Edit: Wireless Access Points, not Modems
I read some time ago that overlapping interference is a lot worse so all modems should use either 1, 6, or 11. But I see a lot of modems in my neighbourhood using all the channels from 1-11, causing an overlapping nightmare. Why do modem manufacturers allow overlapping to happen in the first place?
Edit: To clarify my question, some countries allow use of all channels and some don’t. This means some countries’ optimal channels are 1, 5, 9, 13, while other countries’ optimal channels are 1, 6, 11. Whichever the case, in those specific countries, all modems manufactured should be hard limited to use those optimal channels only. But modems can use any channel and cause overlapping interference. I just don’t understand why modems manufacturers allow overlapping to happen in the first place. The manufacturers, of all people, should know that overlapping is worse than same channel interference…
To add a scenario, in a street of houses closely placed, it would be ideal for modems to use 1, 6, 11. So the first house on the street use channel 1, second house over use channel 6, next house over use channel 11, next house use channel 1, and so on. But somewhere in between house channel 1 and 6, someone uses channel 3. This introduces overlapping interference for all the 3 houses that use channels 1, 3, 6. In this case, the modem manufacturer should hard limit the modems to only use 1, 6, 11 to prevent this overlapping to happen in the first place. But they are manufactured to be able to use any channel and cause the overlap to happen. Why? This is what I am most confused about.
In: Technology
All these answers and not a single person has stumbled on the correct one: Hindsight is 20/20.
Remember that when the standard was settled upon, the designers had absolutely no idea how ubiquitous WiFi would become. It would be approximately another ten years before WiFi routers would even start to become household appliances. Zip drives were state-of-the-art, laptop thickness was measured in _inches_, and the concept of a smartphone was about a decade away from public consciousness. People rented VHS cassettes to watch movies at home on their rear-projection TVs, and HD television was for the idle rich. Netflix had just started mailing people DVDs via The Postal Service.
Okay, I’m getting a little carried away describing the world of the late 90s, but it’s important to remember the designers of the 802.11 standards had to make choices in a world where households rich enough to even have internet access connected to the internet via dialup. No one even conceptualized a world where routers would be so cheap that every single tenant in an apartment building would have their own radio transmitter sitting in a closet gathering dust out of sight, out of mind. Many of the choices they made for the standard naturally assumed wireless internet access would only really be deployed by professional network admins who would have control of all the other routers in range. Why not let them choose any channel?
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