[eyewoo]

Not exactly an art question, but it is related to my art since a connection to the internet is important to me for reference, etc.

At any rate, I have a question about a WiFi detector I just purchased. It's a CanaryWireless HS10 and it works well. It gives strength and the Channel number for each detected WiFi. My question is... what does the Channel number mean??? Anyone know? Is it helpful to know a detected WiFi's Channel number?
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[Nathos]

WiFi channels indicate what radio frequencies are being used by the WiFi access point. Much like an AM/FM radio, if two "stations" are too close to each other on the "dial", they will interfere with each other.

In WiFi, the channels are numbered 1-14. A WiFi access point can be set to use one of those channels to communicate on. The WiFi transceiver in your portable device scans for available access points and can tune to any available channel. The access point set up determines what channels are available for use, your laptop/PDA/whatever looks for what is there, and tries to make use of it.

Channel assignment is important for the people setting up the access points. Users are stuck with whatever is there. For the most part, it doesn't matter a lot to the user. If done well, all that stuff "just works". If there are different people/organizations that run overlapping WiFi networks, the fun can begin.

About the only real purpose for knowing the channels in use for a person just wanting to use a WiFi access point is that the "farther" the channels are apart, the better the transfer rate will be. So if you found something like

WiFiNetworkGeorge - Channel 1
WiFiNetworkJudy - Channel 4
WiFiNetworkFrank - Channel 11

and your WiFi detector shows the signal strength are about the same for all of those, you'd want to try to use WiFiNetworkFrank. There are 7 channels of "spacing" between WiFiNetworkFrank and anything else visible. That would mean that the radio interference between the channels would be the least, resulting in (theroetically) higher data transfer rates.

[eyewoo]

Thanks... that was very clear...
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