Are you suffering from frequent connection drops or slower download speed?
Are you located in a relatively densely populated area?
If your are surfing the web in a densely populated area, it is likely that multiple WiFi networks are within range. If you experience frequent connection drops or slower speed, it is most likely due to multiple network signals competing for the same channel.
Here is a simple 2 step solution for that.
Step 1 – Identify free channels
Open command prompt or terminal.
Windows
Go to Start ->
Type cmd ->
Press Enter key.
In command prompt type:
netsh wlan show all
Linux
In terminal type:
sudo iwlist wlan0 scan | grep \(Channel)
Examine the list of channels currently in use.
In above example the channels most commonly used are channels 6 and 9. The channels listed most commonly are the ones we would want to avoid.
If the network you are connected to is using one of the commonly used channels then you would want to switch to another channel.
It is important to keep in mind that the channel width may be smaller then the actual range. For instance, the router channels can be 5 MHz away from each other, but the channel width for 2.4 GHz is 20 MHz – meaning that while your channel may be set to 9 it is also using channel 8 and 10 and likely interfering with 7 and 11.
Note: There are various applications with GUI you can download to get this list. If you prefer to use a software just pick any of the available ones resulting form a google search for Wifi Scanner.
Step 2 – Switch to a free channel
Navigate to your routers ip in any browser. If you don’t know the ip, here is how to find out:
Windows
In command prompt type:
ipconfig
Look for the ip under “Default Gateway”.
Linux
$ route -n
Output:
Kernel IP routing table Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface 10.0.0.1 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 ra0 0.0.0.0 10.0.0.138 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 ra0
Navigate to http://{Default Gateway} in your browser ->
Enter in the username and password ->
Press Enter ->
Select Basic settings tab ->
Select Wireless .
For each band you will see the network name and used channel. Switch the channel of the currently used network to one that is least commonly listed. Preferably not within 20 MHz range of a commonly used channel (assuming you are on 2.4 GHz).
In above example, the most commonly used channels were 6 and 9. The connected 2.4 GHz network was set to 9, which means that it may also be using channels 8 and 10 and interfering with channels 7 and 11, thus best course of action was to set it to channel 13.
Click Apply.
You may now run a speed test to verify your connection is improved.
