Does anyone know why some channels are listed in pairs i.e. 6+10 or 1+5.
Great question! The channel pairs like 6+10 mean that the network is set up to use a 40 MHz wide channel as opposed to the normal 20 MHz wide channels.
While 40 MHz provides higher throughout, they also occupy 2/3 of the 2.4 GHz band, which is already crowded in most environments. For this reason we do recommend using only 20 MHz wide channels in 2.4 GHz band.
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Thanks for the reply. How do I eliminate the 40Mhz channels. The only thing I find on my router login is 20/40Mhz Coexistence. And I Unchecked this box. Any other guidance??
Which router do you have?
I have R7000P AC2300 Netgear Nighthawk
From the Netgear documentation it sounds like the coexistence setting is all there is, and that it should disable the 40 MHz wide channel if there are other networks that it would overlap.
From Nighthawk AC2300 Smart WiFi Router User Manual, page 57
- Select or clear the Enable 20/40 MHz Coexistence check box.
Disabling this option allows your 2.4 GHz WiFi to keep its max speed. Enabling this option might reduce the max speed of your 2.4 GHz WiFi to the half when another WiFi network detected in your environment; this is to avoid interference between WiFi networks and to get along with other wireless networks in the environment.
So I think if you have selected “coexistence” mode it should be a good neighbor to other networks. 
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