User Manual

RF Explorer User Manual page 21
In MaxHold mode, the highest level used by any channel is permanently recorded by a horizontal marker.
RF Explorer is a fully capable Spectrum Analyzer and, as such, will properly detect not only true 802.11 WiFi
activity but also any other 2.4Ghz signal that may create interference. This is a much better and more reliable
method to finetune your WiFi setup than smartphone-based apps, which only detect 802.11 sources and
channels, but ignore about any other interference. In many cases, non 802.11 interference are the main
cause of low performance.
• If you identify powerful, permanent signal sources blocking specific channels, you should select the
channels that are as far as possible from them.
• For 2.4GHz WiFi channels, the only non-overlapping channels are 1-6-11 therefore is suggested to
setup your access points in one of the three of these channels were less activity is found through the
day, including nearby channels (2 above and two below). For instance, you should select channel 6 if
activity in channels 4-8 seem to be lower than 1-3 and 9-11.
• Except for high-end, professional access points, the “automatic” mode offered for channel selection is
not good enough because is not usually able to monitor daily activity. The method described in
previous steps is the most reliable procedure to improve a WiFi setup reliability and throughput.
Some examples depicted below:
Channel 5 is clearly busy, we should
discard using channel 6 whereas channel
11 seems a much better choice.
Channel 1 is not busy but nearby channel 2
is busy, therefore is not as good as a
choice as channel 11.
Given the usually high noise level at 2.4GHz
band, it is suggested to use a Bottom dBm
of -100dBm or higher.
The same setup described before, but
inspecting the activity for a longer time,
shows the channel 5 is the one with higher
level detected, so we confirm is not a good
choice.
However, the difference among channel 1
and 11 is not that clear anymore, it seems
both have equivalent activity over time.
Probably channel 11 is still a better choice
as it is farther away from channel 5.