It doesn’t matter what kind of wireless network you are running at your home, be it an Apple Airport base station, or one of many other brands like D-Link, Asus, Billion, Netgear, or even a branded one like a Bigpond home wirless network, they all suffer the problem of network congestion. By network congestion I mean there are so many other people in your street or block of units with wireless equipment and they all interfere with each other – a bit like lots of people talking together in a crowded room. This can manifest itself as reduced range on your WiFi network, a drop in speed, your wireless signal dropping out, or your wireless signal strength going up and down randomly. Here’s how to change your wireless channel so that you won’t clash with the other people around you.
In Australia there are 13 wireless channels in the USA there are only 11. When you go and buy a wireless router and bring it home and plug it in it will default to one of those channels, most likely the middle one – Channel 6. If your next door neighbours have done the same thing, chances are all your wireless networks are on channel 6 and therefore they are interfering with each other. This does not reduce the power that your wireless base station puts out, but it does make it harder to your computer to pick up the signal because it will be picking up next door’s network as well – it’s a bit like trying to listen to a conversation in a noisy room. The best thing to do is change the channel of your wireless device. There is a slight complication though, because although there are 11 channels, they all overlap! Have a look at this picture:
wireless channels - click to enlarge
All the 11 channels overlap and so the way to use channels that don’t overlap is to use either channel 1, 6 or 11. It used to be the case that if you are having trouble on say channel 6 you could just switch to channel 1 or 11 and find some free space. But as more and more people go wireless these channels are filling up. For an example, look at all the wireless networks where I live. (I have used a ubiqity AirOS on a Picostation to get this information, but you can use an iphone app such as WiFiFoFum or a great app for mac OSX called wifi scanner from here.)
A list of the local wireless networks interfering with my home network!
These are all the signals I get sitting in my lounge room at home! And this is in a rural area with quite spread out houses! I’d hate to see what was like living in the city. Notice that although there are 7 networks, most of them are on channel 1, 6 or 11. So I would be better choosing a channel between these, like 3 or 9. This will overlap with the other channels but it will be better than trying to compete directly with them! All wireless routers come with information on how to choose a different channel – might be time to dig out the user manual!
A Telstra big pond wireless router
Finding the BEST frequency for your location.
I find the best way to work out the optimum frequency for your wireless network is by trial and error, and using a little iPhone utility called WiFiFoFum.
Firstly go into your wireless router – you will need the password for this, and change the Channel to 1.
On the airport base station it this looks like this under Settings, Airport, Wireless:
Selecting a wireless channel
When you have done this, restart your wireless modem, then measure the signal strength (RSSI) using WiFiFoFum, eg -89.
Change the Channel to 2, then do it again.
You will end up with some results like this:
Channel 1 88-89
Channel 2 92-94
Channel 3 84-87
Channel 4 84-87
Channel 5 82-84
Channel 6 83-85 and so on.
Pick the channel that has the best signal – note that a lower number is better as it is measured in -dB so higher means a weaker signal. For me it was channel 5.
You may want to repeat the test another time and another day because people can turn their wireless modems on and off at different times in the day.
How do I find my wireless base station settings?
For most wireless routers you need to surf to their web page from your browser – Safari or Firefox. To do this you need the IP address of your router. To find it go into your Apple Menu (top left of your screen) , then system preferences, then network, then click on Airport, then Advanced, then TCP/IP, then have a look at what it says next to Router:
It will be a number like 10.0.0.138, or 168.0.0.1, or 192.168.1.1 or something similar.
Type that number into Safari as if it were a webpage!
Accessing your wireless router to change the channel
This will take you to your wireless Router page (you will need a password that came with the router – check your documentation) where you can change the channel settings.
You will need to restart the wireless router each time you change a setting.
If you have an Apple AirPort base Station you don’t need to go through Safari, you can just use the ‘ airport admin’ utility in your utilities folder.
This is not really something to set and forget – because other people might change their settings too!
