Another factor that can affect RF transmission is multiple devices operating at the same time. As previously discussed, there are many consumer devices that operate on the 2.4 GHz band which makes interference quite common. To help prevent multiple devices from interfering with each other a method called Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance can be used. So when a station wants to transmit data, it will first carrier sense which means it listens to the channel to see if other stations are already transmitting. If the channel is idle, it can transmit. However if the channel is busy, the station must wait a period of time before trying again. This reduces the amount of interference to ensure the signal gets to its destination properly.