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Cutting Through a Wi-Fi Traffic Jam?
eric3xxx asks: "A week or so after Christmas, I tried to connect to my home wireless network and while I could see my access point I could not connect. After scanning the network, it turned out that there were at least twenty new access points in my apartment building (and in the surrounding buildings). Most of them had names such as 'linksys' and were all set on their respective vendors default channel (apparently a lot of people received 802.11b/g WAPs as presents). I tried changing the channel on my access point, starting at 1 and continuing through all of the channels, and none of them worked (probably since the channels overlap). In any case, I have no clear solution to this problem. I suppose I could boost the signal, however, that also increases noise. Perhaps I could convince my neighbors to put together a shared wireless network. I may just switch to 802.11a since it isn't as widely used." Has anyone else had success in configuring their APs to work in an areas of heavy wireless traffic?
If your router supports it, grab an open source firmware, and step outside the normal 1-11 channels. Channels 12 - 14 are almost guaranteed to be empty.
For those following along at home, you can use Google Calculator to help you with this.
1/10th wavelength is a generally accepted mesh size for blocking RF. You can be more paranoid if you want (for example the holes in your microwave oven door are about 1/50th wavelength).
To calculate 1/10th of a wavelength at 2.45GHz, type "c/2.45GHz/10" into Google. Bam, 1.22 centimeters. Anything conductive with holes no larger than that will function as a faraday cage for RF up to that frequency (and will probably significantly attenuate RF in higher frequencies as well).