What channel should i change my router to

Launch NetSpot and click Continue to use the free version of the application. Discover Mode. Select your own WiFi network and click Details from the bottom toolbar. Now, switch to the Channels 2. Remember this information. Channel graph. Now, deselect your WiFi network and select all other WiFi networks.

The channel graph view will automatically update, and it should be clear which channels are used the most and which are available. Now that you know which channels are used the least, the only thing left to do is to actually change your router channel setting, and we describe how to do just that in the next section of this article.

WiFi Heatmap by NetSpot. Each router is slightly different, but most routers hide the option to change WiFi channel somewhere in the advanced settings menu. Save the new WiFi channel settings and restart your router if asked to do so. Does changing the channel improve WiFi? Which channel is best for a WiFi router? Have more questions? Read next in All about Wi-Fi If you want to dive deeper into this Wi-Fi thing, check out the following articles about Wi-Fi security, the best apps for wireless networking, inflight WiFi, etc.

High Throughput HT mode is offered in the If you have an The 2. While it lists 11 different channels, each channel is only about 5 Mhz wide. As noted above, WiFi needs a minimum of 20 Mhz. This means that most of the 11 channels overlap into the same area of the radio spectrum. Figure 1: Channel bandwidth overlap. The recommended channels to use on 2. As can be seen in the above diagram, these channels do not overlap into each other.

In general 2. It is often more crowded and less performant than 5 Ghz. While you can run 40 MHz channel width on 2. Lower frequencies generally travel further than higher frequency signals, so 2. Open Mesh access points do not support Channels 12 - 14, and there is no planned support, as these channels are not allowed in North America.

As part of your wifi scanning, you might also notice that your network is overlapping a larger number of channels than other wifi networks. To put it in technical terms, your router might be using channel bonding, which combines multiple adjacent channels together to give you even faster speeds. However, if other nearby networks are using the same wifi channels, they could affect your performance as well.

It might also be the trick that gives you better wireless performance, depending on the setup of competing networks around you. Wireless signal strength is measured in dBM on a logarithmic scale ranging from to with values closest to 1 being more desirable. A value of is considered okay, while a value of is considered very good and represents twice the signal strength of Signal to noise ratio or SNR represents measured interference.

SNR values below 24 are considered poor, and values above 41 are considered excellent. Being portable, you then walk around and see up-to-date info on channel usage and signal strength.