There are many problems that router users face especially when it comes to speed, performance and connectivity. There several reasons as to why speed would drop perhaps unwanted users sitting on your network, or one device taking up too much of bandwidth. But there are also ways of increasing performance especially if you’re facing slow connection speed and a regularly dropping network. One way of fixing this is by changing the channel your Wi-Fi is on. This basically means that if you’re on the same Wi-Fi channel as a lot of your neighbors or other members, you’ll experience a lot of interference which ultimately causes the network to either drop or be slow. The best bet is to choose a channel with less people on it in order to decrease interference and then ultimately improve your signals.
First understanding a few technical details, a router uses 2.4GHz for 802.11n and 5GHz for 802.11c and n. Routers can basically pick from 11 channels and is usually done so after the first initial setup by choosing which ever channel is being broadcasted in the area. But when several WiFi networks overlap on one channel, your internet will be slow causing pages to take longer to load and videos to buffer while streaming.
You’ll need the help of a software tool in order to tell you what channels are available. A few examples of such tools are NirSoft WifiInfoView or WiFi Analyzer App which is available on windows 10 as well and is free of cost. Start by making sure your device is connected to the WiFi network. In the App, you will see graphs of nearby networks differentiated on the basis of colours. A higher curve means stronger signals. You could also separately check the best channels for 2.4GHz and 5GHz. Here, you will also be able to see which channels are overlapping and therefore having more interference than other channels. If 2.4GHz has heavy traffic, you can connect your devices to the 5GHz network to see if that’s less crowded (if the router supports it).
Then, you will need to access your router’s configuration page by using the default IP. You can find out the IP by entering “ipconfig” in Command Prompt and the IP displayed next to Default Gateway will be you router’s IP. Login using Admin/Password or whichever default log in your router uses. Now, you will need to find a tab called WiFi settings. The name may vary depending on the router model that you own. It may also be mentioned in Advanced Settings. Some routers also have it by the name of Manual Wireless Network Setup. Here you will see an option to select whichever channel had the least traffic. If you have a dual band router, you may be required to choose the channel separately for each frequency. Make sure to save your settings before you reboot the router. Hopefully now you can enjoy better speed, connectivity and stutter-less videos.
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