I’ve Never Seen This Before

TL:DR — Using WiFi channel 165 by default will almost always result in your Wifi cameras - just working. There’s a lot more to consider, but this tackles one of the biggest issues most people have with wireless devices in the live streaming world.

Deep into a city neighborhood, this church can choose any wifi channel or width without fear of co-channel interference.

Wifi has rules that it operates by. It can talk on a channel if something else already is. It has to wait for a period of silence before talking to its devices (wireless cameras).

To make matters worse, most consumer level routers default to 80Mhz wifi channels. That means that they combine 4 channels together to create a super fast highway. If there’s any of router or access point talking on any of those 4 channels, your router has to wait for silence.

**The BIG Problem**

Usually it is NOT the cameras or your computers that aren’t working correctly on WiFi, but usually this 1 of many rules wifi operates by. Whenever your router has to wait for silence, it cannot speak to your devices causing things like frame drops, jitters or total disconnections.

**It doesn’t mean the app, software, cameras aren’t the issue— it’s just the first thing to consider with your WiFi network.**

How did I get these charts? This WiFi network is being created by the Uniquiti Dream Machine which provides this and a LOT more useful information to make better educated guesses for things like WiFi channel, channel width, amount of access points (mesh or wired) and much more.

Don’t have a UDM? You can still use:

-WiFi Network Scanner on Mac

-Airport Utility on iOS

-WiFi Analyzer on Android

Don’t care? Try defaulting your equipment to use WiFi channel 165. Most other systems NEVER use that channel. Meaning your stuff just works.

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