Wifi problems since lockdown

DoaM

debitcardmayhem said:
Are you sure it was the adapter, or were you using XP ? I had similar problems with XP but there was a patch available and I used 13 for years after that , mind you there wasn't the much wifi around me in those days either

It was the adaptor ... at the time I had Windows 7 on both my home and work laptops.

bobblebob

debitcardmayhem said:

@bobblebob can you not use 5Ghz for most of your devices (yeah I know the range is smaller) and for your 2.4 devices set them to use static IP addresses, in fact I would set all your devices to be static, and let DHCP just cater for visitors.

Router is fairly old so doesnt support 5Ghz

reynoldnicholson

Place your router on a shelf or table and keep it away from other wireless devices

bobblebob

reynoldnicholson said:

Place your router on a shelf or table and keep it away from other wireless devices

Nothing anywhere near it, other than my PC but that doesnt have a wifi card in it

bobblebob

reynoldnicholson said:

Place your router on a shelf or table and keep it away from other wireless devices

Actually you got me thinking whats near my router. About 3 week ago i bought some dust filters for my PC, that attached to the outside of the air intake holes to stop dust getting into the PC. These are attached to the outside of the PC case with small magnets. Could the magnets be effecting the wifi?

debitcardmayhem

Could be a cordless phone base station too if you have one near your router

bobblebob

debitcardmayhem said:

Could be a cordless phone base station too if you have one near your router

Same phone ive had for awhile and its a fair distance from the router

bobblebob

So its happened again on channel 6. Ive changed it to channel 11

I used a wifi analyser app when i couldnt connect and the wifi signal was as strong as ever, so its still transmitting the wifi signal when it goes down. It just fails on the authentication. Could this just be a router going bad?

arciere

bobblebob said:

So its happened again on channel 6. Ive changed it to channel 7

I used a wifi analyser app when i couldnt connect and the wifi signal was as strong as ever, so its still transmitting the wifi signal when it goes down. It just fails on the authentication. Could this just be a router going bad?

You have actually made the situation worse by changing it to 7. Channel 6 uses 2426 Mhz to 2448 Mhz. Channel 7 uses 2431 Mhz to 2453 Mhz. So as you can see, they overlap but not completely, so they can't coordinate.
It could be a lot of things. The WiFi signal bar doesn't give you the quality of the signal, it gives you the strength. So if there is interference, you will still get full signal, but you won't be able to transfer data at normal speeds. That being said, I seriously doubt that your devices don't connect because of interference.
When you say "it fails on the authentication", what does it mean exactly?

bobblebob

Oops sorry thats a typo. Should say 11.
Basically any device attached wont send or receive data. Then eventually they will drop off the network. If i try to reconnect it will attempt it, then on my phone it will say "authentication error" and try keep trying with the same error.

On my PS4 it will say "failed to obtain IP address" when attempting to connect