**The Struggle is Real: How to Fix Background Noise Traffic and Improve Wi-Fi Performance**

We've all been there - stuck with poor Wi-Fi performance, frustrating slow speeds, and annoying background noise traffic that seems to be sucking the life out of our internet connection. But what's behind this issue, and how can we fix it? In this article, we'll dive into the world of wireless networking and explore the common causes of background noise traffic, as well as some practical solutions to help you improve your Wi-Fi performance.

**Understanding Background Noise Traffic**

Background noise traffic refers to the constant chatter between devices on the same frequency band, causing interference and disrupting our internet connection. This type of traffic is particularly problematic because it's not just a matter of finding a quiet spot - it's about adjusting our settings to minimize its impact. So, what causes this background noise traffic? In many cases, it's due to nearby devices on the same channel as ours, broadcasting their own signals and creating a cacophony of interference.

**The Importance of Channel Selection**

Selecting the right channel is crucial in minimizing background noise traffic. We recommend using an app like WiFi Analyzer to scan for overlapping channels and identify which ones are most utilized in your area. This will help you choose a channel that's less crowded, reducing the likelihood of interference from nearby devices. However, it's essential to note that not all channels are created equal - some may appear less utilized but can still cause problems due to their overlap with other channels.

**Avoiding Common Pitfalls**

When selecting a new channel, there are several pitfalls to watch out for. Firstly, avoid the temptation of in-between channels, which may seem like a good option at first but can end up causing more problems than they solve. Secondly, be aware that some devices only scan for access points while booting up, which can lead to them getting stuck on sub-optimal overlapping channels. By being mindful of these pitfalls, you can minimize the impact of background noise traffic and improve your overall Wi-Fi performance.

**Load Balancing Between Channels**

Another effective strategy for minimizing background noise traffic is to load balance between channels. This involves configuring your access point to switch between different channels dynamically, depending on the network activity and device usage. By doing so, you can ensure that devices are not stuck on a single channel, reducing the likelihood of interference from nearby devices.

**Lowering Transmit Power**

A surprisingly effective strategy for minimizing background noise traffic is to lower the transmit power of your access point. This involves reducing the amount of signal strength emitted by the AP, which can help reduce interference from other devices in the area. By doing so, you can create a more balanced network environment where devices are less likely to interfere with each other.

**Moving Devices Off 2.4 GHz**

Finally, one of the most effective ways to minimize background noise traffic is to move devices that only work on 2.4 GHz off their wireless networks. While this may not be possible for all devices, it's worth exploring alternative options, such as using a wired Ethernet connection or finding a different device that can accommodate your needs.

**The Future of Wi-Fi: Wi-Fi 7 and Dynamic Band Selection**

The latest generation of Wi-Fi technology, Wi-Fi 7, offers several benefits over its predecessors. One of the key advantages is dynamic band selection, which allows devices to switch between different frequency bands (2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, and 6 GHz) depending on the network activity and device usage. This feature can help improve performance by allocating more bandwidth to devices that need it most.

Another benefit of Wi-Fi 7 is its ability to aggregate bandwidth across multiple frequency bands, creating a faster and more reliable internet connection. However, it's worth noting that Wi-Fi 7 devices may not offer the same range as their 2.4 GHz counterparts, so it's essential to configure your APs to use a combination of frequencies to ensure optimal performance.

