wi-fi channel analyser accuracy

[#1]

Hello everyone,
today I found out that my 7 months loss of wireless connection was due to me having Avast Home Network Security enabled. Since these problems started I have been trying to find out which would be the best channel to use so today I installed a couple of channel analysers on my tablet (Netgear and wi-fi Analyzer). The problem is, no matter what channel I select from 1 to 11 for the router the analysers only ever report it as being on channel 1 or 11 with my neighbours being anywhere from 1 to 11, my PC troubleshooter always sees it as channel 11. My main worry is if they are reporting my router on the wrong channel then how accurate are the channels they give to all the local wireless networks and how am I supposed to select a less cluttered channel. Are these analysers just a waste of time or is this just another problem with the router and the information it is sending out?

[#2]

@nicktanner
IMHO the WiFi analysers are showing what is happening so the issue is the router. The analysers just scan for all the available wifi connections and report the details.
What router are you using?
If Netgear  (going by the use of its analyser) then I would go to their support forum and see if others have this issue and if there is new firmware to fix it.

[#3]

I think the Plusnet Sagemcom 2704N router, with the wireless set to attempt to use 300Mbps, just picks channel 1 or 11 by itself and ignores whatever channel you try to set. Using 300Mbps wireless would take up most of the available channels on the 2.4GHz band, and is not necessarily a good idea, it could make things worse in a crowded wireless environment.
WiFi analysers only show the number of networks on each channel. They don't show how heavily each network is being used, so they can't really show which channel is the least busy. Advising people to just try out channels 1, 6 and 11 doesn't sound as impressive as using a wifi analyser app, but is actually better, since there's plenty of factors that wifi analysers don't show.

[#4]

Thanks for the replies. I have the Plusnet 2704 which i set to 300Mbps think i'll try knocking it down and then see if the analyser sees it on any other channel than 1 or 11. I believe the Auto setting for the channel only ever changes channels if you reboot the router which is self defeating because Plusnet will turn my speed down thinking it's a dropout

[#5]

It's wifi. What are you expecting -  a relaible, high throughput connection?
if you want that go for a wired solution.

[#6]

WiFi can be quite reasonable, but how easy it is for the wireless to be better than your broadband speed does of course depend on how fast your broadband is.
If you don't have decent wireless signal strength where you need it, changing channels probably won't help. You'd need to move the hardware, or perhaps get an extra wireless access point or repeater, or possibly even a better wireless adapter (on one with better antennae) for the computer.