802.11N choosing 20mhz channel question about 40mhz overlap.

[Rolling7z]

Hello, I am trying to choose a channel in a very busy area. I know you shouldn't overlap channels, but I was wondering if it's ok to choose a channel that has a router on 40mhz that overlaps my 20 MHZ channel. Or is it bad to have any overlap period? TIA

 

[kanewolf]

It is best to have no overlap. If you have a very congested WIFI environment, you should look at using 5Ghz instead of 2.4Ghz.

 

[bill001g]

Finding a free channel is close to impossible if you live in a area with lots of other people. It has become pretty standard for people to run 40mhz which means only 1 person can run without overlap. The 5g is somewhat better but that too now has the same problem. The 802.11ac routers use 80mhz and there are only 2 contiguous 80mhz blocks in most countries.

Now you have the tri band routers that allow a single person to use 40mhz out of the 2.4g and both 80mhz blocks in the 5g. So one person can use almost all the available bandwidth.

I really don't know the solution. You generally are best off using 20mhz and just keep trying channels until you get one that appears to work. You would like no overlap but many times you can not even see all the overlapping device because they may be turned off when you look. Also many routers auto select radio channels when they are booted so if your neighborhood would take a power failure all the routers would likely select different channels.

Pretty much if you have the option run wired. If you must run wireless you want to be as close to the router as practical which should reduce the problems you see with overlap to some extent.