Many of us have lived the experience: We are perfectly “connected” to the WiFi network, however we can’t navigate or seem to do anything, what’s going on? Don’t even try an Skype call!

The problem is the ubiquitousness of WiFi. Simply, there’re so many WiFi networks around in some areas that it becomes impossible for the devices to talk to selected/chosen WiFi router.

You see, WiFi only can work on the 2.4 and 5 GHz. Within those frequencies, channels were devised, in order to allow the coexistence of several WiFi networks close to each other. However, we have come to a time where there are so many WiFi routers/networks being present on the same area, that it becomes impossible to sustain communication with them. The frequency having the most problems is the 2.4 GHz, as it’s the one carrying the oldest and most compatible Wifi protocol: 802.11 b/g/n. The 5 GHz frequency is free from this problem… for now.

How bad the situation is? Check out this snapshot of the WiFi network status I took while visiting London:

As you can see, even with different channels, many WiFi networks overlap between each other. This situation causes that the device trying to communicate with an specific router, can’t accomplish this simple task.

Any solution?

The solution for this is for the router to use the least crowded channel, in order not to overlap with other close by WiFi networks. But even doing so, might not help. Here comes a human problem, the people managing a café or hotel, don’t necessarily know about WiFi channels, so they do the simplest of things: Install the WiFi router and that’s it! WiFi routers have algorithms to avoid this situation to a certain extent. But that’s about it, if the frequency is too crowded, human intervention is needed. This human intervention needs to be from a person knowing a little more about networks, and these places don’t necessarily have such personnel under their payroll.

This situation is frequent also in apartments, if you are suffering it, change your channel while you can!

So, unless somebody tells the Hotel administrators, Café managers, landlords, etc. that the WiFi has too many conflicting channels, they won’t know for sure. They’ll just check up if it’s working, since it is, they won’t see a problem happening 🙁