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com/download Change Your Wi-Fi Router Channel to Optimize Your Wireless Signal If you live in an apartment complex youve probably noticed more than just the pas sive-aggressive network IDs that your neighbors usevery likely youve had problems with your wireless connections dropping out, or just not being as fast as youd li ke. Heres a quick fix. Of course, this isnt the only thing you need to do to make sure your wireless net work is running at maximum speed, but for todays lesson well show you how to pick the right channel to make sure you can stream the new Futurama episode to your l aptop without skipping. Note: if your Wireless network is working fine, please dont mess with it. Or at l east, dont blame us if you break it. Figuring Out the Right Wi-Fi Channel The first thing you need to do is grab yourself a copy of the free inSSIDer util ity, which will scan your wireless network and probably reveal some humorous nam es from your weird neighbors. If only they could learn how to park their cars li ke decent human beings. Lets take a closer look at that window youll need to choose the right channel band, depending on the router you are using. Mine is a Linksys dual-band Wireless-N r outer, which has two separate networks if you arent sure, go for the 2.4 GHz one f irst, and then click the Start Scanning button. Note: If you have more than one network card enabled, make sure the drop-down ha s your wireless card selected. <p><img src="http://www.howtogeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/image251.png" alt="" /></p> Ideally youve selected the right one, and after waiting for a minute or two, youll see your network in the list. For example, my test network is called lhdevnet, and its currently running on channel 6. If you looked closely at the screenshot e arlier, youd see that there are loads of networks in my apartment complex using t he same wireless channel. <p><img src="http://www.howtogeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/image11.png" a lt="" /></p> Looks like its time to change the channel. Hopefully Futurama is on. Change Your Wireless Channel If youre using a Linksys router, youll need to browse to the address of your route r, which is probably set to http://192.168.1.1 but could be assigned to another address. You can run a quick ipconfig command at the command prompt to check: <p><img src="http://www.howtogeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/image12.png" a lt="" /></p> In my case the address is different (because I changed it, of course), but what youre looking for is the Default Gateway for your Wireless connection, and then g o to http://<Default Gateway> in your browser. Enter in the password that you ho pefully remember, and head to the Wireless > Basic Wireless Settings tab. My router has two separate bands, but your router might just have a single band here. In my case, what Ive done is set the 2.4 GHz band to only be used for Wirel ess-G, and the 5GHz one to Wireless-N only. Since Im not having any problems with the Wireless-N settings, Ive left those on auto. <p><img src="http://www.howtogeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/image13.png" a lt="" /></p> Where I am having a problem, however, is my Wireless-G devicesso what Ive done is chosen channel 9, since its the only channel thats not being used by any of my nei ghbors, who are using mostly channels 1 and 6, though a few are using 11 as well . Channels 1, 6, and 11 are the most common channels to choose, and most routers w ill use one of them as the default channelbut the general idea is to be as far aw ay from everybody else as you can.

<p><img src="http://www.howtogeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/image14.png" a lt="" /></p> Note: Ive also configured my router for 20 MHz only on the 2.4 GHz Wireless-G ban d, just because that was the only way it would let me choose the standard channe l manually. If you are using a different router, the IP address will generally be the same, but youll have to figure out how to change the Wireless channel without any scree nshot tours. Its usually fairly easy, though, once you know what youre looking for . Fun Technical notes If you look closely, youll notice that each of the channels are 5 MHz away from e ach other, but the Channel Width for 2.4 GHz is actually 20 MHz. What this means is while that the channel might be set to channel 6, its also partially using 5 and 7, and probably slightly interfering with 4 and 8.