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What's Killing Your Wi-Fi?
Barence writes "PC Pro has taken an in-depth look at Wi-Fi and the factors that can cause connections to crumble. It dispels some common myths about Wi-Fi problems — such as that neighboring Wi-Fi hotspots are the most common cause of problems, instead of other RF interference from devices such as analogue video senders, microwave ovens and even fish tanks. The feature also highlights free and paid-for tools that can diagnose Wi-Fi issues, such as inSSIDer and Heatmapper, the latter of which maps provides a heatmap of Wi-Fi hotspots in your home or office."
Badgers
Billions of ads + need to check 15 pages to RTFA... and the article is actually a little shallow...
Three on sale for 15 dollars each, 1 for each section of the spectrum. (essentially channels 1-5, 5-9,9-X.) When I setup my in home surveillance system everyone in about a 200 foot radius was jammed on 2.4ghz. It took a while to figure out, but even a sniffer was pretty much useless, kismet was getting next to nothing.
microwave knocks ours out. Router 200-300 feet away, and microwave much closer to the computer endpoint.
In every PC I've had with WiFi, getting it to work under linux has been a complete disaster. Broadcom and Realtek alike.
Nowadays it's not anymore a work-not work issue, but a work-at-full-speed-and-suddenly-drop-to-a-few-bps-range issue. I've given up.
Why don't people talk more about using a wire to an access point to get the wireless where you want it ?
Both InSIDDer and Heatmapper are Windows-only, AFAIK. For Linux, there's the awesome Kismet and its cousin for OS X, KisMAC.
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Ethernet.
http://www.ekahau.com/products/heatmapper/overview.html is totally unavaliable
I've got some Wifi problems in my apartment. In the room with the AP, everything is fine. In the next room, transfer speeds are in the toilet. I used 'WLAN AP Grapher', which gives a graph of signal and noise over time, but that indicated no change in the S/N ratio between rooms. This rather surprised me. If there's interference, there should be noise in the frequency range used by the WLAN.
And on that note: anyone know of a tool for OS X that shows WLAN speeds in a graph ?
My wifi was going great... until the neighbours decided to secure their network
. .
Stations in the same channel with lots of retransmissions at 1 Mbps will kill your WiFi.
I knew that goldfish was up to something!
Research from the Farpoint Group suggests that data throughput can fall by 64% within 25ft of a microwave, and Farpoint analyst Craig Mathias said the firm had even “seen problems at 50m”.
I'm sorry but if this is the case you have far bigger problems with your microwave then simply WiFi interference.
RUN!
affinity for lathe and plaster.
Crap firmware and products.
That is what is killing my wifi.
I would also like to add:
1) Wall Street fascist pig CEO types who need that 5th mansion and stupid Board directors and shareholders who let him get away with it while the companies network infrastructure rots to hell.
That doesn't help my wifi either.
2) Closed proprietary crap hardware primarily by CISCO that makes it impossible to produce decent firmware via a 3rd party even after you bought the damn thing.
Apparently in a fascist system you really don't get to own anything you buy and can go to jail if you try and figure out how it works or make your own improvements.
Poor WRT guys, how they must suffer. Even though they work really hard, their firmware still sucks because the binary blobs they get with the radios suck it and my Wireless N router (WRT600N) still, has to auto reboot every 24 hours or it just plain stops working.
3) Finally I would like to thank all of the fascist members in Congress for creating laws that pretty much guarantees our wifi will suck.on a country wide basis, insuring intellectual property nonsense will continue to make wifi blow.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
PC Wiper Mag. Crashed Google Chrome browser. One of very few websites able to do this. No stars, I give this post 10 toilets.
What's killing your Wi-Fi? Or rather, who? *maniacal laughter*
Mini Portable Signal Jammer (Wi-Fi/GPS)
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Nachos
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
We were running a trial with Axis wireless cameras. Nice cameras, but the link was unreliable, mostly around lunch time. Nobody believed me until I set up tcpdump, walked over to the microwave, hit the 30 second button, and down it went, never to return.
