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An insane amount of interference - what to do?

7

720pete

Junior Member
I live in a huge apartment building and have a dlink 2.4 ghz wireless N router. I have a 20/2 connection that is right on the mark at 20/2 when I'm wired to the router. When I'm sitting in the same room as the router but using wifi I've got a 15/2 connection. 20 feet away at the desktop PC in my room I've got a 3/2 connection that drops out ALL THE TIME. I'm assuming it will only get worse as the building next door gets 4G antennas on it. There are nearly 15 wifi networks in range.

I downloaded an app to see which wifi channels were being broadcast on, and changed mine to several different channels in an attempt to increase the connection strength to no avail. The best I could get was 5/2 and intermittent cut-outs in wifi.

Wiring the network is not possible since the Landlord will now allow this. What is the best bet that I have? Should I try and set up a wireless repeater or a wireless access point somewhere? Would a 5GHZ router solve my issues? Any advice? I don't know a whole lot about networking. Thanks. 😕
 
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You should definitely look at a 5 GHz router, usually that spectrum is less crowded, plus there are more channels available. Just make sure your client equipment supports 5 GHz as well, otherwise the router won't do you any good.
 
Yep, in that environment 2.4 Ghz is way too crowded. Use 5Ghz.

Or you could go with a semi-directional antenna on the AP at 2.4 but then you'd have to worry about pointing the antenna where you want signal.
 
LOL!

That's why you don't use 40 Mhz channels, whoever has "urban planning" is stomping over the entire 2.4 range. Your noise floor is unusable, you need 5 Ghz.

What tool is that? looks pretty slick.
 
spidey07 said:
LOL!

That's why you don't use 40 Mhz channels, whoever has "urban planning" is stomping over the entire 2.4 range. Your noise floor is unusable, you need 5 Ghz.

What tool is that? looks pretty slick.
Click to expand...

InSSIDer. Great little program.
 
I can honestly say I haven't seen a spectrum that fubarred save for wireless video transmitters. Nasty.

It's like looking at a spectrum analyzer and immediately saying.

Yeah. You got major interference. That's why I said "unusable". Go wired if you can. Otherwise 5 ghz is your only option.

You're not going to get around that -60 noise
 
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Ha ha. I'm in ur wifis, hogging your channels. (Yeah, I'm the guy using 40mhz because I can.)

Anyway, get the refurb E4200. Or the N66u, if you want to go big. Too bad you can't get cheap E2000 refurbs any more -- you don't really need dual-band.
 
I just bought a 5 ghz wifi card and installed it today so I could see what was going on around me on the 5ghz frequency. It looks like only one other wifi network within range of me is operating on 5 ghz, so I went ahead and also bought the E4200 like s44 recommended. Hopefully this will provide better connectivity.
 
There is another option I'd rather choose in your shoes, switch home for a lesser EMI polluted one, your system was trying to save your life ... :whiste:

Besides jokes (even if it's not all that joke), usually lower channels grants more efficiency, usually the lower the channel the strongest the signal, the lesser the users, I usually try to use the lowest possible but in all that mess you showed one of the options was to switch to 5Ghz as you already did, another option were to cover the walls with a faraday cage, remaining the best option to move house somewhere else. :biggrin:
 
Ack! Just got the 4200 and the power adapter was defective. Had to spend almost an hour with "technical" support explaining to them that the router was not the problem, but the power adapter wasn't working (had my own 12v 2a adapter and of course that one worked just fine). Hopefully they ship the replacement fast.
 
I'm assuming when you say the landlord won't let you wire the apartment, you mean wall installation. What's keeping you from just running some loose wire along the walls? It might not be pretty but it's far more preferable to crappy wifi. You might not be able to hit every room in your apartment, but you can cover the important areas. You can also buy some plastic conduit to run the wire through that you can lay neatly along the baseboards.
 
Got the 5ghz router set up finally. First speed test I get is 20/2, exactly what my internet service is rated for. This is a HUGE improvement over the 5/2 I was getting before!!
 
spidey07 said:
The 2.4 Ghz spectrum is becoming quite unusable unless you have strict control over it.
Click to expand...

Agreed. Recently I have started having random disconnect issues with my phone in my bedroom so I did a wireless scan and sure enough I found 8 networks in the low to medium range. One jack hole set his AP to channel 2 and was wrecking the lower 2 non conflicting 2.4ghz wireless channels also.

Rewiring and moving my AP appears to be in my future.
 
spidey07 said:
That's why you don't use 40 Mhz channels, whoever has "urban planning" is stomping over the entire 2.4 range. Your noise floor is unusable, you need 5 Ghz.
Click to expand...

Using inSSIDer to see the networks around my apartment (which is two-family home style with close neighboring buildings), there are a couple of jerks running 40 Mhz channels at 2.4GHz, though they dynamically switch from 20 to 40 and channel to channel. It seems that RCN distributes their modem/routers with that 'feature' turned on. A horrible idea for NYC.

Fortunately, none of that interferes with my 2.4GHz N network (stupid lack of 5GHz desktop wireless cards 🙁 )
 
Unless you are willing to buy one of those ac adapters the 200 dollar ac routers are going to be a waste for you. You can grab a n600 to n900 router and use the 5 ghz band.

I almost always recommend a dual band to someone if they get a lot of interferance in apartment complex.
 
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