What's Killing Your Wi-Fi?

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PC Pro has posted a collection of articles on how to understand, diagnose and repair your whacked out Wi-Fi connection. While many of you have this stuff down pat, there is still some pretty handy info here.

Appallingly slow speeds, dropped connections, and routers that are working fine one minute and apparently drop off the face of the Earth the next – anyone who has ever set up a Wi-Fi network will have battled with these problems.
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Is the solution to all of these check a Cat5 (etc.) cable is connected? :p

On that note, wireless mice. When are they going to be good? Oh never, you say?
 
my biggest wifi killer occurred on my first laptop, the wireless card itself, it was located right in the center of the laptop, a place that will naturally flex the most, end result dropped signals everywhere, crappy connection, considered getting a new router.... new laptop, same old router, get great signal constantly from any place in my house.
 
Mine tends to die when the object[blunt] has a RAGEon.. ill show that fucking router how to drop a packet properly.
 
My girlfriend had an old Toshiba laptop from 2005 that never dropped signal, she just got a Lenovo Z570 Ideapad, and it's dropping signal fairly constantly using the same router that her Toshiba never dropped from.

Any ideas?
 
Well f#$k my hat, an unsecured wireless router will get bogged down?

My PS3 refused to communicate with my router via Wi-Fi, new Netgear dual band router fixed that.
 
sfsuphysics said:
my biggest wifi killer occurred on my first laptop, the wireless card itself, it was located right in the center of the laptop, a place that will naturally flex the most, end result dropped signals everywhere, crappy connection, considered getting a new router.... new laptop, same old router, get great signal constantly from any place in my house.
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You're holding it wrong.
 
DeathPrincess said:
Is the solution to all of these check a Cat5 (etc.) cable is connected? :p

On that note, wireless mice. When are they going to be good? Oh never, you say?
Click to expand...

Yeah wireless mice and keyboards are utter crap under heavy wifi load. I have a Microsoft Comfort 5000 mouse/keyboard set and when I do some heavy file transfer between my laptop and my NAS, my mouse movement stutters like hell.
 
DeathPrincess said:
Is the solution to all of these check a Cat5 (etc.) cable is connected? :p

On that note, wireless mice. When are they going to be good? Oh never, you say?
Click to expand...

Step1:
Ensure power coord is connected to PC. Check!

Step2:
Ensure the PC is powered ON. Check!

Step3:
Have you rebooted the PC? Check!

Step4:
Hold on, im transfering you to a manager who has more knowledge of your problem.

I don't miss the help desk at all!
 
Number 1 killer of my wi-fi is my microwave oven... but until they start making lead insulated microwaves I'm just going to have to live with it :p
 
What does it mean when you can't access the internet through your router for 2-4 mins at a time, then it starts working again. But you never get discontented. ( It never says internet unavailable) Skype and other services stay on, just I cant get anything to come up in Firefox. My D-link DIR-655 does this all the time.

Doesn't do it if I plug straight into the cable modem though. Is there a setting in the menu I should change?
 
Compddd said:
My girlfriend had an old Toshiba laptop from 2005 that never dropped signal, she just got a Lenovo Z570 Ideapad, and it's dropping signal fairly constantly using the same router that her Toshiba never dropped from.

Any ideas?
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I would try updating the firmware on the router and if that doesn't work make sure the wireless driver is up to date.
 
neokeelo said:
What does it mean when you can't access the internet through your router for 2-4 mins at a time, then it starts working again. But you never get discontented. ( It never says internet unavailable) Skype and other services stay on, just I cant get anything to come up in Firefox. My D-link DIR-655 does this all the time.

Doesn't do it if I plug straight into the cable modem though. Is there a setting in the menu I should change?
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Router is refreshing the security key from the provider, happened a lot on the US Robotics routers back in '04 (haven't used them since due to that crap), to the point we switched them out for Netgear or D-link. Now the worst I have seen is the router hanging, until you pull the power from it and then power it back on, I'll have to have a look tonight, but I think there is a setting to get around that.
 
Oh wait, just read the rest of your post, not sure, have you tried any firmware updates for the router?
 
