Hi David, Thanks for your comment. Very interesting information about Nest & ZigBee, we are finding exactly this challenge now due to Nest / Hue / Sonos & Wi-Fi. The solution we think is Google Wi-Fi, but that is another article 😉

However the Air Port Utility does work without a base station as we don’t have one – give it a test and let us know how you get on. Just make sure you enable it in Settings.

Alternatively if you have a PC there are several Wi-Fi scanner apps such as “inSSIDer” that can be used instead.

As you mention 802.11b/g uses 20MHz wide channels in the 2.4GHz band but 802.11n can also use 40MHz channels, making the overlap problem even worse. It can therefore be worth checking your router settings for 20/40MHz modes and avoid the Auto or 40MHz options and select the fixed 20MHz mode. This reduces the theoretical speed advantage of 802.11n but by reducing the overlapping co-channel interference, the throughput can often be improved.

If you are using ZigBee, 802.15.4 or Thread devices (Nest in particular) they also operate in the 2.4GHz band but with much lower bandwidth, typically about 3MHz, so it is even more important to setup your Wi-Fi on 20MHz wide channels 1, 6 & 11only as this gives enough space in-between for these non-Wi-Fi devices to communicate well.

A similar problem does exist in the 5GHz band. Standard channels are also 20MHz wide but in this band they do not overlap and any can be used. Unless the higher speeds of 802.11ac devices are being used, in which case each signal can occupy as much as 80MHz (with even faster speeds and 160MHz channels still to come). With this in mind it is probable best to make sure that your 5GHz channel number are 4 or more channels away from neighbouring networks.