Since Wi-Fi networks interfere with each other, if you live in a building or in an apartment building with neighbors on the right and left it is easy for the various wireless connections to interfere with each other . Obviously, interference is bad and, for everyone, general internet performance is going down.
To limit these interferences it is good to know that the routers from which a wifi network is generated, can work on different frequency channels .
Ideally, therefore, interference is reduced if the various nearby wifi networks work on different channels.
Some routers have a Wi-Fi channel set by default, others instead try to automatically choose the best Wi-Fi channel to have the least external interference.
In the end, however, the configuration margins are so limited as to make it very difficult to avoid interference on wifi if there are many wifi networks around us.
READ ALSO: Have better coverage of the wifi router at home
But it is not only the neighbors' wifi networks that disturb the wireless signal, there are in fact other commonly used appliances such as the microwave, the baby monitor or the cordless phone, which if kept close to the router (and it may be that our near it has one adjacent to the wall where our router is located) can cause significant interference.
Most of these devices work on the 2.4 GHz band which is the same used by cheaper and older routers.
On a 2.4 GHz router there are 14 different wireless channels available, but they overlap each other .
The Wi-Fi network channels are subsets of the available radio frequencies and can be imagined as pipes that are not isolated from each other, the flow of which is mixed inside with that of the neighboring tube.
In the end, the only non-overlapping channels on the 2.5 GHz band are the most distant channels, namely 1, 6 and 11 .
These are therefore the only three channels used by 2.5 GHz routers, with the consequence that if you can see more than three wireless networks from your PC or smartphone, there is no way to avoid interference (unless that the walls of the house are not insulated with foil).
It is also useless to choose a channel different from the 3 most used, because they are not too far away.
If channel 1 is used and our neighbor uses channel 2, interference from the adjacent channel is not well handled by the receivers.
If, on the other hand, both WLAN networks use the same channel, the receivers have more ease of coordination and, even if both compete for part of the same spectrum (and band), sharing is certainly more efficient, with a speed that will not be the desired one, but with reliable operation.
In other words, when two networks are both on the same channel, traffic from each stops and waits for the other to pass in a coordinated way.
On the other hand, when two networks are on different channels not far and overlapping (for example 3 and 6), the traffic is not coordinated and each network will see the signal from the other as an interference that degrades the performance.
Moving on to re-read what is written in another article on how to choose the best and least crowded wifi channel, let's see how, with a program like Nirsoft WirelessNetView, it is possible to cross different data related to nearby wifi networks, to find out which channel is less busy.
After the above it is therefore obvious that one of the three non-overlapping channels, 1, 6 or 11, is preferred, choosing the one that is not only less used by other networks, but which also has less interference.
For example, if we discover that a strong signal network is on channel 8, this can disturb both 6 and 11 and all that remains is to choose channel 1.
I remember that to set the channel of your wifi network you need to access the router, go to the basic settings of wireless and change the option related to the channel or Channel .
READ ALSO: What slows down the network speed (wifi or wired) and the internet connection
The final solution to the problem of interference with neighbors' wifi networks is to buy a new dual band router that works on 5 GHz frequency .
Modern Wi-Fi standards have the option to work on the 5 GHz band which instead offers 23 non-overlapping channels.
This does not mean that any interference is eliminated, but being less used and having much more space, there is little chance of a disturbed signal, also because external devices do not work on this frequency.
Currently, on Amazon, you can buy a dual band router at a great price.
READ ALSO: Improve the wifi signal and avoid frequent disconnections
