Spending money for high speed Internet and not getting what you expected? Are you and your colleagues not able to stay connected to the office network? Was your Wi-Fi network working fine in the past and then suddenly very slow Wi-Fi data rates?
Each case above indicates Wi-Fi interference.
There are three main causes of Wi-Fi interference: co-channel, overlapping channel and non-Wi-Fi wireless interference.
Channel related interference can be reduced or eliminated by selecting the proper Wi-Fi channel for your network. Ultimately improving your 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi network coverage and performance.
Let’s get technical for a moment. The 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g/n) spectrum is 100 MHz wide and made up of 11 channels centered 5 MHz apart. Each 2.4GHz channel is 20 – 22 MHz wide making the spectrum a little crowded.
If each channel is 20 MHz wide, this means there will be a minimum of 10 MHz of overlap with neighboring channels (overlapping channel interference). For example, if your network is on channel 9, it will overlap with channels 7, 8, 10, 11.
Creating a situation where your network is yelling loudly in a foreign language, distracting any network on an overlapping channel. Vis-versa for the other networks and your network.
In the case of Wi-Fi, channel overlapping is bad. This leaves only channels 1, 6 and 11 not overlapping with each other.
General rule of thumb, you want your network to be anti-social with other networks. So, avoid being within 2 channels of any other network.
If you cannot avoid them, join them. Sharing the same channel, co-channel interference, is not ideal, the impact of the interference is reduced because the 802.11 specification has methods to negotiate same channel communications.