Channel change on router (with bonus wireless connection question)

Grislo

Okay, possibly stupid question:

I've changed the channel on my (cisco) wireless router from the default 1 to 6, but on the setup page of the router it still says that the current channel is 1, even thought the default is set to 6.

Do I need to restart the router for that to change / take effect?

(Stupid question mostly because it could be easily tested of course, but I'd rather not lose my connection just now.)


As promised, a bonus question:

Is there any way to diagnose a wireless connection? Mine keeps dropping, for just a second, very frequently, which isn't a problem for surfing where I don't actually notice it, but it is for streaming Netflix and such. It only happens on my wireless connection, but I also only have the one laptop actually running wireless, so it could be a hardware thing as well. What I've done so far is to check what the nearby connections were like, and there were a ton of close connections running the same channel as me, hence the original question. But is there a program that'll let me monitor / log what's actually happening and why I'm dropping?

Great Scott

What model of Cisco wireless router is it? The different classes work really differently. If it's a Cisco-Linksys it is probably sensing interference on channel 6 and automatically not using it. I'm going to assume you don't need the information here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_WLAN_channels

I'd use the free tool NetStumbler to check for signal strength and non-broadcasting networks, just be aware it doesn't work with all varieties of wireless adapter.

Grislo

I picked 6 because it seemed to have the least traffic - I think pretty much everyone around here uses the same company, and they default to 1. I used that InSSIDer program to check, but I don't know if that catches everything, so there could be a problem with 6.

EDIT: Tried a few other channels and it was happy to switch to 8, for example. Gonna have another look at InSSIDer and see what my best bet is outside of 6, which I guess is a frequently used one, along with 1 and 11, so there might be some stuff I'm not seeing that's causing a problem with 6.