**Conclusion**

Background noise traffic is a common problem in wireless networking, but with the right strategies and knowledge, you can minimize its impact and improve your Wi-Fi performance. By selecting the right channel, load balancing between channels, lowering transmit power, moving devices off 2.4 GHz, and leveraging the latest generation of Wi-Fi technology (Wi-Fi 7), you can create a more balanced and efficient network environment that meets your needs.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enLong time viewers will know that I've had my fair share of problems with all of the tech that I've stuffed into my new houseBut one of the biggest pain points has been the Wi-Fi. At firstI thought it might be random interference from dodgy smart home gadgetsand then I blamed the devices themselves which would justDisconnect and then refuse to reconnect, seemingly at random.But as it turned out the answer was both more complicated and also simpler than I thought.Every one of my access points had defaulted to channel one in the 2.4 gigahertz band.Which meant that even though I never configured that I had a traffic jam of 2.4 gigahertz Wi-Fiaround my entire house.Which got me thinking, is it possible to have too much Wi-Fi? How bad would that be?And it's alreadyCompletely bricked our video streams. Turns out pretty bad.So if you want to improve your Wi-Fi at homeThe answer is not to put an access point in every room. Do you know what you could put in every room?No, not that. Our sponsorRidge. They're doing a massive sweepstakes now until September 13th with prizes like a gold-platedCybertruck, a Hennessy Velociraptor, which is also a truck, or a$100,000 in cash. Enter for free or grab a mystery wallet at ridge.com/Linusmystery for just $69. Nice!As fun as it would be to start here. First, we need to back up a littleWe have a full video on this EMC chamber from Raymond EMCBut the TLDR is this room blocks radio waves creating an absolutely idealEnvironment for testing manufacturer claims.So we've got our one access point here configured to 2.4 gigahertz channel oneAnd we've got our Wi-Fi 7 laptop over there, which we'll be using to complete a 10 gigabyte file transferand...Go!Wow, that's really impressive, but it's still gonna take a whileSo while we wait for that to complete I should probably explain why you would neverSee these results at home2.4 gigahertz has been in use for Wi-Fi since 802.11b hit the market back in1999 it has some major drawbacks these daysBut also a few key advantages that keep it in use, namely its legacy compatibility,It's superior maximum range and it's very low implementation cost.Unfortunately, it's these very same,Advantages that can turn 2.4 gigahertz into such a nightmare.Allow me to demonstrate. Well, I just did I bet those speeds drop to like half, right?They're all now they're going down there they go. Yep took a second, but they're about half now. Cool, right?But not scientific. Let's get the door closed and show you what happened in a controlled environment.I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say, you probably don't live in an electromagnetic isolation cellSo let's try to create a more real-worldEnvironment within our cell. In our scenario you live in a windowlessApartment with neighbors on all six sides and those will be represented by that six access points that we're gonna positionAround the room. I'm gonna assume that your internet service provider negotiated an exclusivity deal with the builderSo all of your neighbors have the same default router running factory default settings and would you look at that seven Wi-Fi's?Let's do the same file transfer. YeahIt's not bad. OhBut it sure as heck isn't 20 megabytes a secondNo problem. You say as long as we aren't all streaming Netflix at the same timeIt shouldn't be a problem and yet it isIt's not the slowest thing ever, but it's definitely slower than what we saw last timeSo what's going on? Meet the wise by DBX!While you can use a free app on your phone to see all of the wireless networks around you including which channels they're operating onWhich goes a long wayYou need a spectrum analyzer tool like this one to see just how busy the airwaves areThese new u7 Pro Max devices also have a built-in antenna just for spectrum analysisMeaning that once you install themYou can then actually check where they're conflicting, which channels are issues and the waterfall effectJust like the Wi Spy. And you can actually see right here on channel one where all of our access points are loaded upWe are looking at anywhere from 35 to 45 percent utilizationAnd what's really wild is the traffic you're seeing isn't from them doing anythingIt's just from them looking for devices that might want to connect to them. SoLet's kick things up a notch and play a YouTube video. And asexpected,Basically, no difference. I mean if you couldn't watch a YouTube video when you had six neighborsWi-Fi wouldn't work at all. So this shouldn't be a surprise.But what happens if your neighbors all get home and start streaming video as well? I can see the utilization changing.Wow, that's a lot more traffic already. Yep. I don't even have all of them connected yet.There you go. All six of our neighbors. OhThat's a lot spicier, basically red equals bad.And what's really interesting is that even though our utilization isn't a hundred percent you can see frequentHitches in our phones here. Oh, oh that one's really bad. Now parsec being a real-time streaming applicationRather than loading in chunks like YouTube is a worst-case scenario, but it's also a real-world oneSo, let's see what our file transfer looks like with all of those running at the same timeActually, that's better than I expected but definitely slowerWhat's even more interesting though is the way that now instead of just this one hitching all the timeThey're all doing it as they wait around for their turn to transfer data. But wait, hold on a second LinusWhat are the phones waiting for each phone is connected to just one of our six access points,They're not sharing the connection with anything else.Ah, but to use a classic networking analogy where data payloads are cars and wireless spectrum is roads,You can actually see in the utilization here that because they are all using the factory default configurationThey're all sharing the same roadThis limits the maximum total bandwidth across all of these devices in spite of the fact that they're allconnected to different access pointsThis creates traffic jam situations as the APs and the connected devicesFight to decide whose turn it is to go.Now the obvious solution would be to add more roads for these guys to drive on and they do do that in most casesThe 2.4 gigahertz spectrum has three non overlapping channelsBut this only helps if everyone works together to avoid