I’ve long heard tales about adjusting your Wi-Fi channel width to receive a speed boost. It seems like an easy enough change to make on most routers, and if you get faster Wi-Fi as the outcome, what’s not to love?
So, I gave it a go, and while I didn’t experience an enormous uptick in speeds, it was a consistent improvement that I’m happy to receive for free. But before you start bonding your Wi-Fi channels and making every band wider, there are a few considerations and issues you need to be aware of.
Wider Wi-Fi channels can deliver faster speeds
But it’s not always as simple as “bigger is better”
In my case, on my 5GHz Wi-Fi band, I regularly receive speeds around 85-100Mbps, which isn’t bad at all. But I pay for a 500Mbps connection, so I’m not getting the full throughput. Now, that’s down to a few reasons, such as poor connectivity, Wi-Fi interference, and general issues with Wi-Fi transmissions.
Wi-Fi is broken down into bands and, within those, channels. The Wi-Fi channels designate a specific “lane” where your data is sent, and these are set at 20MHz on the 2.4GHz, 5GHz, and newest 6GHz band.
The thing is, 20MHz isn’t a particularly broad slice of the spectrum, and some Wi-Fi bands allow you to “bond” channels to create wider data transmission lanes. So, where a single lane allows a certain amount of traffic, bonding channels allows more.
But it’s not as simple as just sticking as many channels together as you want and reaping the rewards. Merging Wi-Fi channels doesn’t create more Wi-Fi spectrum; it overlaps with other existing channels. While it can help increase data throughput on your Wi-Fi, you can also open your Wi-Fi up to more interference depending on the number of overlapping Wi-Fi channels already in operation in your area.
I widened my 5GHz band and received faster speeds
Not a huge increase, but steady
So, when it comes to extending your Wi-Fi channels, I opted for the 5GHz band for a couple of reasons.
The 5GHz band has more available spectrum than 2.4GHz, which makes it a better option for Wi-Fi channel bonding. I’ll elaborate more on the issues with 2.4GHz Wi-Fi channel bonding in a moment, but in short, it’s not well suited to Wi-Fi bonding for most folks.
The wider spectrum means that creating wider Wi-Fi channels is easier and you run a smaller chance of colliding with other Wi-Fi channels. But it really depends on your Wi-Fi router and your area.
I’m lucky enough to live in a relatively quiet area with few overlapping signals, so I created an 80MHz band around channel 161 (spanning 20MHz channels 149-161). There is another potential 80MHz channel on 5GHz, channel 42 (spanning 20MHz channels 36-48).
These two 80MHz channels are important to note because they don’t trigger router Dynamic Frequency Selection (DFS), which listens for radar activity and vacates the channel the moment it detects any. In most cases, on 5GHz Wi-Fi, extending your Wi-Fi channels to 80MHz or 160MHz means you’ll almost always end up spanning at least one DFS channel, but these two are mostly fine.
After swapping up and bonding the Wi-Fi channels, I regularly received 125Mbps, with a few spikes into the 350Mbps range. Obviously, I can’t count on those increases, but that would be the dream for my Wi-Fi. Nonetheless, I’m happy with the marginal increase to my Wi-Fi speed.
Why can’t you bond 2.4GHz Wi-Fi?
At least, you can’t most of the time
Most people have 2.4Hz Wi-Fi. It’s the most commonly used Wi-Fi band worldwide, meaning that it’s also typically one of the most congested.
Within the 2.4GHz band, there are only three 20MHz channels that don’t overlap: 1, 6, and 11. If you bond two of them into a 40MHz, you’re basically glueing together other channels that do overlap, and likely going to start experiencing interference from your neighbors Wi-Fi.
In most cases, routers have already done away with and hidden the option for 2.4GHz channel bonding. Way back when, in the days of Wi-Fi 4 (802.11n), 40MBHz bonded channels were marketed as a speed boost.
Back in the day, there was less Wi-Fi interference, so it made more sense, but it still wasn’t a great idea. The limited number of 2.4GHz channels means that unless you live on your own, in the middle of nowhere, you’re almost always going to encounter interference.
The Wi-Fi generation sets the ceiling for channel bonding
Older Wi-Fi struggles with merged channels
Wi-Fi channel bonding also works differently across generations, due to the specifications laid out that the Wi-Fi standard must follow.
For example, if you’re stuck using Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac), you’ll be limited to 80MHz channels most of the time, with very limited 160MHz support. Upgrading to the next generation, Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax), brings much better 80MHz support along with formalized 160MHz channel support, making it easier to create larger, stable channels (but still not necessarily avoiding interference!).
Wi-Fi 6E adds the 6GHz band to the same 802.11ax standard. Wi-Fi 7 (802.11be) is the first generation built around genuinely wide channels, up to 320MHz, alongside features specifically meant to manage the interference that width creates.
In that, channel bonding works well on 5GHz with limitations, but the newer 6GHz channel is where merging your Wi-Fi channels really becomes useful.
Head to your router admin panel to change your Wi-Fi channels
The speed boost is real, but it might not stay that way
To change your Wi-Fi channel width, you’ll need to access your Wi-Fi router’s admin panel, where you’re typically looking for a setting named “Wi-Fi channel” or “Wireless Radio” or similar. From there, you should be able to adjust your Wi-Fi channel settings as you see fit.
If your router doesn’t automatically show you the nearest overlapping channels, I’d suggest checking out a Wi-Fi analyzer app to help visualize where you’ll find some clean spectrum.
Finally, note that while bonding your Wi-Fi channels might give you a speed boost now, it’s not guaranteed to last. Why? Because other folks might change their Wi-Fi settings and overlap your now much wider channel, others may move into your area and increase the interference, and the old classic, your router might reset your settings without warning.
In that, it’s worth keeping close tabs on your Wi-Fi settings and tweaking them as you go to keep things ship-shape.