I sent a variation of this to our neighborhood listserv, where we live in single family houses fairly close together - and way too many kids streaming multiple devices at once right now. It would apply even more to people living in apartments, condos, and townhouse communities. Neighborhood interference isn't really a problem with houses on spacious lots, but might have trouble within the house. Feel free to share it around, just include the link back to DBR!
Wifi runs on two frequencies, 2.4 and 5 GHz. A 5 GHz signal fades fairly quickly (it frequently won't reach from one end of a house to the other), and otherwise doesn't create many problems - use the 5 GHz band whenever possible. Hard wire any video streaming device you can - netflix will chew a ton of bandwidth. Use the 5 GHz bands for streaming video if you must go with wifi. You can also avoid 4k streams when on wifi, and if you don't need HD, watch SD. (Streaming audio doesn't use much bandwidth, though.) 2.4 GHz signals push much farther through walls and furniture than 5 GHz, which is useful. But 2.4 GHz also pushes into neighbors' houses, competing for limited bandwidth. Most of the rest deals with 2.4 GHz.
Due to spec limits, 2.4 GHz should only be using channels 1, 6, or 11. Please don't "channel bond" in this range either for theoretical extra speed, it's not effective when other wifi routers or access points are nearby. (For convenience, I'll refer to routers and access points as just APs.) If one AP is on channel 11 and another is on 10, for instance, they can't negotiate to share the space, they just blast signals like a college dorm stereo war. (Are you old enough to remember those?) No one really wins. We want wifi to behave more like earbuds.
Within your house, you can do a few things to improve performance. Run network cable wherever practical - those things that stay put such as desktops, printers, TVs (and their wired streaming devices), and your wifi APs themselves.
Wifi is line of sight and everything the signal passes through lessens it, some things more than others.
Position APs accounting for the existing building. Generally place APs high in a room when you can - just walking in front of an AP weakens its signal albeit briefly. Walls, appliances, mirrors, or a full bookcase can cut the signal, as can a chimney, flue, or duct work. Be aware that some APs have directional antennas ("antennae" for us zealots :) ), with a stronger signal going in certain directions. Think about where it points. Finally, adding an AP almost always helps your coverage but also crowds the airwaves. Each home is different, with different needs.
Ideally, wifi is set up in a way that meets our needs and doesn't make things worse for our neighbors. If you really want to get in the weeds, you can collectively turn your AP signal strengths down to the lowest where it still works well in each of your homes. For robust connections, you generally want something in the range of -65 dBm or stronger to stream video,
where you use it. Going stronger than that won't really help (a smaller number is stronger). Weaker than -80 dBm and it's mostly unusable. (FWIW, RSSI is a different measure with different thresholds.) Signal strength tuning is usually a solution more useful in apartments or dense office spaces. (And this is why doing wifi in a big football stadium is so hard; limited bandwidth and tons of clients and APs, all way too close together.)
A nice, free tool to see wifi signals and signal strength near you is
inSSIDer for Windows (there's also a
Mac version in beta).
As a practical example: I have two hard-wired APs with directional antennae using channels 1 and 11 (as well as using the 5 GHz space). The one closer to my downhill neighbor (less than 20' between us) is pointed horizontally away from their house on a wall mount. The one closer to my uphill neighbor is pointed down from a ceiling mount. All my video equipment - TiVo, Apple TV, Blu Ray, and receiver - is hard-wired, as are the two printers and any computers being used in our home office.
https://forums.dukebasketballreport...39#post1242239
-jk
