WiFi help

Pantshandshake · July 2014

Evening all. I'm looking for a little wifi help. Basically, I'm trying to figure out where my issue lies, and I'm having a hard time.
The salient points:
My router is a Netgear R6200 about 9 months old. In the past few days, one of 2 things started happening: At rest, my computer shows 5 bars for connection. Actually doing anything that requires internet causes the signal to drop to 3 bars. Sometimes 4. Even when that doesn't happen, my speeds are suddenly abysmal. Speedtest usually comes back with around 8 Mbps down and 5 or 6 up. Earlier, it was .5 each. I upgraded my routers firmware, and it rose to 2 down, 5.45 up.

My phone, connected to my router, and sitting in front of my computer, gets 6.28 down and 6.06 up.

So, it would seem like my computer is culprit, yes? How do I figure out what, exactly, is causing the problem?

Edit:
Rebooting the modem and router seems to help for a little while, ditto ip release/renew.

Double Edit:
Watching my wireless network connection status from the control panel. It is claiming a speed of 21.5 Mbps. It will dip briefly if I open a new tab in a browser. While watching this, I'm running a speedtest, and it's telling me I'm currently at .52 down and capping at around 4 up.

PedroAsani · July 2014

If the problem is intermittent, it may be a competing signal. I find that changing the wireless channel can remove a lot of problems. Because a wireless survey will only show other wireless networks and not other broadcasts in the same range, the quickest fix is to simply start at channel 1 and cycle up until you find one that works better than the others. When I installed a previous network, even with the survey saying that everything would be fine, for whatever reason channel 8 was the only one that worked with the building structure and/or surrounding wireless broadcasts.

If you have a 5ghz router, try just using that rather than the 2.4ghz as there are likely fewer signals on those channels. Again, cycle through and test each one.

Pantshandshake · July 2014

I do have a 5ghz router, but that frequency doesn't seem to reach this room for whatever reason. I think I read that 5ghz has less solid object penetration than 2.4, but in any case, it works fine for mobile devices in the downstairs part of my house.

And, changing to channel 1 instead of auto seems to have immediately resolved this. I wonder if my neighbors got some new electronics of some sort or something. Thanks a bunch for pointing out the channel business, I think I would have continued to just gloss over that.

PedroAsani · July 2014

Pantshandshake wrote: »

I do have a 5ghz router, but that frequency doesn't seem to reach this room for whatever reason. I think I read that 5ghz has less solid object penetration than 2.4, but in any case, it works fine for mobile devices in the downstairs part of my house.

And, changing to channel 1 instead of auto seems to have immediately resolved this. I wonder if my neighbors got some new electronics of some sort or something. Thanks a bunch for pointing out the channel business, I think I would have continued to just gloss over that.

If you ever want to do a survey, use inSSIDer or Kismet.

Pantshandshake · July 2014

Well, I downloaded inSSIDer just to see what a survey looked like. Seems like I have more questions, but the speeds are fine, so I'm just going to ignore them for now.

Thank you again for your help.

Penny Arcade

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