Can I change my home broadband channel?

[anotheruser]

Hello!

I've got the big square Vodafone hub and recently moved into a little neighborhood. Sometimes my wifi drops to significantly low speeds, particularly at night time and whenever I check it's aligns with the channel overlapping a lot of others. For some reason my router is selecting channel 9 whereas all the VM and SKY routers in the area seem to mostly behave in their respectful 1, 6 and 11 lanes. 

Having used a wifi analyzer for a while I can see that channel 6 is begging for more routers to choose it, but I can't see any way to do this in the router?

Please can anyone help me? Seems like I'm missing something obvious here

[Jayach]

The obvious that you are missing is that Vodafone have, in their wisdom, removed the option for us to choose the best channel for ourselves. They believe they know better.

[HappyNomad]

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@Jayach wrote:

The obvious that you are missing is that Vodafone have, in their wisdom, removed the option for us to choose the best channel for ourselves. They believe they know better.

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More a case of… 

If we can get user interaction with the router down to taking it out of the box, plugging it in and pressing an on/off switch we reduce our support burden to almost nothing and we need no highly paid support staff to say, "is it plugged in, switched on and lit up?  It is?  Ok, the problem is with your LAN and unfortunately, we can’t help with that.  Thank you for choosing Vodafone, have a nice day”.

Wait… is that on/off switch really necessary?

[anotheruser]

oh what a bummer..!

It's a great router! Good speccs and works well if it just didnt use channel 9..!

Is this something they can change remotely if I call them? Seems a bit crazy but I'm sure the option is there to themselves?

[HappyNomad]

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@anotheruser wrote:

oh what a bummer..!

It's a great router! Good speccs and works well if it just didnt use channel 9..!

Is this something they can change remotely if I call them? Seems a bit crazy but I'm sure the option is there to themselves?

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Not using the supplied modem/router, I am a little out of touch with it but I believe that channel selection is now dynamically handled by the router itself. 
Not sure if the companion app has any more or any less user selectable features than the router but may be worth looking at if you haven’t already done so.

The removal of user channel selection has generated many posts in these forum pages but clearly, to little effect.  Have a scout round.  

An alternative is to do what a number of us have done - replace the substandard supplied modem/router with hardware of our own choosing.

[VFbroadbanduser]

Yes you can, but you need an Android device to do it.

Vodafone have removed the setting from the router and several newer versions of the Vodafone Broadband app (Why?). What you need to do is download the apk of 4.1.0 of the Android Vodafone Broadband app. This will allow you to change any channels manually.

Once you have installed the app and connected it to the router, you have to be quick because the app automatically updates itself to the latest version again around 5 minutes later after installing it. It doesn't even need the Google Play store to do it.

Once you have set up the Vodafone Broadband app you need to select the wifi networks, I configure my router with split SSID's for the 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz networks with the Guest network also turned on. Then you select the 2.4Ghz network scroll down and manually change the channel to a different one.

This is the only method of manually changing either the 2.4Ghz or 5Ghz channels, you must use an Android device to do it. 

[Jayach]

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@anotheruser wrote:

oh what a bummer..!

It's a great router! Good speccs and works well if it just didnt use channel 9..!

Is this something they can change remotely if I call them? Seems a bit crazy but I'm sure the option is there to themselves?

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Yes they can, but good luck with getting anyone to do it.

The best chances of getting it done would be to use live chat https://www.vodafone.co.uk/bbservcd/

or call 08080 034 515.

Do let us know if you succeed.

[anotheruser]

Hey thanks for the info - how can I get the previous apk version?

[Jayach]

A quick search found this:

 Vodafone Broadband - Broadband at your fingertips 4.5.2 Download Android APK | Aptoide

The version you want is 4.1.0. Don't forget to turn auto update off or it will update itself.

Edit: Strangely I couldn't download the app from Aptoide, it jut kept downloading the Aptoide app itself. so I found this one instead, and that worked.

Vodafone Broadband - Broadband at your fingertips APK 4.1.0 Download for Android – Download Vodafone...

2nd Edit: Thought I should add a disclaimer: Downloading from anywhere other than the official app store carries a risk.

[VFbroadbanduser]

That's the version I have from Aptoide and you have to install it first and then install the Vodafone broadband app the first time. But what I have is another app called APK Extractor so once 4.1.0 is installed, I build the apk of the Vodafone Broadband app using it, so I don't have to use the Aptoide app anymore. 

It's stupid that Vodafone took the option to change the channels manually out of the GUI and the mobile app ages ago.

[Jayach]

Yes I finally figured out that Aptoide require you to install their app store first. They don't make that obvious.

The Apkfab download was just the apk file itself.

[anotheruser]

I tried to install it on an emulator but had no luck so installed the apkfab on a old samsung I had lying around that is set to never update anything. Now it's lying behind the router whenever I need it.

Easy to change the channel with the old app, thanks for the help!

[Jayach]

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@anotheruser wrote:

I tried to install it on an emulator but had no luck so installed the apkfab on a old samsung I had lying around that is set to never update anything. Now it's lying behind the router whenever I need it.

Easy to change the channel with the old app, thanks for the help!

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Seems a good solution, but crazy we have to go to such lengths.