If you have an Android phone, a really handy program that tests what channel surrounding Wi-Fi networks are on is called “Wifi Analyzer”. Free and easy to use.
See http://www.appbrain.com/app/com.farproc.wifi.analyzer
WiFi-Fo-Fum is also available free on Android as well as iPhone.
http://www.appbrain.com/app/com.dynamicallyloaded.wififofum
Yes they are good apps Mike – thanks.
Really good write-up, but this doesn’t really to work with my router ip, any helpful hints?
Hi, thanks for your excellent site!
We have noticed a lot of wifi congestion at home too – so I think it’s time to change channels.
I bought ‘wifi scanner’ for the laptop, and am about to start the process of cycling through my wifi channels to see what gives the best signal.
I have a time capsule plugged into a netgear modem- how do I change the channel on the the time capsule (which is what I use for my wifi signal)?
Do I need to change anything on my modem?- or just the time capsule….
If I am unable to compare the best frequency from my iphone, does that matter? (Unfortunately apple has taken all those handy wifi checking apps off the iphone app site).
Thanks for your help.
I think you are confused about your number of channels. In the US there are 11 and in Australia there are 13.
Thanks bob that is right.
Information was helpful. Is it possible to have no connectivity at all with some channels? my router was set to use 11 but when i tried say 5, i was disconnected and was not able to connect back till the changes were reversed.
b.w. I use Linksys WAG120N
Am staying with a relative who has broadband which is very weak as we are well away from the exchange.
There are many routers in the area – all of our neighbours use channel 11. The modem also has ‘channel 11’ written on the bottom.
I have been unable to access the router using the usual ‘admin/password’ info. I have, instead, plugged the modem into my Time Capsule and now it thinks it is on channel 1.
I still feel I am missing something though and would like to ask if, regardless of my cunning manoeuvre, I have not completed my task and still need to chance the channel on the router?
Nice piece by the way. Informative and easy to follow.
Can not locate WiFifofum is it omly OS 4+ ?
Wel it’s gone and so has every other App that measures wifi strength! It seems Apple has disabled or banned the ability to measure wifi signal strength on the iPhone.
I am using istubler to get best signal stregth
none of these ideas solved my problem.
doesnt help me one bit
wifi signal scan function is prohibited by the app store now.
Awesome thanks a bunch, worked right away.
Nice advise!! I should have found here before calling att, today. As I had a problem to connect to home wifi network to iphone and samsung, I was instructed by remote access the same thing by paying $50 despite of having u-verse box 3 days ago. I found the connection issue when my iphone failed to have Netflix.
Great advice – worked perfectly, though I accessed the router a different way, I was able to tell it to “change the channel” and now I have full strength again. Sure appreciate your advice!
This was very helpful. My wifi kept dropping intermittently all day long. I changed the channel it is working a lot better.
Thanks for posting help like this.
This did not help me. I’m running OS 10.9.5 and in ‘System Preferences’ it does not show the router address. It says ‘Configure IPv6’ AUTOMATICALLY. If I switch it to manually, I would have to type in a router address, and I do not have one.
I am going to type in the router address I found on my imac. Wifi works on this, but not on my ipad mini. have had terrible problems with it.
I didn’t realize that you could change the channel’s on your wireless network to improve the frequency. Thanks for mentioning how you can also overlap. My husband and I are looking for a good wireless internet provider for our house; thanks for the tips.
Thanks for helping me understand that network congestion can manifest itself in the form of a bad range, a low speed, or no signal from wifi. My parents are planning on finally getting WiFi for their house, and they have asked me to figure out the best way to solve WiFi problems if they arise. I will be sure to forward this article to them, but also I think I will also have them consult a professional about helping them have a great WiFi connection.
Hi,
Thanks for the various solutions to get connected ipads on the wifi. I tried most of your solutions but without success. I’ve a router tplink ax55 and an old ipad retina. And solved the issue – just passed the security level from wpa3 to wpa2. Surprisingly this 9 years old ipad connected to the 5GHz wifi in addition of the 2.4Ghz.
Hope it helps