OP,
Thank you. Fortunately I have never had this problem. But a great item to have in your bag of tricks. I remember when I had the only SSID detectable in my house. Now the list is extensive.
Hint: Change your Wi-Fi frequency to avoid interference with neighbors router
My friend was having annoying Internet problems such as start and stop, dropped signals, streaming pauses, skips, etc. In other words, a sporadic Wi-Fi connection on his Net-Gear router that sometimes works, and most times fails to work. Everything we tried failed to solve the issue (re-boot, etc.). And the strange thing is that the connection was working fine for many months and then suddenly stopped working.
After much research, and many phone calls, we discovered these kinds of difficulties could be caused by having another customers modem/router too close. We never thought of this.
All routers must operate their Wi-Fi network on one of several “channels” — different ranges of frequencies the wireless network can operate on. If you have multiple Wi-Fi networks near each other, and you probably do unless you do not live near anyone else, they should ideally be on different channels to reduce interference.
A very simple solution. We change his routers frequency from 11 to 6 and everything worked perfectly. I am not an expert on this topic but if you are having a sporadic Wi-Fi connection that sometimes works and, most times fails to work, you might want to investigate this simple solution.