20 Mhz & 40 Mhz coexistence are modes of frequency. Your wireless devices connect to any one of them according to their specified SSID support system. Your smartphones or headphones can mostly go about connecting with a 20 Mhz frequency with low power usage and call it a day. But your laptop or gaming consoles need the higher frequency, which is set by the manufacturer to connect to a 40 Mhz or higher channel. It can also depend on the wireless network card itself, some can operate at both frequencies.
If you’re the network admin, you must not choose only a 20/40 Mhz channel because chances are some users on your network might not be able to utilize that properly. That’s when the coexistence comes in handy. You set the required frequency’s up and the user utilizes that.
Now let’s set those frequencies:
Note: The instructions below are shown from my TP-Link router. You can follow through the procedure with the same instructions. Your UI might not be the same but the options and functions are equally matched through all the devices. This guide can serve a newbie to a pro. So, stick along.
STEP 1: Navigating to the workbench
This step is very easy. Open your browser, chrome or firefox it doesn’t matter whichever it is. Now, navigate to the login page of your router by visiting the default gateway which should be 192.168.0.1.
Or you can find it pretty easily via command prompt. Press the Win+R key on your keyboard and type in “cmd” in the field and hit Enter.
This will open up the command prompt and type in “ipconfig” and hit Enter again.
This will bring up a list of IPs in your network. At the bottom of the list, there’s Default Gateway & we need that IP. Copy and paste the IP on your browser. This should bring up the login page.
Default login credentials should be ‘admin’ & ‘admin’. Once we’re in, now it’s time to dig in.
STEP 2: Finding the correct option
From the left, select the Wireless option and click on the Basic Settings. Now navigate on the right field and below your wireless network name From the mode, you need to select the 11bgn mixed if it’s not already selected.
Now, below that, you’ll find the Channel tab. You should use 6 or 11. In my case, I’ve already experimented with them and discovered 11 works best for my case. Please do a little experiment with this option because it might benefit you, using a different channel.
STEP 3: Selecting the correct Channel Width
After doing all those procedures, we need to choose the correct channel width. The default should be auto which is fine for most cases, but as we discussed above, smaller devices use 20 Mhz channel. But using 40 Mhz means using a wider channel than 20 Mhz and it pushes more data.
If your devices can only utilize 20 Mhz then switching to 40 Mhz is only hypothetical. Changing this doesn’t mean you’re going to get more speed, it will only help you get better signals. But in the crowded areas with lots of signals bouncing around, setting a manual channel width helps more than having a default channel.
Note that, using the auto mode might be the most preferred or default option, as in this there’s a chance of coexisting both the protocols under the same setting. But for an advanced user, a dedicated channel should be the way to go. You should always restart your browser after every change in the mentioned fields, sometimes you need to restart your router to apply the changes.
This is how you experiment with different Mhz channels and get the most juice from your wireless router. If your router supports 300mbps, then switching to 20 Mhz will disable a single stream and provide you with only half the speed. But if you choose to go with 40 Mhz, you’ll get the full output as a signal.
STEP 4: Testing
If your connection is 100mbps then in 20 Mhz you’ll get only about 35-40 mbps & if you change to 40 Mhz you might get 80-85mbps or maybe the full 100mbps depending on the performance of the router. Hope by the end of this, you have a clear idea about the coexistence and know how to disable/enable/modify them all by yourself.
PRO TIP: It is experimented and proven that if you use Google’s DNS (1.1.1.1) in your DNS setting replacing the default one, you might get increased performance. Also, check your router firmware version, if some of the settings are not available to you & upgrade them accordingly.
The post What is 20/40 MHz coexistence and how to enable or disable it on your router appeared first on Appuals.com.