@TP-Link_Deco Whilst I understand much of the thinking behind your response here, can you please explain why - if the system is intelligent enough to know when there is channel congestion - there is still an option to optimize the system manually?  Why isn't this done automatically? On a daily basis I check 'Network Optimization', get the message 'Your current wi-fi channel is congested', select optimize and then everything is supposedly ok.  Thirty minutes later, the channel is somehow congested again.  What is going on?

@TP-Link_Deco 

"Meanwhile, theoretically, the Deco will choose a wireless channel with best performance automatically."

Emphasizing the theoretically part.

The Deco's Wifi analyzer itself suggests switching to a better, less crowded channel but I am unable to.

I really am quite unhappy with this (M4R)

I havent seen many threads about this in 2021 but I hope I am just missing some critical hidden update that allows me to fix the issue that the Deco app itself is suggesting as the solution. 

(EU, Finland)

@obnoxiousalpha 

I don't know why but they are deleting some post about this matter

TP-Link_Deco wrote

Hello all, sorry to respond late.

 

We have already noted all of your requests about choosing the wireless channels manually on the Deco system and they have been forwarded to the developers, they will publish new official firmware in the near future, not too long to wait, which will optimize the current channeling picking mechanism, it is suggested to wait for the new updates and confirm if that will help address any of your concerns.

 

I will try to explain why we don't give the Deco administrator the permission to manually choose a channel on the current Deco system, which may not precise but I will try my best:

 

Firstly, we need to clarify that the wireless channels on the current Deco firmware are not manually configurable as Deco automatically selects a 2.4GHz channel to use based on what it sees around it, selecting the channel that has the least interference. The 5GHz channel appears to be configured based on the region the device was manufactured for use in and they are apparently not auto-selected and are definitely not manually configurable.

 

Secondly, we need to reiterate what is the point of having a whole mesh Wi-Fi system in your network. The whole point of mesh networks is to give a seamless, unfettered, and performant experience for wireless networking, and thus a mesh network is "self-configuring" and "self-healing", the network automatically incorporates a new node into the existing structure without needing any adjustments manually by a network administrator and it automatically finds the fastest and most reliable paths to send data. If you change the wireless channel on the Deco nodes manually, it may give you the risk of losing the other Deco nodes and thus ruin your Deco system, you may need to start over again to reconfigure them.

 

What's more, it is not always easy to choose a clear wireless channel in your networks, you may need to test with all of them in order to find one that may be usable. Most importantly, crowded isn’t the same as busy, even though some channel scanning apps tell you one specific channel is busy, they don’t always measure other sources of congestion and interference. Non-Wi-Fi signals (like those from microwaves, Bluetooth devices, cordless phones, garage door openers, baby monitors, etc.) can all congest a channel but may not show up in a scan. So it’s possible that a channel can appear empty, while it is, in fact, saturated with other kinds of interference. 

 

Last but not least, other mesh systems such as Google Wi-Fi mesh (update here that Netgear Orbi is not the same mesh as Deco, Orbi is more like a router + an RE, so if we misunderstood it previously, we are sorry for that), don't allow users to change the channel manually either, which means when developing a mesh system, our developers have already taken all factors into serious consideration and choose the current one, the current Deco mesh system may not be perfect or even good, but we don't think it's just that awful or nonusable as some of you thought. If we need or we must do this change to allow you to change the channel, it will require a lot of research in the market and it is not that easy just like you said "just open the option", I think most users like you guys should understand it.

 

Hopefully, that answers your question but let us know if you need more details.

FYI, It's the Deco Lab analysis tool inside the app that is providing the recommendation to change to a channel with less interference. Unfortunately, this is currently impossible.

@TP-Link_Deco 

@TP-Link_Deco 

I appreciate your manufacturer perspective with selling these to the masses, but the problem we as a WISP are running into in a few instances now that we've deployed over 50 of the Deco for ISP M4/M5 models is that they choose the same or overlapping channel as the fixed wireless dish on the roof.  Talk about interference and it is 20 times more difficult to find a good frequency (clean doesn't exist anymore except in the remotest of places) outdoors that it is in any individual home, unless it's in a MDU with lots of people with WiFi crammed together.  So changing the frequency outside for one client is not an option as they will affect many other clients.

Maybe a compromise---is there a way to make the Deco mesh choose another frequency, or block a frequency range from it's chooses?

This lack of ability to force the Deco's to move to a frequency not in use by the Internet connectivity dish on the roof is forcing us to reconsider our choice to use Deco in our client homes.

Sincerely,

Tim@281 Communications