I really applaud the help pages you have created to assist all those working from home; extremely helpful. However, there is just one page I came across that I found slightly confusing and this related to "The three main causes of WIFI interference. I understand the dialogue but what I found very confusing was the graphic above the dialogue; relating to why channels 1, 6, 11.
I’m not being critical, just trying to assist in something I found confusing.
Best regards,
David
Hi David, and thanks so much for writing us! I’m glad you are finding the educational material helpful.
If this graphic is a bit confusing, I bet you’re not the only one, so thanks for helping us make it better by contacting us about it!
The top graphic (lots of networks, red/blue color scheme) illustrates what would happen if you tried to put a network on each of the 11 channels. Lots of adjacent-channel interference, which is bad. The text above the red/blue graphic explains it a bit:
“Each channel on the 2.4 GHz spectrum is 20 MHz wide. The channel centers are separated by 5 MHz, and the entire spectrum is only 100 MHz wide. This means the 11 channels have to squeeze into the 100 MHz available, and in the end, overlap.”
But I think it could be much more clearly explained, and even better clarified by a caption under both graphics. Do you think that would help? I’ll post again here when it’s fixed, if you wouldn’t mind letting us know if that clears it up for you.
Stay tuned!
Hi Lael,
Many thanks for replying.
Are the red/blue strips the 14 channels (where the extreme right blue strip is double the width of the other red/blue strips as there isn’t a channel 14 used)? You used the words “lots of networks”. What does the 2 bright red triangle mean to convey please?
I don’t understand what the green blue and orange graphic below this means. The colour blend above 6 gives the impression of a blend of the blue (centred on channel 1 and orange centred on channel 11).
As stated previously, I’m not trying to be critical, simply highlighting something that wasn’t clear to me.
Best regards
David
Hi @david.poole999, thanks for your feedback! Yes, I love the image you shared! An image like that was a big eye-opener for me when I first joined MetaGeek and was learning about 802.11. That was actually the inspiration for how we show WiFi networks on the frequency graphs in Chanalyzer and InSSIDer.
Sometimes we get a little too geeky for our own good over here. Those extra-wide network outlines on our graphic are trying to show the “shoulders” due to harmonics that appear on the outside of frequency band used by the channel, and I agree that in this case they make the meaning of the graphic less clear. Using a few more colors helps, too.
Thanks again for your input, and let us know if there is anything else we can be doing better, or if there is anything that is working especially well.
