wifi channels

English Network/Internet
1

I live in an apartment building. I don’t have a particular problem but I saw an article about boosting your wifi speeds. A key take-away was to go to an unused channel. However, further reading said to stick to 1, 6, or 11. Another article said to move to the 5 GHz band. I ran

iwlist scan

and found 19 cells. The first three were my “regular” network, my guest network and my wireless printer. All are on channel 10 with a strong signal (less than -35db). The other 16 cells are spread out between channels 1 and 6 with the occasional oddball. One oddity is a channel with no ESSID but a signal at -23db. Perhaps that belongs to the building for fire alarm or security issues. I don’t know constitutes “crowding” on a particular channel or how to get a reading on which would be the best channel to use.

Anyway, do you have any recommendations to maximize my wifi? As I said, there are no problems but any free boost is a good thing!

2

Hi Prexi,
For sure I would go for 5GHz, where possible. It’s a huge difference of speed achievable. I’d let the wifi router set this automatically, as recommended in my Fritz!Box’s GUI. I live near an airport and recently the airport radar literally “chased” one of my repeaters through the 5GHz channels as the radar got priority my Box kept giving way to it. :wink: It was an interesting reading in the last system report. I don’t see a benefit in setting a fixed channel unless you have a very good reason to do so.
kasi

3

Some 60 SSIDs at 2.4 GHz detected by Fritz!Box 7360, currently 15 responding to scan. No need to change default settings since eight years.

4

I have set my cell phone and an “antique” ipad to 5 GHz. Neither my pc or laptop, apparently, is capable of using the 5 GHz range. My pc is hard wired. Would the other devices get a speed boost if I deactivate the wifi card in the pc? With two network connections, is there a “bonding” going on that would slow the pc if I deactivate it’s wifi?

5

Hi Prexi,

I don’t think any device would get a speed boost just by deactivating a network interface. Why would you think there is a “bonding”? Do you have any signifcant speed problem?

6

No, there is no perceptible problem. It is more of a theoretical question. Does Tumbleweed use both network connections together? As I said, just a curiosity, not a problem. Similarly, I occasionally connect my laptop to the router with a cable, usually if there is a very big zypper dup. At those times, the laptop has two connections. I don’t know how Tumbleweed handles that. Does it connect to the repos two times or even different repos?

7

NetworkManager will probably try to use the fastest of the two connections, which is the cable I assume.

That can not be to difficult to see. Doesn’t the NetworkManager applet tell you what is up and what is down?

In any case, connections are made using only one route at a time.

8

NetworkManager does not “use connections”. NetworkManager applies (best matching) connection profile to interface when interface becomes available. What happens later is outside of scope of NetworkManager.

If there are suitable connection profiles for both wired and wireless interfaces (which also covers default automatic connection profile for wired) both interfaces will be configured and available. By default NM assigns route metric based on device type, so if both connection profiles define default route (e.g. by getting it from DHCP), route entry associated with wired interface will get better metric. What happens after that is up to kernel, not NetworkManager. Most likely connections initiated by host will use default route associated with wired interface in this case.

9

Thanks for all this interesting information!

10

Use newer standards (802.11 ac, ax), disable older standards (a, b, g) in your router and neighbours too ;).

11
  1. Make sure that, the box with the WLAN antennae is placed such that, the antennae transmit and receive horizontally – most of the boxes, if placed horizontally on a piece of furniture, tend to have vertical antenna transmission and reception lobes which is fine for multi-storied private houses but, not quite what one wants in an apartment building.
  2. For a larger apartment, at least one WLAN Repeater is often needed to ensure that, the WLAN reception and transmission in all rooms is acceptable.
  3. On the WLAN Router, check if, there’s a setting related to “use in congested areas
    ” – If there is such a setting, enable it – It’s a setting which constrains the number of channels to be used within the given WLAN frequency band – If many neighbours then, not being greedy often improves your WLAN throughput and general performance – Whether or not your neighbours are also careful with their use of the WLAN resources is another issue …