Router problems, or something I've missed?

Chronos5618 · March 17, 2015

Hi all,

So I have a problem to which I'm hoping there should be a fairly easy fix. I'm currently at university, and a friend's house is having some internet connection issues. Apart from the fact they didn't do their research and ended up getting royally ripped off with their internet deal, they are finding that their wifi connection within the house is slow and sporadic at times, but is completely fine others. I've been round several times to try find the problem, and have found the speed to be what they should expect (about 8Mbps), though the channel they are on to be extremely crowded...I'm talking 5 or 6 other routers using the same one. The router being used is also an ancient piece of rubbish that doesn't allow for any indepth configuration to allow me to move channels or look at the settings in more depth. It really is terrible.

So, from what I can tell the problem seems to be due to a terrible router on a crowded channel; and thus a better router I can tinker with should fix the problem. However, before I invest in one I just wanted to check that I wasn't missing anything. Networking isn't really my forte, so any suggestions as to other problems would be great.

Many thanks.

Goose Legs · March 17, 2015

Getting a router that is capable of broadcasting on different channels and switching to a channel that isn't being used (or at least not much) will help things immensely. When one wireless frequency is being used, no other devices (even if they are on separate networks, but share the same channel) will be able to communicate.