Wifi status indicator

Well I have no neighbours. Not within WiFi range anyway.

Which, given Stansted's proximity, means just a couple of channels here.

Yeah sorry, I never thought to look at it on my home wifi. It's stayed on channel 2 for a while.

The 12 (or 13 in some countries) WiFi channels date back to the first iteration of WiFi which had a much smaller bandwidth, and are very unhelpful these day that the signal is much wider than a single channel. This means that there are only 3 useable channels which don't overlap;

It is far better to be on these channels, even if there is also a fairly strong signal from another router, as the devices and access points will detect each others transmissions and timeshare on that channel. If you use the other overlapping channel numbers it will interfere with other APs, and they cannot coordinate leading to lower speeds for everyone.

Don't rely on the router to pick a channel, as the best one where it is, is not important as it's signal is going to be much stronger anyway. Go around the perimeter of your house or property where you are likely to be using WiFi, and measure the signal strengths of competing APs on channel 1, 6 and 11. Pick the channel which has the least competition on average in these locations. It may not be possible to get a good signal on any channel everywhere, so you may have to consider WiFi repeaters.

---druck