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longtime viewers will know that I've had my fair share of problems with all of

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the tech that I've stuffed into my new house but one of the biggest pain points

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has been the wi-fi at first I thought it might be random interference from dodgy

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smart home gadgets and then I blamed the devices themselves which would just

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disconnect and then refuse to reconnect seemingly at random but as it turned out

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the answer was both more complicated and

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also simpler than I thought every one of

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my access points had defaulted to channel one in the 2.4 GHz band which

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meant that even though I never configured that I had a traffic jam of

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2.4 GHz Wi-Fi around my entire house

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which got me thinking is it possible to have too much Wi-Fi how bad would that

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be and it's already completely bricked

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our video streams turns out pretty bad

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so if you want to improve your Wi-Fi at home the answer is not to put an access

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point in every room though you know what you could put in every room wa no not

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that our sponsor Ridge they're doing a

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nice as fun as it would be to start here

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first we need to back up a little we have a full video on this EMC Chamber

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from Raymond DMC but the tldr is this

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room blocks radio waves creating an

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absolutely ideal environment for testing manufacturer claims so we've got our one

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access point here configured to 2.4 GHz Channel 1 and we've got our Wi-Fi 7

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laptop over there which we'll be using to complete a 10 GB file

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transfer and go wow that's really impressive but

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it's still going to take a while so while we wait for that to complete I

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should probably explain why you would never see these results at home 2.4 GHz

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has been in use for Wi-Fi since 802.11b hit the market back in

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1999 it has some major drawbacks these

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days but also a few key advantages that

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keep it in use namely its Legacy compatibility its Superior maximum range

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and its very low implementation cost

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unfortunately it's these very same ah

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advantages that can turn 2.4 GHz into

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such a nightmare allow me to demonstrate well I just did I bet those speeds Dro

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to like half right uh they're all oh now they're

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going down there they go yep took a second but they're about half now cool

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right but not scientific let's get the door closed and show you what happened

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in a controlled environment I'm going to go out on a

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limb here and say you probably don't live in an electromagnetic isolation

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cell so let's try to create a more

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realworld environment within our cell in

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our scenario you live in a windowless apartment with neighbors on all six

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sides and those will be represented by the six access points that we're going

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to position around the room I'm going to assume that your internet

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service provider negotiated an exclusivity deal with the builder so all

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of your neighbors have the same default router running factory default settings

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and would you look at that seven Wi-Fi

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let's do the same file transfer yeah it's not bad oh but it sure as heck

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isn't 20 megabytes a second no problem you say as long as we aren't all

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streaming Netflix at the same time it shouldn't be a problem and yet it is

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it's not the slowest thing ever but it's definitely slower than what we saw last

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time so what's going on Meet the ypy dbx

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while you can use a free app on your phone to see all of the wireless networks around you including which

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channels they're operating on which goes a long way you need a spectrum analyzer

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tool like this one to see just how busy

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the airwaves are these new U7 Pro Max devices also have a built-in antenna

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just for spectrum analysis meaning that once you install them you can then

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actually check check where they're conflicting which channels are issues

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and the waterfall effect just like the Y spy and you can actually see right here

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on channel one where all of our access points are loaded up we are looking at

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anywhere from 35 to 45% utilization and

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what's really wild is the traffic you're seeing isn't from them doing anything

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it's just from them looking for devices that might want to connect to them so

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let's kick things up a notch and play a YouTube video and

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as expected basically no difference I

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mean if you couldn't watch a YouTube video when you had six neighbors Wi-Fi

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wouldn't work at all so this shouldn't be a surprise but what happens if your

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neighbors all get home and start streaming video as well I can see the

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utilization changing wow that's a lot

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more traffic already yep I don't even have all of them connected yet there you

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go all six of our neighbors that's a lot spicier basically

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red equals bad and what's really interesting is that even though our

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utilization isn't 100% you can see

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frequent hitches in our phones here oh

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oh that one's really bad now parseek being a realtime streaming application

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rather than loading in chunks like YouTube is a worst case scenario but

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it's also a real world one so let's see

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what our file transfer looks like with all of those running at the same time

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actually that's better than I expected but definitely slower what's even more

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interesting though is the way that now instead of just this one hitching all

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the time they're all doing it as they

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wait around for their turn to transfer data but wait hold on a second lonus

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what are the phones waiting for each phone is connected to just one of our

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six access points they're not sharing the connection with anything else ah but

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to use a classic networking analogy where data payloads are cars and

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wireless spectrum is roads you can actually see in the utilization here

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that because they are all using the factory default configuration they're

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all sharing the same road this limits the maximum total bandwidth across all

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of these devices in spite of the fact that they're all connected to different

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access points this creates traffic jam situations as the APS and the connected

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devices fight to decide whose turn it is to go now the obvious solution would be

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to add more roads for these guys to drive on and they do do that in most

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cases the 2.4 GHz Spectrum has three nonoverlapping channels but this only

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helps if everyone works together to avoid using the same channels as each

