Just because the WiFi channel is available doesn’t mean it’s the one you should use

TL:DR - WiFi doesn’t work the same way as electricity, indoor plumbing or anything else. It isn’t a switch that always has unlimited resources just for you. It’s far more complicated. Knowing the basics will save your streams. Sometimes using Auto on your pro-sumer equipment like the UDM is the best option.

Even though this 5GHZ channel is wide open for co-channel inference, pack drops are still happening. NO other routers we’ve used give us this info.

Why is it important? Bc even though this WiFi channel isn’t used by another router/AP, there might be another kind of interference. So this channel might not be good to use.

What does this info translate into in the field? Packet drops = frame drops.

So if you do a channel scan, determine that this channel is the one to use, set the router/AP to use it— and you have frame drops— what do you do next? … Dare I say try Auto channel selection.

What happens with Auto… many things are supposed to happen:

-channel scan for availability

-co-channel utilization

-inference from other equipment

-more

Best case Auto should make the best decision for your network to use— that isn’t always the case — even when using UDM. But for me, I trust UDM WAY more than any other system.

Another thing to note about this packet drop— for the time for UniFi to get this data point, I haven’t had any camera equipment on this AP. This packet loss could be from a device that is simply too far from the AP.

All of this should / needs to be taken into consideration when selecting which WiFi channel your equipment uses.

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