Go 5GHz with WPA2 and 802.11n -- you'll have great performance until all your neighbours do the same.
Go wired (gigabit) when you can -- that's faster and more secure.
If you're forced to run on 2.4, don't expect great things in crowded (spectrum) areas. Do spectrum scans, and if you can't work with one of the non-overlapping 2.4GHz channels (1,6,11), and can't use a directional antenna (you can build your own corner reflector or parabolic reflector for under $1) try 3 or 8 and don't worry about HT (high throughput) datarates.
Take up arc welding as a hobby.
The CRT part was interesting; curious to see further documentation on that.
Furries make the internet go.
do fish eat semen?
My 8 year old Airport base station dying, that's what killed it.
Not mentioned in this article was the problem of people operating poor quality routers. Ironically enough that they quoted a rep from Belkin in the article, cheap $30 routers from the likes of Belkin, D-Link and such from the local Wal-Mart electronic section tend to have a bad habit of "dropping out", or freezing traffic to the point to where the only solution is to power off and power on the router. On some bad quality routers this happens nearly 100% of the time under heavy traffic loads (2 or more computers watching Netflix, for example).
The solution to this is to invest more than $30 into a home router.
@sillivalley: I agree. 5GHz with WPA2 is my preferred choice. I always run better when I'm using that setup. Then again, my closest neighbor is 40 miles away from me. iphone 6
put the cell phone in the microwave, close the door, if you call and it rings, u have a leak
another trick on smartphone is to install some kind of wifi analyzer and put it in microwave, close the door and watch signal strength
Because otherwise the only conclusion is that resonably priced consumer Wi-Fi hardware, routers, dongles, and built in chips are cheap crap that doesn't ever work as fast as claimed. A lot of enterprise-grade stuff's no good either.
For example, with various affordably priced domestic WiFi routers I have tried the internal LAN switching is usually garbage or the throughput between the built in wireless AP is bottlenecked to the wired switch, or the AP is flakey crap or a combination. Many seriously underperform, even if the signal performance turns out to be good. Even with excellent signal and all 54mbps+ wifi, the best I may get is ~10mbps. Connect two WiFi devices and the internal LAN transfers between them will total 10mbps, even if one is on wired. Change the router, change the devices and not much may improved. Borrowed a high-spec corporate grade AP from work, got much more speed, although the thing still flaked out. Unplugging interference sources and hoping channels has always made little difference. Flashing to DD-WRT got no benefit either, it was garbage hardware.
I resisted switching from ethernet until I had no choice (renting can't exactly wire cat-6 through the walls). So maybe if I spent twice as much on a router I'd have a chance of respectable performance.
Once my daughter goes to sleep and my wife turns this bad boy on, my wireless network totally falls apart.
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=110693416818&clk_rvr_id=236365054762
Seems quite common, I work in IT and now and again I get asked do you know why my wiresless network is so crap and a lot of the times they've just had a baby.
A eulogy and service will be held tomorrow at Cisco Cemetery.
In my carefully controlled laboratory (the basement of my parent's house), I decided to try things that would enhance the wireless connectivity. "Scientists" tend to only focus on the negative. Who wants to read something that very craftily calls us idiots? Summary of article the article I didn't read: "Want better wireless? Get rid of the microwave, dumb ass!"
I'm going to write a paper. But my parents want me to clean up the basement first. I don't feel like it ...... so its going to take a while. :)
In writing this more positive paper, I felt gold dust would be the best stuff to sprinkle in the air to enhance wireless signals. After all, this stuff works *MIRACLES* for stereo cables and computer cables. Why not wireless signals?
So I installed some fans in the basement to blow the gold dust around while testing my wireless network. I tried 3 different gold samples. 1) Gold bought from Dollar Store. 2) Gold bought from Pawn Shop. 3) Gold extracted from Monster Cables.
Total cost of materials (gold): $2000*. Acquiring gold from the first two sources was much cheaper than the 3rd (see Marketing Materials as reference).
I'm not going to bore you with the methodology. "What was the purity of the samples?", you might ask. I trust I'm getting 100% Gold from all my sources. They told me it is.
