Mixed Channel Widths in a wireless network

[Garrett]

I was looking around in the default RF profiles and see there are different profiles with different channel widths.

Going to test a few different profiles and settings out.

Does anyone have any background knowledge on if having multiple AP's in an area on different channel widths has any complications?

Thanks!

[NolanHerring]

It's always something you can do but I would be careful.

The goal with channels is to get as much spectrum re-use as you can, so people tend to lean towards 20MHz by default as this allows you to have the most non-overlapping channels on 5GHz.

If you start to mix stuff, and your letting AutoRF handle it, its easily possible that an AP might be running 40 or 80MHz (say starting on channel 36), and the AP nearby (or within ear-shot) might be on channel 40.

So those two access points might now be contending for the same RF space.

If you know you can get away with it, and you've controlled which channels those RF profiles will be using, then you should be fine. Just make sure you put in the effort to ensure your not stepping on your own toes.

[Garrett]

Thanks for the response Nolan,

We have an AP per classroom. One thought was to increase to 40MHz with DFS channels on 5GHz frequency. 

The reason for this was by increasing from 20 to 40 the range of the signal would be shortened slightly and allow for less bleed over...

We are slowly trying to get away from 2.4MHz frequency because it is currently so saturated. 

Any thoughts? 

Thanks in advance!