Solving Wi-Fi Interference : AO

License-exempt spectrum is a great thing. The opening up of the 2.4 GHz radio band made possible the growth of cheap wireless networking for consumers. But now this wireless neighborhood is getting crowded and overrun.

Users and consumers notice this because they get interference on their wireless LANs. They may not actually say, "I've got interference," but when a Wi-Fi (802.11b) setup in a house or office stops working as well as it used to—when a laptop at one end of a building that used to be able to connect can no longer do so, or when cordless phone users start hearing crackling or popping noises—generally, interference from a neighbor's wireless LAN is the culprit.

Solving this problem is important, as Wi-Fi crowding will only get worse. Not only are more computers and telephones moving on to the 2.4GHz spectrum, but cellular phones use it (via Bluetooth). Even microwave ovens radiate 2.4GHz interference.

Do we really need a company to make a radio interference solution? In the case of standard 11 megabit per second Wi-Fi (802.11b), there are eleven channels of communication available to devices, each one on a slightly different frequency near 2.4 Gigahertz. One way to get better performance from Wi-Fi is to make sure that your device is on a channel that's relatively uncrowded.

Propagate handles this, which is a good start, since most consumers don't. Propagate cofounder Paul Callahan told me that curently "pretty much everybody is on channel 6." Users can change the channel their Wi-Fi router uses, but most don't. Propagate's AutoCell software, running in a Wi-Fi router, assigns itself a channel based on which one is the least used in the vicinity. It simply scans the signals in its neighborhood to see which channels are open and which are crowded.