What killed my WiFi? My wireless sub. Moved to 802.11n @ 5GHz to fix it. Also fixed the issue I had qith cordless phones dorking with the speed as well.
 
I'd contemplate looking at a new router, I think my old Netgear 311T did the same towards the end, went from getting stuck refreshing the security key, to wireless signal is great, but the web browser couldn't pull anything.
 
Fix Me said:
I would try updating the firmware on the router and if that doesn't work make sure the wireless driver is up to date.
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Router is running the latest firmware and the Ideapad is running the latest wireless driver.
 
*will read*

One laptop fails to connect periodically and the only thing I've found to restore the connection is to cycle the router itself. Everything else connects just fine: Wii, iPad, work laptop, wife's desktop, friends' laptops.
 
Compddd said:
My girlfriend had an old Toshiba laptop from 2005 that never dropped signal, she just got a Lenovo Z570 Ideapad, and it's dropping signal fairly constantly using the same router that her Toshiba never dropped from.

Any ideas?
Click to expand...

Most of the wireless issues I see are related to malfunctioning "green" software that automatically lowers the power settings on your wireless card to save power. A lot of times it refuses to up the power when the signal becomes poor. Windows 7 (and I think vista) have this built in, but it tends to suck less than the software that the vendors install.
 
I didn't realize WEP had greater overhead than WPA/WPA2. I really need to get around to transitioning everything in the house over.

I used WEP before I moved, because I only had one house (maybe) within wi-fi range...so I didn't care too much about it.

Now that I'm in the city I should really change it over...especially if the performance is better!!
 
Azhar said:
Yeah wireless mice and keyboards are utter crap under heavy wifi load. I have a Microsoft Comfort 5000 mouse/keyboard set and when I do some heavy file transfer between my laptop and my NAS, my mouse movement stutters like hell.
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same experience here

went back to using wired keyboard and mouse

response is better with wired too
 
My 6 year old Buffalo Tech 802.11g router is still running like a champ. Best wireless product I've ever owned. My Linksys, Dlink, and Netgear boxes were junk compared to this bad boy. I realized back then that getting a solid product can knock out a ton of problems in one go.
 
BobSutan said:
My 6 year old Buffalo Tech 802.11g router is still running like a champ. Best wireless product I've ever owned. My Linksys, Dlink, and Netgear boxes were junk compared to this bad boy. I realized back then that getting a solid product can knock out a ton of problems in one go.
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I've been running DD-WRT on a Buffalo WHR-54gs for years now. Great router.

That said I had it on a Belkin FD7230-4 before that (and I was using for bridging for a lon time) and that router has been good to me to.
 
I know exactly what's killing my WiFi. It's the fact that I live in a big apartment complex with WiFi signals coming from all directions. Picking the "least" congested channel still means you're sharing it with half a dozen users in range. I'm surprised it works as well as it does considering the circumstances - getting around 10Mb out of my Netgear G router. On some rare occasions, it will drop the connection. In that case I just click Disconnect-Connect and I'm up and running again.

I'm thinking about getting a 5 GHz Wireless-N router. Don't think that band is nearly as congested. Plus you don't have to share it with cordless phones and microwave ovens.
 
That was a good article, and anyone who's got a lot of wireless traffic (I an see over 25 networks from my place) should download inSSIDer. It's an amazing tool.

My little netbook takes FOREVER to get it's initial connection to my D-Link DGL-4500 Wireless N router. But, when it's connected, it's solid. Never drops connection.
 
My newer Netgear router (The model that does 2.4ghz and 5.0ghz frequency at the same time) is great. Much better signal than my old Linksys(to be fair it was 5 years old). The new netgear wireless adaptors are also great, awesome signal, never dropped and always 1.5-2.0mb/s downloads on wireless :)
 
Compddd said:
My girlfriend had an old Toshiba laptop from 2005 that never dropped signal, she just got a Lenovo Z570 Ideapad, and it's dropping signal fairly constantly using the same router that her Toshiba never dropped from.

Any ideas?
Click to expand...

Uninstall ThinkVantage Access Connections, or whatever crappy program they're installing to manage the wifi network these days (and if you haven't already, remove the rest of the Lenovo bloatware).
 
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