On 2006-10-04, Peter <z123@nospam.com> wrote:
The bandwidth of the transmitted WiFi signal is actually 5 channels
wide, so channels less than 5 apart will overlap. To set 3 access
points to non-overlapping spectrum you'd pick channels that are
separated by at least 5, like 1-6-11, or 1-7-13, or something.

This channel selection isn't fundamentally necessary for it to
work, however. Even if you set them all to the same channel
you'll likely still have fine results, certainly if your
computers always attach to the closest access point, since
the APs are still separated by code division. The issue is that
the "signal" from one AP is "noise" with respect to the
other APs to the extent that their channels overlap, so
minimizing that overlap between adjacent APs will improve
their signal-to-noise ratio, and hence improve things like
connection speed.

So you don't need to worry a whole lot about channel selection,
but minimizing the channel overlap of an AP with its closest
neighbours will improve performance.

Dennis Ferguson