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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.

 

hgeifman
erik_squires
15,828 posts
 

@riley804  - That was a joke!

I did move from dense apartment complexes to modest single family home complex and the network neighborhood is completely different.  I went from 20 or more competing wifi signals to 5. 

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kr4's avatar
kr4
3,651 posts
 

Maybe the real solution is for audiphiles to buy homes on 30 acres of land?

In most cases, switching to wired ethernet will be cheaper. 😉

mtbiker29's avatar
mtbiker29
156 posts
 

Just use airport utility to scan frequency, see what is in use and yes if you can switch to 5ghz absolutely do that.  

 

 

sfgak
97 posts
 

As other stated, wired is the way to go. If you can’t get wired Ethernet to your system’s location, there are a few options:

1. Ethernet over power (NOT Power over Ethernet). There are adapters that will send Ethernet over your electrical lines, for example:

 

These work well if the outlet you plug one of them into near your router is on the same phase as the one you plug in by your system (e.g. at the panel, the circuit breaker for those two circuits are both on black wires or both on red wires). If you install them on opposite phases, quality will suck because the signal has to go all the way out to the step-down transformer (e.g. on a telephone pole) outside your house to couple the different phases, and the transmission rate will suffer.

These devices also require encryption, since the signal will leak out of the house and could potentially be read by your neighbors. 

 

2. Since I have Gbps fiber to my home, and use it for TV as well, my RG-6 cable is free for other uses. There are MoCa adapters that you can buy to run Ethernet over RG-6, which allows popping out another ethernet port in some other part of your home. These work great, and I get Gbps performance on the RG-6 links. Here’s an example:

 

I really do like the MoCa adapters. They gave me a great alternative, and they run just in the house, rather than the Ethernet over powerline. This means not having to deal with setting the device's encryption keys to be different from the default, etc, so your home network isn’t scanned from outside...

 

 

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