Wireless Channels (80MHz and Channel Selection)

[NismoZ]

I have read some articles about 80MHz and how channels work, and still trying to grasp this. My EA8500 has a selection for 80MHz, when you select AC Only clients. In my house, I only have AC clients and my others are wired. Guests can use the 2.4GHz band in mixed mode.

I noticed that my Phones AC link went from 400 to 866 as soon as I enabled 80MHz and AC Mode only. That's good right...

Using WiFi Analyzer, I can see that one neighbor network is on channel 44, 112, and 149. I selected 36, because I know lower freqs go through walls better.

Using 80MHz on channel 36, how far does that overlap into other channels? Would I be better using channel 161 because of this?

 

[pete y testing]

the issue with setting 80mhz only is that some clients do not run 80mhz and use only 40 or 20 mhz even on 5 gig , so its best to leave the 5 gig set to 20/40/80mhz to ensure compatibility to all your 5 gig clients

I selected 36, because I know lower freqs go through walls better.

not exactly correct at this stage as the lower 5 gig band has lower power output and thus less coverage

Would I be better using channel 161 because of this?

no ch 161 is problematic

you will be fine using ch 153 though and its what i use for testing as it gives the best results of all the higher band channels

btw how are you finding the ea8500 , i have heard good and bad reports on this router but mostly from reviewers and beta testers and not many from the ground floor

 

[sfx2000]

the issue with setting 80mhz only is that some clients do not run 80mhz and use only 40 or 20 mhz even on 5 gig , so its best to leave the 5 gig set to 20/40/80mhz to ensure compatibility to all your 5 gig clients

All 802.11AC stations must support 80MHz...

not exactly correct at this stage as the lower 5 gig band has lower power output and thus less coverage

Depends on regulatory certs - newer AP's actually may transmit higher power... note that I say "may"...

no ch 161 is problematic

you will be fine using ch 153 though and its what i use for testing as it gives the best results of all the higher band channels

btw how are you finding the ea8500 , i have heard good and bad reports on this router but mostly from reviewers and beta testers and not many from the ground floor

CH161 should be fine - but again, depends on what part of the world - 5GHz is a bit of a mess - but watch out for the 802.11AC specific channels in a mixed mode environment - CH165 is a good example - it doesn't exist in 802.11n/11a...

I'm also a bit curious about the EA8500 - incidental reports here on SNB have been fairly favorable, but some have run into specific issues...

Hopefully Belkin/Linksys has done a better job of sorting that device than the WRT1900/1200 product line - those devices, because of their rather unique architecture, have been problematic compared to the Broadcom/QC-Atheros based devices that Belkin/Linksys ships these days...

 

[stevech]

I have read some articles about 80MHz and how channels work, and still trying to grasp this. My EA8500 has a selection for 80MHz, when you select AC Only clients. In my house, I only have AC clients and my others are wired. Guests can use the 2.4GHz band in mixed mode.

I noticed that my Phones AC link went from 400 to 866 as soon as I enabled 80MHz and AC Mode only. That's good right...

Using WiFi Analyzer, I can see that one neighbor network is on channel 44, 112, and 149. I selected 36, because I know lower freqs go through walls better.

Using 80MHz on channel 36, how far does that overlap into other channels? Would I be better using channel 161 because of this?

80MHz will cost you some range / coverage. A phone doesn't need more than 20MHz 11n speeds, as a rule. And 80MHz is in the 5GHz band and that higher freq. costs range.

 

[sfx2000]

80MHz will cost you some range / coverage. A phone doesn't need more than 20MHz 11n speeds, as a rule. And 80MHz is in the 5GHz band and that higher freq. costs range.

11ac's link-budget accounts for that...

But I have seen VHT40 in some enterprise deployments to fit frequency plans - and there's still some benefit going with VHT40 vs. HT40...

 

[NismoZ]

The EA8500 has been a good router so far. If you follow this thread, there where few issues that seemed to have cleared up with firmware (Linksys is doing a good job at releasing new versions in a reasonable time frame). We'll see how things progress over a few more months.

 

[stevech]

Sounds like Belkin is hands-off on Linksys.

 

[sfx2000]

Sounds like Belkin is hands-off on Linksys.

i think they changed their focus a bit... and some product lines got caught in the middle... doesn't mean they're all bad - just a market focus that I'm no longer part of.