What is the impact of overlapping channels?
Each channel delivers 11 Mbps or 54 Mbps of bandwidth. All clients that associate with an Access Point on a channel share that bandwidth. If more bandwidth is needed, additional Access Points must be added. As wireless is a shared medium like an Ethernet hub, these Access Points must be on non-overlapping channels. Otherwise, if a 2nd or 3rd Access Point on the same channel is used in the same physical area, no additional capacity will be added. Even channels that only partially overlap will cause performance issues. Overlap between the channels will cause interference between radios, making it harder for clients that are far away to connect reliably. Thus in the 2.4 GHz band, only 3 non-overlapping channels are available.