using the same channels as each other and even thenIt only helps to a point while most real apartments don't have neighbors on every single sideBecause of 2.4 gigahertz is incredible wall penetrating power,It's still common to see as many as a couple of dozenNearby access points that are clogging up the airwaves and we're about to kick things upAnother notch to show you why that can be such a problem, after we check on that file transfer.I'm gonna make it.Nope oh, I didn't make it. It is much slower. Yeah, I don't feel like waiting around for thisYou're gonna get... I'll get the actual times of them. You'll make graphs and stuff. YeahNiceLet's put in some more APs. Let's do it.Now courtesy of Ubiquiti instead of six neighbors. We're gonna have 50 nowWe didn't have 50 phones to pair to themBut as you're about to see just having this many APs in a room together is gonna cause some serious problems.Are these ones here plugged in? They're booting up. Yeah. No, I see them flashingIt's alreadyCompletely bricked our video streams. The thing to remember here guys isNone of the access points we just put in the room are actually connected to anythingWhat about our file transfer Elijah? I don't even think you'll get it started but go for it.I'm still connected to Wi-Fi, which is more than some of my devices could do at homeYes, they would disconnect and simply not be able to reconnect. Maybe that's good news then. I doubt.It already lagged at the beginning. It hasn't even figured out that it's the same fileThat's right because it would ask for the copy replace it hasn't even prompted me if I want to overwrite it.Oh, hold on. Let's uh, let's fire up the spectrum analyzer.This will still work because it doesn't rely on being connected to Wi-Fi. Oh, we've exceeded their default scaleWhich is at minus 80 DB. Ah, here we go. I didn't know it went that color.That's a very very swamped networkAnd what's really interesting is Elijah go ahead and kill the attempt set parsec streaming here. Look at thiseven with all the parsec streams dead, that utilization is still a 100%and most of these don't have any devices connected to them and even the ones that do aren't transferring anythingSo what's on the road? A lot of things sending out multiple pings a second to check for devices to connect toChecking for devices it might have lost a connection to or sometimesThey're even trying to adjust their settings based on detecting traffic that might be in the air.And when you get enough of this background noise traffic this results in an environment where we can't even begintransferring a file.So what can we do to fix it? We can start by changing the channel.Very funny now your interface is probably gonna look a little bit different,But nearly every wireless router or access point has a similar option buried somewhere in the admin control panelAllowing you to select another channel. There are a couple of things to watch out for thoughand the first one isSelecting the right oneWe'd recommend downloading an app such as WiFi man to see which channels are mostUtilized in your area so that you can select one that is wellNot those ones. Another thing to watch out for is not getting tempted by the in-between channelsThey might look less utilizedBut because of the way they overlap with channels 1 6 and 11 they can end up causing more problems than they solve.Now I can practically hear you askingLinus, why would I do any of this when I can just enable automatic channel switching? And that's a good questionSometimes as a set-and-forget solution it can be greatBut depending on your device and more importantly your neighbors devicesThey might only scan for access points while they are booting up which can lead to themAccidentally ending up stuck on sub optimal overlapping channels. While you're in here by the way load balancing between channelsIt's the most important stepBut a surprisingly effective strategy to help everyone around you out can be to lower the transmit power of your access pointIf everyone in an apartment complex did this everyone's speed within their unit would probably be the sameBut they'd be much less likely to interfere with their neighbors outside of their unitThe last big fix is to move any devices that you can off of 2.4 gigahertz. For meThis unfortunately wasn't possible since I have a handful of smart devices that only work on 2.4 gigahertz.But for everything else 5 gigahertz and especially 6 gigahertz offer multiple benefitsWhich is a huge advantage of Wi-Fi 7 devices like unifies lineup that we used.Wi-Fi 7 capable devices are able to dynamically switch between 6 5 and2.4 gigahertz bands to adjust for latency or any other factors that may be affecting your connection. With some devices even supportingMLO or a multi-link operation allowing your client devices to connect using all three bands at the same timeWhich aggregates their bandwidth together for greater overall performance.The only drawback is that compared to 2.4 they don't offer the same rangeThat's why the best installations configure their APs to use a combinationLet's say you're in a pretty big house or a small business and you've got an AP right in the middleYou need to extend your 5 gigahertz range to the far reaches of the building. SoOkay, you add two more APsNow your 2.4 gigahertz devices are all talking over each otherWell, no problemMost APs allow the 2.4 gigahertz radio to be turned offSo you can have your range and eat your speed too. In the real world nailing downAll of these optimizations can be challenging though, especially if you aren't on the best terms with your neighborsBut who knows maybe if you show them this video they might see how if we all cooperateThere's enough wireless spectrum for everyone and now for a word from our sponsor.SHOKZThe Open Run Pro 2s are a unique design using both the power of bone conduction and air conductionTo produce crisp highs and un-muddied bassThe magic behind it all, their dual pitch technologyIt's fine-tuned to provide premium sound quality while reducing leakage to keep that audio for your ears onlyOctopushy, from Russia with love.The unique design sits comfortably and unintrusively on top of your earBut stays nicely in place making them shockingly great for sports like running, cycling, working outCompetitive tic-tac-toe, I don't know what you're into.Plus it has all the features you'd expect like wind resistance, noise cancelling mics, on-device controlsAnd an IP55 sweat and water resistance ratingElectrify your life!Get your own pair of Open Run Pro 2s using our link in the descriptionIf you guys enjoyed this video, maybe check out the one where I first set up Wi-Fi 6E access points in my houseAnd, forgot to disable 2.4 on some of them.Maybe it's time to upgrade to Wi-Fi 7Is it time?Let's do itI noticed we have a bunch of APs in there\n"