Network congestion is a familiar problem with most of the wireless networks and is getting worst day after day, as more people are going wireless. Be it an Apple Airport base station or any other wireless networks like Asus, Billion, D-Link, Netgear or even the branded Bigpond home wireless network, all are prone to network congestion problems.

The problem of network congestion is that there are so many people in your vicinity using wireless networks. All these wireless network users get to interfere with each other thus compromising quality of the wireless service. The idea here is same like lots of people talking loudly in the same room. This result in a reduced range on your WiFi network, a slump in speed, signals dropping down and signals strength fluctuating randomly.

Following information will show you the approach of changing your wireless channel, which will keep you isolated from other wireless traffic.

Australia has 13 wireless channels while USA has just 11. When you use a wireless router, it will default you to one of these channels; mostly the middle channel 6. If your neighbours and other people nearby have done the same thing, then you will face congestion problems. The best thing is to change your channel, but the problem here is that all channels overlap. Channel 1 and channel 6 are considered best to be used, as they do not overlap much.

Suppose that you are using channel 6 and facing problems, then the best and quick thing is to move to either channel 1 or channel 6. But nowadays, more and more users are going wireless. So, these channels are filling up quickly causing more congestion problems. The solution then is to find an optimum frequency at your own location.

Locating optimum Frequency

The best way to accomplish this is to use hit and trial method and the WiFiFoFum utility of iPhone. Change the channel to 1 on your routers. After doing this, restart your router and measure the signal strength using WiFiFoFum utility. Change the channel to 2 and repeat the process. At the end, you will come up with the results like this:

• 
  Channel 1: 88 – 90


• 
  Channel 2: 92 – 93


• 
  Channel 3: 88 – 90


• 
  Channel 4: 82 – 84


• 
  Channel 5: 90 - 91


• 
  Channel 6: 92 – 94 and so on.

Choose the channel that carries the best signal. The lower numbers are the better. So, in the above case, channel 4 is the best to be used.

By this way, you can get best channel to use while avoiding network congestion and getting a better wireless speed. But, you might need to repeat this procedure again, because other people might also shift to your channel thus interfering once again over the wireless network.

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