Suffice it to say, my paper will conclude (I'm not done looking at most if of the results just yet and don't think I need to) that sprinkling gold dust in the air boosted wireless signals up to 2 x 10 ^ 3 % (this is a scientific study so I must use scientific notation!). I'll leave the reader to conclude which of the 3 sources resulted in the best results. Frankly, I lost track.
One issue that continually makes wireless far worse than wired connections on home routers is bufferbloat. See http://gettys.wordpress.com/2011/01/03/aggregate-bufferbloat-802-11-and-3g-networks/ and http://linuxwireless.org/en/developers/bufferbloat and http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/01/07/0533226/Bufferbloat-mdash-the-Submarine-Thats-Sinking-the-Net and https://lists.bufferbloat.net/pipermail/bloat/2011-February/000068.html and ...
xbox 360 controllers.
ps3 controllers.
bluetooth.
electrical motors for ceiling fans.
cordless phones in the 2.4Ghz range.
cheap RC cars/planes/helicopters.
Your paper shredder, while it's running.
your 5 neighbors' wifis all on channel 6.
CFL bulbs. (They tend to absorb radio signals.)
All of these will interfere with wifi. Perhaps you should switch to 5Ghz 802.11N
They're using their grammar skills there.
...replaced my 802.11b/g/n access point with a 802.11a/n access point and now all my troubles seems so far away...
5 GHz is empty in residential areas.
Old, early generation Buffalo 802.11g router, purchased from Worst Buy for $39 when they were being cleared out of inventory during the patent lawsuit several years ago... I've got it plugged into a UPS battery backup now and it's been running non-stop for over two years without a reboot.
heres the download link for Heatmapper
http://www.ekahau.com/download/client/Ekahau%20Heatmapper-Setup.exe
Just remember that WiFi is an 'unlicensed' use, and that you have to accept interference from licensed uses, and in turn, not interfere with them. If a licensed user of the WiFi spectrum comes over and says "I'm sorry, you have to turn off your WiFi", you'll have to
I live in sight of the San Francisco Bay. When large cargo ships and ferries pass nearby by they interfere with my WiFi signal. These BUF's put out serious microwave Watts (4 - 25 KW)! How do I know? When it's foggy you can hear their fog horns and that correlates nicely with a WiFi fainting spell.
Also, I find it impossible to make a new WiFi connection when the kitchen microwave is Magentonizing the mornings oatmeal. An established WiFi sessions survives across a quick Microwave oven zapping. But no new connections are possible. So I have mostly gone to hardwired connections.
Back in the day...
When WiFi was just starting to get rolled out in most businesses, I had set up a multi access-point wireless network that had worked really well for about five months. Then, with no known changes, it started dying across the entire building almost every afternoon about the same time.
I worked with the building maintenance staff to try to find any electrical gear that might be starting up about that time with no luck. Finally, because the executives loved their wireless, I had to buy a spectrum analyser to try to track down the problem. I kept it on my desk until the next time we had an outage and started following the high amplitude broadband noise that had suddenly appeared.
The directional antenna led me straight to the kid that worked in the mailroom who had his feed up on the desk talking into a wireless phone. I pulled the plug on it and the noise stopped, the network reappeared. He'd brought in a consumer wireless phone so he could talk to his girlfriend while he moved around the mailroom sorting mail. I'm surprised his hair wasn't smoking with the signal the thing was emitting.
I took it away from him and everyone, except maybe his girlfriend, was happy. :)
It will kill any kind of transmission in the house but my parent wont replace it as any replacement they had was not as fast as this 2500W monster....
Because heaven forbid they wait an extra 20 seconds...
Because heaven forbid they wait an extra 20 seconds...
It's a microwave man; the whole point is speed. If you're going to suffer eating nuked food, you better damn well at least get a speed advantage out of it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
even people can block wifi, my router is next to a desktop in the office at the front of the house, normally i get about 75% signal strength, when someone is sitting at that desk it drops down to about 55% to 60% and i notice the slowdown...
this router has a rubber ducky antenna so while searching for a way to improve my signal quality i found this and it really does work, now when someone is sitting at the office desk near the router it does not weaken the signal and the overall signal averages about 85% solid without problems
build one of these out of heavy paper like card stock or similar (cereal box cardboard) and aluminum foil http://www.freeantennas.com/projects/template2/
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
I'm guessing the nuclear powerplant I built in my backyard isn't helping... That and the invasion of sentient bloodthirsty mutant animals.
