You’ve got your wireless router and modem. You’ve signed up for an ISP that promises lightning fast speeds. Now, you’re ready to enjoy your wireless network. But when you log in with your laptop or other device, you find that your Wi-Fi speed is lacking. Did you purchase the wrong equipment? Is there some type of interference preventing you from getting what you’ve paid for? Maybe. But maybe the problem lies within the channel that you’re using for your Wi-Fi.
Wi-Fi channels
It would be nice if plugging in your equipment were all it took for fast Wi-Fi, but that often isn’t the case. Sometimes you need to open the router settings and make a few changes to optimize performance. One setting that can affect performance is the Wi-Fi channel. In most cases the channel is chosen automatically, but a particular channel may be less congested than others, so an occasional manual adjustment can help.
Setting your channel for 5 GHz Wi-Fi
There are significant differences between the channels available on 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz Wi-Fi. This article focuses on 5 GHz.
Because there is far more spectrum at 5 GHz, it offers many more non-overlapping channels than 2.4 GHz - roughly two dozen 20 MHz channels in the US, though the exact number depends on your region and which channels your router supports. A nice benefit of 802.11n, 802.11ac, and 802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6) is that most modern routers will automatically pick a clear channel for you.
You can, however, look at your channel settings to determine if it’s working for you. You can access this through your router settings. Once you’ve entered the settings menu, you can select your region, which will automatically select your channel range on most equipment. When setting up your system, you want to select a dedicated channel for the time being. Changes can be made later based on performance.
Your router may also have a channel bonding (channel width) option, which combines channels into wider 40, 80, or 160 MHz channels for higher speeds. Wider channels are great when the airwaves are clear, but they leave fewer non-overlapping channels and pick up more interference in crowded areas. If you see instability in an apartment or dense neighborhood, try a narrower width.
For most people, letting the router auto-select the 5 GHz channel works well, since the band is less crowded than 2.4 GHz. One thing to know: many 5 GHz channels are DFS channels shared with weather and military radar. They are perfectly usable, but if your router detects radar it must briefly vacate the channel, which can cause a short dropout. If that happens often, manually choosing a non-DFS channel (such as 36-48 or 149-165 in the US) can help.
Final thoughts
One of the big advantages of 5 GHz Wi-Fi is that it offers far more, less-congested channels than 2.4 GHz, so the automatic setting usually keeps performance high. Reach for a manual channel only if you run into congestion or DFS-related dropouts.
