 Posts

January 17 2009 08:12 GMT

#12

The point is, you generally can't have two devices near each other transmitting using the same frequency waves or else you get collisions (a third device receiving wouldn't be able to pull the two signals apart). Other wireless devices using the 2.4 GHz spectrum usually employ some kind of frequency hopping and/or spread spectrum to reduce the occurrences and effects of interference with Wi-Fi but nothing's perfect. The most important part is to avoid interference from other Wi-Fi users. If you have neighbors with similar wireless routers, you want to choose a different channel than they are using. Try downloading Netstumbler, a pretty nifty and easy-to-use tool out of the box that will tell you what channels your neighbors are using. Then you can try to pick channels that are not used very heavily around you, to avoid the most multiple-access interference.

How it works is once you set the channel you want to use on your router, that's the only channel it will transmit on. When you connect to the router, your wireless card is really scanning all the available channels (glossing over details in scanning process). Then when it detects the signal from your router, you can connect to it. Once connected to a router, you'll be using that router's channel the whole time. So each person's router dictates what channel his/her network is using.

Please stick to using channels 1, 6, or 11. Explanation: only channels 1, 6, and 11 do not overlap (theoretically, although in practice devices are not perfect). The frequency specified in your router page is the center frequency used for the communication. However, the bandwidth of a Wi-Fi signal is larger than the spacing between adjacent channels. In other words, if you are transmitting on channel 1 and somebody else is using channel 2, the two--even if working properly--will interfere with each other and bleed a lot of energy through to the other, thus effectively making your signal-to-interference-and-noise ratio crap. IIRC it's something like the spacing between channels is 5 MHz but the bandwidth of a Wi-Fi signal is 24 MHz (12 MHz from the center to both extremes). So you need spacing of 24 or more MHz between center frequencies of channels to avoid interference between the two. Thus 1, 6, and 11 shouldn't overlap.

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