If your equipment is sending microwave transmissions so strong that they can cook your body, it's time to get out of the kitchen ...
No bloody way on earth I can get it to connect to my android access point!
stupid stupid ubuntu.
http://www.wavedeploy.com/downloads/download_center.aspx
I've had no wifi in my living room since they installed the new power meters on the outside wall. What i found in that the meters are on 2.4GHz and use up to 4watts output. They are some kind of mesh network to each other. I had to take down my wifi on that outside wall to my brothers house. It quit working and the input amp was destroyed do to proximity to the meter. 5feet away. Lost two wrt54's before I figured it out. I'm tempted to wrap the meters in tinfoil as a message to the power co. But I like my freedom too much. Can't afford to take on a 500lb gorilla.
Singed;
Living on the wire now...
I don't want a pickle; I just want a Motor-Cycle! A four foot cop arrived with a five foot gun!
Some urban legend is circulating that this will work for radiation, but it will definitely work for WiFi interference: Set a bag of microwave popcorn out on the counter. If it starts popping, you've probably got WiFi interference problems.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
Parent post wrongly assumes a standard US household socket, which is max 120 volt, 15 amp, 1800 watt.
Other replies to parent port appear to wrongly assume various European outlets. European household power is generally 220-240 volt, but max amperages are all over the map -- literally. They range from 15 amp / 3750 watt to as low as 5 amp / 1250 watt, depending on country, IIRC.
We don't appear to know the country of the grandparent post's parents' microwave. We can't even say "European" for sure; some early US models were hardwired, and so might have had a higher than usual power draw.
Power sockets exemplify the "I love standards -- there are so many to choose from!" concept.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
My parents couldn't understand why connecting to their Wi-Fi was intermittent. Though once connected, it all worked fine.
Then I looked into it and found that both they and some neighbour used the same network name: "wireless" (obviously the factory setting), but with different passwords. And this was setup by some IT guy (not me). <facepalm>
I changed the network name, and all is well now. :)
I wonder how common it is for people to unwittingly use each others' Wi-Fi because they use factory settings...
"CFL bulbs. (They tend to absorb radio signals.)"
Uh, water absorbs RF too. Are you going to blame your WiFi problems on your morning coffee?? Holy crap on a cracker...
The article is not even getting the technical facts right, much less the grammar. Shouldn't we expect better from PCPro? No, I guess not.
have one with 2 wireless speakers for the back channels.... I loved it while i was oblivious to the fact that it kill wifi in a 3ft radius!
...until i tried to play online on the wii.
Now i have to choose if I want 5.1 audio or multiplayer.
... mismatched devices!
You would not believe how many people "upgrade" their broadband to 20+ Mbit/sec service and then complain that their computer is still only getting 1-3Mbit/sec speeds. A lot of them don't realize that the older 802.11 devices can significant reduce the performance of a modern wireless network.
Most 802.11b devices (which are still in use today) usually top out at around 10-11Mbit/sec, and that's under perfect conditions. If you start adding multiple users, competing networks and outside interference, things get out of hand pretty quick.
Here's a list of things to look for in examining your wireless network for performance issues:
- Replace the router.
If you're router is over 3 years old, it might be time to replace it. Especially if it's an older 802.11a/b model. The really old 802.11 devices, like Apple's original AirPort base station, have a lot of problems working correctly when they encounter other networks within their own service range. This can result in dropped or spotty connections and overall losses in bandwidth. Many of these first generation wireless network devices barely worked, but they worked well enough for the few people that could afford them. Most of these devices have since been trashed for more recent models either because they started failing under the weight of other networks or simply died from various flaws or age.
- Update the firmware.
