Synthesis Studios

Many people don’t realize just how important the channel on which they run their wireless network is. Changing the channel can make all the difference for spotty performance; you might be trying to talk over someone. Imagine trying to have a conversation in a crowded room — when the person you are talking to misses a word, you have to repeat yourself. Your computer can have the same problem. I noticed this sitting even at my desk in Porter Square. Eight of the fifteen networks I can see are on channel 6! Every time one of these tries to communicate, it’s going to block the others.

Imagine trying to have a conversation in a crowded room — when the person you are talking to misses a word, you have to repeat yourself. Your computer can have the same problem.

So how do you pick the best channel? Most consumer grade routes, your DLinks and Linksi (is that plural?) will pick channel 6 right out of the box. Channel 6 is right in the center of the bandwidth available for 802.11g, so most WiFi antennae are tuned for it. If you don’t feel like scanning the area to see what’s around you can pick something slightly off of 6. Moving just one number is not always enough to help, as the way the protocol is structured channels within 10 MHz of each other may overlap. This means you’re best off going with something less than 4 or greater than 8.

You might be wondering why this matters. This November (hopefully) the IEEE 802.11n standard will be finalized and we should start to see a lot more devices using it. The added bandwidth and range will be nice, but it is going to amplify this problem. Not only can this reach further, but it has the capability to use two different channels for more bandwidth. Luckily for those of us who want to skirt this problem, all 802.11n transmissions have to be wrapped in an 802.11b header. Because of this we’ll still be able to see and avoid them with our current cards.

If you’re having trouble with your wireless network, it might be worth your time to check out iStumbler, a great tool for seeing what radios are around you. And if you like colorful graphs as much as I do, you’ll be happy to see they have a dashboard plugin to show you what’s in the air.

With a few iPhones floating around the office, and no iTunes enabled Starbucks in sight–we were feeling a bit disenfranchised up here in lovely Cambridge. Given that, and our love of “just in time” information, we felt we had to take matters into our own hands. And so we did.

Want to check it out for yourself? It’s easy: stand outside our office, and fire up the WiFi iTunes store. Now check out that Starbucks button!

Want to check it out for yourself? It’s easy: hop on the T to Porter Square in Cambridge, stand outside our office, tune to the “tmobile” WiFi network (you should be able to pick it up from the street), and fire up the WiFi iTunes store on your phone. Now check out that Starbucks button! (you’ll notice that we’re hiring too)

Any student who took “Every Bit You Make” should be able to pull it off as its pretty straight forward. All it took was an Acela ticket, and a morning in New York in the Times Square Starbucks with my laptop, my iPhone, and a bunch of network snooping. Granted, I probably got some funny looks while being overly caffeinated and staring intently at my laptop…