One thing I’ve noticed living here in this apartment is the shear number of wireless networks that propagate throughout my space. Personally I could care less what or where this signal comes from or goes to, however it does present a bit of a problem for reliability.

This is due to the fact that so many people tend to utilize the same channel (sub frequency) for their wireless networks that things get messy fast. I’ve seen everything from slow and unreliable wireless (feet away from the access point) to access point failure due to it having to negotiate so many other active access points sharing the same channel.

There is a solution and it’s quiet simple. In Linux using iwlist tool you can quickly pull a list of active networks around you, from there you can find (if you’re lucky) an unused channel, or at the very least the least used channel. Once you’ve discovered this change your router configuration, reboot if necessary and enjoy your much more stable and reliable connection.

$ iwlist wlan1 scanning | egrep 'ESSID|Channel' 
                    ESSID:"BusyGiraffe"
                    Frequency:2.412 GHz (Channel 1)
                    ESSID:"FBI Surveillance Van #13"
                    Frequency:2.412 GHz (Channel 1)
                    ESSID:"BusyGiraffe-guest"
                    Frequency:2.412 GHz (Channel 1)
                    ESSID:"erics wire"
                    Frequency:2.412 GHz (Channel 1)
                    ESSID:"<hidden>"
                    Frequency:2.412 GHz (Channel 1)
                    ESSID:"myqwest1123"
                    Frequency:2.412 GHz (Channel 1)
                    ESSID:"myqwest3115"
                    Frequency:2.412 GHz (Channel 1)
                    ESSID:"unixgr"
                    Frequency:2.427 GHz (Channel 4)
                    ESSID:"lynxandloki"
                    Frequency:2.432 GHz (Channel 5)
                    ESSID:"eany"
                    Frequency:2.437 GHz (Channel 6)
                    ESSID:"belkin.4d2"
                    Frequency:2.437 GHz (Channel 6)
                    ESSID:"Burton"
                    Frequency:2.437 GHz (Channel 6)
                    ESSID:"Netgearhome"
                    Frequency:2.437 GHz (Channel 6)
                    ESSID:"BrightCedar"
                    Frequency:2.462 GHz (Channel 11)
                    ESSID:"BrightCedar-guest"
                    Frequency:2.462 GHz (Channel 11)
                    ESSID:"FatBottomGirls"
                    Frequency:2.462 GHz (Channel 11)
                    ESSID:"FatBottomGirls-guest"
                    Frequency:2.462 GHz (Channel 11)
                    ESSID:"THC137"
                    Frequency:2.462 GHz (Channel 11)
                    ESSID:"TanushArinjay"
                    Frequency:2.462 GHz (Channel 11)

As you can see, channel 4 was available so I snatched it up (even though it’s overlapping), channels 1,  6 and 11 being extremely busy as they’re the the only non-overlapping channels available, so they’re set by default on most consumer access points.