What an Idiot!

[ElectroMan]

I recently bought a cheap cordless telephone to replace my 20 year old phone in the louge (I have a slightly more up-to-date one upstairs!).

After installing it, and moving my Netgear wireless router, I noticed the signal strength of the router was reduced. It's been like this for about a week. After learning that cordless 'phones can disrupt wireless routers, I have tried everything to improve the signal.

I have switched off the 'phone base station, moved it away from the router, even disconnected the battery from the handset, and hid the handset in a drawer well away from the router. The router has also been moved from shelf to shelf, had the antennas on both the router and my PC swivelled every which way, I even had the router on the floor. I tried making signal boosters from cooking foil and an empty drinks can. All to no avail. The signal strength at the PC never went above low.

Even when I used my laptop next to the router it was still less than 50% strength.

I thought about installing a new antenna or getting a new router.

It was driving me nuts as the PC kept losing the connection, and running downstairs all the time to fiddle with the router is very tedious - especially when it makes no difference at all.

Needless to say, the solution was simple: in the couple of years I have had the router, occasionally swivelling the antenna had actually unscrewed it. I did pull it off the other evening to see if it was removable, and was surprised that it apparently just plugged in.

I have now screwed it back in tightly, and am currently getting maximum signal. As the title of this post says, what an idiot I am!

 

[ear]

Well if you could sort it out then u are not an idiot.but you would have been if you had bought new equipment lol

 

[Tonya]

Yes, loose antenn‘ connections are the most common culprit for this problem, well done on the detective work!

Another phenomenon that slows down wireless routers is frequency saturation.
Now that everyone & his/her dog have one, it's worth doing a quich scan on your PC to see how many routers nearby that are on your frquency band.
Most people just plug in their routers and use the default setting, without realizing that you can change the frequency band to one higher or lower than the default, finding a "Less populated" area.
Of course after you have done this, you will have to do a rescan on all the units that are communicating with your router, but that takes a few seconds and the benefits far outweigh the initial inconvenience.

Plus, ALWAYS use an encription key, you don't want strangers stealing your bandwidth speed!

 

[Anonymous]

Sorry to jump on this one but I went wireless a couple of weeks ago with a Belkin N1 router. Although my laptop remains stationary on the study desk, next to the router, I thought I'd go wireless so I could connect my Wii in the lounge and use my ipod touch around the flat. Trouble is the connection keeps breaking and even when it is connected sometimes I'm only getting 1Mbps - to the point where I got fed up and just plugged the ethernet cable back in. It is WPA2 protected and I do have about 6 other wireless networks around me - but I changed the channel setting away from the default because of this. I thought I'd solved it the other day when a PC fixer guy advised me to take the battery out of the laptop to let all the chips 'die' and then re-start as it might have been something interfering with the wireless card. It seemed to work for a bit but when I switched back on the next morning, same problem!

How would I know if it's the router or laptop that's the problem? Sometimes the ipod doesn't connect either, but much less often than the laptop, so it's not that easy to determine which is the problem - router or laptop. It's not a cordless phone as that's nowhere near the router. I'm also wondering whether it messes it up when I plug my ipod touch in to recharge? (for the last half hour it's been okay and the ipod's not been plugged in). Or (bizarrely!) the wireless only works when the ethernet cable's in!! Hey, you can see where superstition comes from because after a while I start wondering whether it doesn't like the boxer shorts I'm wearing!

 

[Tonya]

"How would I know if it's the router or laptop that's the problem?"

Well, there's a few ways to tell. The easiest would be to borrow another laptop and try it to see if your download speed is still unstable. If you are running Vista or Windows 7, you can download various free gadgets, which enable you to monitor the network activity in realtime. Try relocating your wireless sender, sometimes moving it just a few metres has a profound effect. And if you're more advanced, go into the settings of the router using IE and ensure that the range is set to maximum. As you've already tried moving channels, there's not much more you can do. Borrow another wireless router to test perhaps?