Channels requires a good, stable, fast network to get the most out of it. Streaming video around the house uses a lot of bandwidth. It’s important your network is prepared for that.

Here are some tips to make sure your network is prepared to work great with Channels.

Ethernet

Use wired ethernet everywhere you can. This guarentees speed and stability. When your devices are on WiFi, your video streaming is battling all of the other devices on your network for speed.

WiFi

If you do use WiFi, make sure you’re using at least an 802.11 AC router and your streaming device is on the 5ghz network.

DHCP Reservation

When network devices connect to your home network, they receive an IP address automatically. This makes things easy. But when other software relies on these IP addresses, things can get hairy when they change.

To solve this problem, use your router’s DHCP Reservation feature. This will let you make the router provide the same IP address every time to your device.

When your devices get the same IP addresses every time, you can be sure your Channels DVR Server or Channels app will always be connected to your HDHomeRun or Channels DVR Server correctly.

Multiple WiFi Routers

If you are using multiple wifi routers in your home, be sure that they are set to bridge mode. When you plug a wifi router into your service provider’s provided router, it creates as second internal network. This can potentially create problems for the Channels app discovering your Channels DVR Server.

Putting your secondary wifi router into bridge mode will adopt it into the original network created by your provider’s router. This will put all your devices on the same network and they will see each other correctly.

Moca 2.0 Adapters

If you can’t run ethernet around your house, try using a Moca 2.0 bridge to pass your networking across the COAX cable in your home. These adapters can get up to 800mbit/s and are a lot easier and cheaper than running ethernet around your house.

Speed test

Test the speeds of your network using apps designed for your streaming devices. These will tell you how fast they are on your home network and give you clues on what you might need to change.