Changing Wireless Channel

Nov 16, 2016

Setting the channel for your WiFi is an important step in ensuring the best possible wireless connection.

This guide will walk you through how to change the wireless channel.

SSH to your OpenWRT device

If you are using Windows then start PuTTY and click Session on the left side, select SSH from the options, and then enter in the IP Address of your OpenWRT box into the Host Name field.

Once you’ve done this just click on Open to start up the SSH connection.

If you are connecting via terminal, then just SSH to your OpenWRT device using the following command, where 192.168.1.1 is your OpenWRT device’s IP address.

Configuration

First we need to access the wireless config file to make changes. So run the following command:

vi /etc/config/wireless

Once this is open, you will need to find and edit the channel of your wireless device. If you do not know what device you need to change, search for the SSID you’re trying to make changes to.

config 'wifi-iface'
        option 'device'     'wl0'
        option 'network'    'lan'
        option 'mode'       'ap'
        option 'ssid'       'FreePubWiFi'
        option 'encryption' 'psk2'
        option 'key'        'secretsecrets'

Above, we have found the interface for the SSID ‘FreePubWiFi’. Take a look at the device option, this is the name of the device you need to look for.

config 'wifi-device' 'wl0'
        option 'type'    'broadcom'
        option 'channel' 'auto'

You should find something similar to the above. For this example, simply replace ‘auto’ with the number of the channel you want to use.

Once you have made your changes you will need to reboot your device or restart the wireless.

To restart your wireless, run the following:

wifi down
wifi up

Or if you want to reboot the whole device, run this instead:

reboot

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