Poor Wireless Signal

Morskittar

I've been attempting to help my parents troubleshoot a bad wireless connection, but have reached the extent of my very limited knowledge. Help me HA, you're my only hope.

The scenario:

Originally, my stepdad's machine on the first floor was dropping wireless connection every few minutes; he had shit for signal, so I figured it was just too far to reliably connect to the router on the third floor. Considering he has a pretty stock PC and the router is an integrated cable modem/router supplied by the ISP. My laptop didn't seem to have the same issue. So, the first solution was to move the router to the second floor, which seemed to fix the problem; his machine stopped dropping, and my mom's (back on the third floor) was fine.

A week later, hers now drops every hour or two, and his is still fine. Their ISP's mostly useless support thought it may be an interference issue, rather than signal strength or hardware. I still think it may just be crappy hardware.

So, before I head over there again and start tearing things apart to test configurations, any thoughts? How does one troubleshoot these sorts of things, and has anyone dealt with a similar scenario previously?

KungFu

My father has terrible signal and drops all the time from my wireless router so just yesterday we drilled a hole in the floor and ran a ~100ft ethernet cable directly from the router to him.

Is a cordless phone in the vicinity of your dad's computer or the router? They can interfere with the signal. I had a friend who everytime the phone would ring at his house or someone use the phone, his wireless would die. I think I fixed that interference by changing the channel his network was using.


ps if this works get me into the six mouths WAR beta

Creepy

Yeah, try and figure out if there's an appliance running when the signal drops out. I've heard wireless phones and occasionally microwaves can interfere.

Do you have any other networks walking on your signal?

One thing I liked about the WRT firmware is that it allows you to boost the signal strength. I turned mine up a little and it helped a lot. Course, that would mean buying and flashing a router.

ViolentChemistry

First try power-cycling the combo router/modem (unplug from power for a good ten, fifteen seconds, then plug back in). If that fails, reset it. The problem just started recently so it's unlikely to be interference unless you have new appliances with huge electromagnetic fields or have recently drastically increased usage of an existing appliance with a huge electromagnetic field. More likely the router just needs a break, for all intents and purposes. Routers keep track of every connection that happens and don't tend to clear their caches or whatever the fuck it is very well. Beyond that, those things run hot and when you run electronics hot for a long-ass time they start glitching. But it's normal to have to power-cycle a router regularly, and sometimes reset it completely. Resetting requires you to go back in and re-do all of your settings, so make sure you have the necessary information to feed it before you do that.

sinn

ViolentChemistry wrote: »

First try power-cycling the combo router/modem (unplug from power for a good ten, fifteen seconds, then plug back in). If that fails, reset it. The problem just started recently so it's unlikely to be interference unless you have new appliances with huge electromagnetic fields or have recently drastically increased usage of an existing appliance with a huge electromagnetic field. More likely the router just needs a break, for all intents and purposes. Routers keep track of every connection that happens and don't tend to clear their caches or whatever the fuck it is very well. Beyond that, those things run hot and when you run electronics hot for a long-ass time they start glitching. But it's normal to have to power-cycle a router regularly, and sometimes reset it completely. Resetting requires you to go back in and re-do all of your settings, so make sure you have the necessary information to feed it before you do that.

The fact that it only began recently doesn't negate wireless interference from the options. Also, it isn't magnetic fields that cause the most wireless interference, but other wireless devices.

Wireless networks in the US operate on one of 11 channels, or frequencies. If there are too many devices using the same frequency in your area, you'll notice decreased speed and range, and intermittent dropouts. It isn't just other computers that can cause this, but anything operating in the 2.4GHz band such as cordless phones, baby monitors, wireless security cameras, etc...

What you'll want to do is to change the channel your router is broadcasting on, this is done through the routers configuration page. Of the 11 channels most of them overlap one or more other channels, making them less than suitable. There are 3 channels that do not overlap others, these are 1, 6, and 11. It is usually best to stick with one of those three, but it really will depend on your neighborhood.

Give that a shot, and wait and see what happens, continue until you find a channel that works.


EDIT: I just saw that it is a wireless modem provided by the ISP, in that case you'll likely not be able to change the channel yourself, it will need be done by the ISP. What ISP do you have?

ViolentChemistry

Wireless signals are electromagnetic radiation.

Edit: I mean, unless physics doesn't apply to the internet.

Edit 2: I mean shit, why do you think radio reception is measurably better at night? Suddenly there's no sun.

Morskittar

Thanks for the input guys.

The ISP is Comcast, with whom they'd spoken and had suggested they change the channel; they tried everything, and though some were better than others, it still dropped.

I think I'll need to head over there and play with the setup some more. It does sound like the assumption that it's interference is correct.

KungFu, getting into the WAR beta at this point means; getting an invite email then going through an agonizing wait with no client for an indefinite period. I can't recommend it as something you'd want now.

ViolentChemistry

I'm not sure what you'd lose by trying power-cycling and resetting first if you're planning to fuck around with settings, but okay.

Morskittar

ViolentChemistry wrote: »

I'm not sure what you'd lose by trying power-cycling and resetting first if you're planning to fuck around with settings, but okay.

Ahh, I hadn't mentioned that; it's been power-cycled and reset more than a few times; before the initial move from 3rd to 2nd floor, as well as after.

ViolentChemistry

Morskittar wrote: »

ViolentChemistry wrote: »

I'm not sure what you'd lose by trying power-cycling and resetting first if you're planning to fuck around with settings, but okay.

Ahh, I hadn't mentioned that; it's been power-cycled and reset more than a few times; before the initial move from 3rd to 2nd floor, as well as after.

Well that's different then. Although the 1st -> 3rd floor problem was probably the building itself causing interference. There's a lot of shit in your walls and floors that interferes with signals.

DrFrylock

If you still can't get rid of the problem, one thing to do is to get a second wireless router and connect the two directly by a hard cable, putting each one on different floors. Set up the one connected to the modem regularly, but turn off the DHCP server on the other one so they'll just use the DHCP server on the one connected to the modem.