Better use of channels available by better use of standards.

Pbee

First suggestion: stop using 802.11B and channels 6/11.

For 5 to 10 years I've noticed something very bad on both residential wifi and business wifi. Almost ALL wifi AP's still use a channel default pattern that is based on the old 802.11B (DSSS) standard for the US frequency space. This usually means that every AP is set to channel 6 or 11 as a default or its automatic selection defaults to these channels.

It is time to enforce channels 1, 5, 9 and 13 instead. It is generally accepted that 802.11B (with its 22MHz channel width) is obsolete for a decade now and except for the US all other countries in the world use channels 1 to 13. Especially since most AP's tend to be used in dual channel (40MHz) mode, its logical to stop delivering AP's with default channel setting 6 and 11 now. Older and current AP's can have a firmware update to enforce this.

Second suggestion: channel selection by geographical coordinates.

Also there should be an industry wide initiative to create channel planning system based on the actual location of an AP. A mechanism that can automatically rearrange the use of channels by all AP's near to each other by periodically exchanging/checking each others geographical coordinates. There are so many AP's, including those from Zyxel, that struggle and fail to automatically set a channel (both 2.4 and 5GHz) based on the reception of neighbouring AP's only. In an area with very "noisy" 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands it usually fails.

Also many (if not all) internet service providers deliver modem/routers to residential/office buildings with wifi all fixed to channel 6/11 and 36. Causing massive interference with all neighbours. Most technicians from internet service providers have barely any knowledge about radio transmission and their response is often placing even more AP's (with or without wireless mesh) causing even more interference. I have this neighbour that has 4 AP's in a residence space that is no more than 10x10x10 meters and he's still baffled that his wifi network is very slow.