What's the best channel for my place?

[apthai86]

It's been about 6 years since I last did any work on my network. I recently picked up an Asus RT-AC66U and trying to get the best performance I can. I used inSSIDer and there's tons of AP on 2.4Ghz and I'm not sure which one would be ideal for me. 5Ghz is pretty clear and I'll probably set that to CH48. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

 

[PrivateJoker]

It's been about 6 years since I last did any work on my network. I recently picked up an Asus RT-AC66U and trying to get the best performance I can. I used inSSIDer and there's tons of AP on 2.4Ghz and I'm not sure which one would be ideal for me. 5Ghz is pretty clear and I'll probably set that to CH48. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Well you're doing the right stuff. . . I'm guessing you live in a condo or apartment building? That's a pretty dense wifi survey.

First, you may want to do higher on the 5ghz if you're manually selecting it. The higher channels have a higher power limit (and it should auto adjust, knowing that info).

Personally I like to sample from 2-3 areas in the domicile that I'll be using wifi. To just do it at your AP is helpful, but not as helpful as also measuring it at the two places you're most likely to use your wifi connection also.

So, it's kind of hard with that much other traffic though, but 1, 6 & 11 are what you want to use if you go 40mhz wide channels on 2.4ghz, but maybe that density is a good reason to use 20mhz and maybe go for first channel with weakest other signal on it (and even those signals on ch 1 didn't look too bad, especially b/c I doubt the guest network gets much traffic).

If nothing else, try a config or two, measure some file transfer & internet speed tests, then try another channel. You also might want to manually try notching your own power down by 5-10-15mw, it depends how many SF you have. Just test and compare. If not, no big deal, it should still work acceptably for you.

Good luck & HTH!

 

[stevech]

I don't fully agree with the above...
Suggest:

don't use 40MHz in 2.4GHz in urban areas.

don't be concerned with how MANY WiFi SSIDs you detect. The issue is which if any are sometimes carrying long duration heavy traffic - streaming HD video via WiFi from server in house to another room. Relatively rare.
Most all WiFi survey tools (free ones) show you SSID and signal strength but do not show what's important: Utilization of channels. Vast majority of SSIDs have just a tiny percent of use on average.

 

[apthai86]

I don't fully agree with the above...
Suggest:

don't use 40MHz in 2.4GHz in urban areas.

don't be concerned with how MANY WiFi SSIDs you detect. The issue is which if any are sometimes carrying long duration heavy traffic - streaming HD video via WiFi from server in house to another room. Relatively rare.
Most all WiFi survey tools (free ones) show you SSID and signal strength but do not show what's important: Utilization of channels. Vast majority of SSIDs have just a tiny percent of use on average.

Do you have any recommendation of any tools that can show/measure utilization?

 

[PrivateJoker]

So, it's kind of hard with that much other traffic though, but 1, 6 & 11 are what you want to use if you go 40mhz wide channels on 2.4ghz, but maybe that density is a good reason to use 20mhz and maybe go for first channel with weakest other signal on it (and even those signals on ch 1 didn't look too bad, especially b/c I doubt the guest network gets much traffic).

don't use 40MHz in 2.4GHz in urban areas.

don't be concerned with how MANY WiFi SSIDs you detect. The issue is which if any are sometimes carrying long duration heavy traffic

@stevech, I think we were in overwhelming agreement on the gist of our suggestions. What I said in my 4th paragraph (quoted above) is essentially identical to your advice (20mhz 2.4ghz channel, existing channel w/ weak or no existing signal and probable low traffic).

Do you have any recommendation of any tools that can show/measure utilization?

What OS is your laptop?

 

[apthai86]

What OS is your laptop?

My laptop is OSX but I do have access to Windows as well.

 

[PrivateJoker]

Try using r407 of KisMAC available here:
http://trac.kismac-ng.org/wiki/Downloads

Be on the band (ie 2.4 or 5ghz) that you want to look at, and it should list the APs as well as #of packets and/or kb of data that are flying across.

If it does correctly see neighboring networks, let it run for an hour sometime in the evening and just make sure you're not on or near (as much as practically possible) a strong, high traffic channel.

This is like an alpha version, but the previous 0.3.3 stable doesn't work under Mountain Lion, and that's what I'm running.

See if that works, if not I'm sure there are alternatives somewhere.

 

[stevech]

It'll be a challenge to be measuring at the time a neighbor is being boggy for an hour. Often you can see heavy usage with the free ping plotter tool.

 

[PrivateJoker]

It'll be a challenge to be measuring at the time a neighbor is being boggy for an hour. Often you can see heavy usage with the free ping plotter tool.

@SteveCH That's true. . .theoretically you can keep KISmac going (but that machine will be occupied) as long as you want and it'll keep logging. . .I've run it for a week before. But if that's not an option, and even if it is, I'm curious about the other thing you mentioned.

Is a ping plotter tool anything like the smokeping test at DSLreports.org or their "intensive monitoring"? (Side notes: the smokeping is a free test - I just set one to run for 3 days to me, the intensive monitor test costs $ but it's really cheap, like a buck or two for a week. It helps if you have a DDNS setup that it can find you at [or a static IP], and I believe that DNSomatic can actually update DSLreports if you use DNSomatic [the Asus routers have that built in as an option] and you have to remember to turn "Respond Ping Request from WAN" on in router or these won't work).

Thx!

 

[stevech]

all consumer routers have a dynamic DNS client updater. Most support the 3 or more most popular, e.g., dyndns - which is free only under certain conditions now.
Several others.
I prefer to not use the DDNS service from hardware vendors.

 

[stevech]

PingPlotter the program has been freeware for years. It now is still free but with nags if you don't buy. I deal with it.
http://www.pingplotter.com/standard.html

If you set it to ping from a WiFi laptop/PC to the wifi router's admin address, such as 192.168.1.1 (not an internet host) and let it graph for hours, with some WiFi channel, 1, 6, or 11, and if you see sustained times of increased ping responses, this indicates retries or channel-in-use "CSMA" delays. These indicate times when a neighbor might be streaming HD on his WiFi as it uses a lot of bandwidth/capacity. Streaming Netflix probably wouldn't show up much.

If an neighbor has a Gigabyte upload of a backup to an on line backup service, this might show up too.

Most people know better than to do HD streaming or gigabyte uploads via WiFi