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other and even then it only helps to a point While most real Apartments don't

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have neighbors on every single side because of 2.4 gz's incredible wall all

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penetrating power it's still common to see as many as a couple of dozen nearby

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access points that are clogging up the airwaves and we're about to kick things

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up another notch to show you why that can be such a problem after we check on

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that file transfer oh I'm going to make

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it s oh God I didn't make it it is much

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slower yeah I don't feel like waiting around for this you're going to get I'll

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get the actual times of them you'll make graphs and stuff yeah

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nice let's put in some more APS let's do

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it now courtesy of ubiquity instead of

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six neighbors we're going to have 50 now

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we didn't have 50 phones to pair of them but as you're about to see just having

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this many APS in a room together is going to cause some serious problems

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are these ones here plugged in they're boing up yeah no I I see them

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flashing and it's already completely

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bricked our video streams the thing to remember here guys is none of the access

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points we just put in the room are actually connected to anything but what

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about our file transfer Elijah I don't even think you'll get it started but go

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for it I'm still connected to Wi-Fi which is more than some of my devices

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could do at home yes they would disconnect and simply not be able to

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reconnect maybe that's good news then I

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doubt it it already lagged at the beginning it hasn't even figured out

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that it's the same file that's right cuz it would ask for

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the copy replac it hasn't even prompted me if I want to overwrite it oh hold on

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let's uh let's fire up the Spectrum analyzer this will still work because it

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doesn't rely on being connected to Wi-Fi oh we've exceeded their default scale uh

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which is at minus 80 DB ah here we go I

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didn't know it went that color of red that is a very very swamped Network and

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what's really interesting is Elijah go ahead and kill the attempts at Parx

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streaming here look at this even with

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all the parex streams dead that utilization is still 100% and most of

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these don't have any devices connected to them and even the ones that do aren't

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transferring anything so what's on the road a lot of things sending out

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multiple pings a second to check for devices to connect to uh checking for

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devices it might have lost a connection to or sometimes they're even trying to

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adjust their settings based on detecting traffic that might be in the air and

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when you get enough of this background noise traffic this results in an

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environment where we can't even begin transferring a file so what can we do to

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fix it we can start by changing the

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channel very fun funny now your

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interface is probably going to look a little bit different but nearly every

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wireless router or access point has a similar option buried somewhere in the

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admin control panel allowing you to select another Channel there are a

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couple of things to watch out for though and the first one is selecting the right

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one we'd recommend downloading an app such as Wi-Fi man to see which channels

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are most utilized in your area so that you can select one that is well not

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those ones another thing to watch out for is not getting tempted by the in

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between channels they might look less utilized but because of the way they

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overlap with channels 1 six and 11 they can end up causing more problems than

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they solve now I can practically hear you asking lonus why would I do any of

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this when I can just enable automatic Channel switching and that's a good

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question sometimes as a set and forget solution it can be great but depending

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on your device and more importantly your neighbor's devices they might only scan

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for access points while they're booting up which can lead to them accidentally

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ending up stuck on suboptimal overlapping channels while you're in

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here by the way load balancing between channels is the most important step but

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a surprisingly effective strategy to help everyone around you out can be to

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lower the transmit power of your access point if everyone in an apartment

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complex did this everyone's speed within their unit would probably be the same

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but they'd be much less likely to interfere with their neighbors outside

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of their unit the last big fix is to move any devices that you can off of 2.4

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GHz for me this unfortunately wasn't possible since I have a handful of smart

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devices that only work on 2.4 GHz but

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for everything else 5 GHz and especially 6 GHz offer multiple benefits which is a

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huge advantage of Wi-Fi 7 devices like UniFi lineup that we used Wi-Fi 7

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capable devices are able to dynamically switch between 65 and 2.4 GHz bands to

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adjust for latency or any other factors that may be affecting your connection

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with some devices even supporting mlo or multi-link operation allowing your

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client devices to connect using all three bands at the same time which

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Aggregates their bandwidth together for greater overall performance the only

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drawback is that compared to 2.4 they don't offer the same range that's why

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the best installations configure their APS to use a combination let's say

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you're in a pretty big house or a small business and you've got an AP right in

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the middle you need to extend your 5 GHz range to the far reaches of the building

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so okay you add two more APS but now

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your 2.4 GHz devices are all talking over each other well no problem most APS

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allow the 2.4 GHz radio to be turned off

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so you can have your range and eat your speed too in the real world nailing down

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all of these optimizations can be challenging though especially if you

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aren't on the best terms with your neighbors but who knows maybe if you

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show them this video they might see how if we all cooperate there's enough

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Wireless Spectrum for everyone and now

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don't I don't know what you're into plus it has all the features you'd expect

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like wind resistance noise cancelling mics on device controls and an ip55

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video maybe check out the one where I first set up Wi-Fi 60 access points in

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my house and uh forgot to disable 2.4 on

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some of them maybe it's time to upgrade to Wi-Fi 7 is it time let's do it I

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noticed we have a bunch of APS in there