Many wireless devices have firmware chips on them that can be upgraded through software. This can help weed out networking issues that might be caused by buggy firmware, or may add enhanced features that can help your device work better under heavier loads from competing networks, interference, multiple users and various security issues.
- upgrade all client-end networking hardware at the same time.
When putting a wireless network together, or upgrading an existing one, make sure your client devices use similar configurations. (Or identical, if possible...) A single, poorly configured client device can significantly impact your wireless network's performance. By making the network devices functionally similar to each other, the simpler it will be to put together an efficient network setup. For example, if you have a network consisting of only 802.11g devices and set up a router to only accept 802.11g connections, it'll run at around 54Mbit/sec. But, if you have a network consisting of random 802.11 devices and a router that will support several protocols going back to 802.11b, the network will default to using the slowest, most common protocol available (802.11b) and will force all connected clients to run at that speed (11Mbit/sec), regardless of each client's individual configuration. That bandwidth is then divided by every connection, making then network seem much slower than it is. By keeping the client and router hardware similarly configured, the network speeds are less likely to suffer. Your maximum network performance is limited only by the hardware you use to build it.
- Secure your network.
Make sure your network hardware is secure on both the router and client end. Set up your router to use the most powerful encryption protocols it supports and utilize MAC address detection to identify each piece of hardware on the network, so you can ensure no one outside of your client list can access your network. Also, don't use DHCP to assign IP addresses. Manually configure each client, so they have a static IP. Finally, disable SSID broadcasting. This will reduce the likelihood of a war-driver finding your network and tagging it for others to find.
- Use the latest available network protocols.
Using protocols like 802.11g or 802.11n may help to significantly improve your network speeds over older ones, but may also offer some added flexibility. Unlike the older 802.11b/a protocols, some of the newer protocols aren't limited to one broadcast frequency (2.4GHz). While the broadcast frequency of your wireless hardware has relatively little to do with your netw
8==8 Bones 8==8
Every time the wife turns on our Panasonic Genius microwave the Wifi signal tanks, not to mention the cordless phone is useless. Needless to say, we stand back from the microwave when it's on.
--
Luck is just skill you didn't know you had.
A lighter with a piezoelectric crystal (generating an electric arc). Press it a few times in rapid succession near a laptop and your WiFi is out. It also kills wireless DTV on my laptop.
I had terrible trouble with wireless, although my house is quite small and the distances involved were usually less than 30-40 feet. Did some research and found out that most mass-market wireless won't go through a decent brick or concrete wall, is stopped pretty much dead by metal, and doesn't even like double glazing much. So you need to consider what materials your house is made of before you go shopping. If it's wood or some other lightweight material, fine. But if it's built with lots of brick and concrete and steel - maybe not.
Power line networking to the rescue! I happened to choose Devolo because it looked good quality (although relatively expensive). My problems evaporated within 24 hours, and network speeds have actually increased. I hardly ever use even Ethernet cable any more. Every mains socket is also an Ethernet socket, so I sit down with my laptop, plug in the mains cable, and plug a short length of Ethernet cable into the same socket - and I'm wired.
Of course, you can do this with a wireless acces point instead of a laptop - so pick the power point that is most convenient for where you want reception, and plug in your access point there - that lets you use your equipment in the garden.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
That was "in-depth?"
I moved a couple boxes worth of DVDs and CDs away from my router and it has significantly improved the signal strength and reliability (it used to reboot itself fairly regularly). If I put one of those boxes on the floor in a certain place, I can completely block WiFi to the "shadowed" part of the house. Moving the router just a few inches in one direction will effectively kill the signal to my game consoles. Sometimes these little details matter.
After weeks of switching locations and settings and trying new routers, I found that Pulse Audio (on a wired computer on the network) was starting twice. Whenever an audio file was played on the offending machine, the dual PA servers would suck bandwidth from the router. It wasn't noticeable on the only other wired machine in the house, but the effect on the wireless machines was complete and utter loss of bandwidth, even though the signal-strength indicators remained high.
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
Pretty cool for not requiring any software installation. http://meraki.com/tools/
You cannot warp because you are warp scrambled.