My wifi seems a bit crap.

Was advised (here) to "change channels". Manual has no mention of same.

What to do? It drops occasionally and has to be "repaired".

what's the router/wifi dongle?

I got a netgear router from work, its tosh, drops like a whores knickers. wouldn't have a clue how to anything with them. Still trying to get work to cough up for my broadband for encouraging me to work at home.

most modern routers will do a quick rummage around on the airwaves when they boot up and try and pick a channel that doesn't appear to be occupied.

Can you see lots of wireless networks when you search? if not what's the reception like when you're close to the router. Could be your house is not wireless friendly…

Lastly, some household appliances blat out 3 million watts of pure radio interference. Is your central heating thermostat wireless? Anything else like a sound system or a wireless telephone? Try turning them off, see if it gets better.

Winnie – both Belkin.

Samurai – Old 20's flat, signal has to travel 20ft through 2 solid walls. Flatmate appears to have no problems.

Issues present when cordless phone is on the base. Nothing else wireless in flat.

3 other routers present on search.

TV sender units are another good source of interference – I had to play with the channels on both my router and the TV sender to get the wifi to work when the sender was switched on.

It's also worth noting that some devices are much better at keeping connection than others – eg in exactly the same location, my laptop never loses the signal while my mobile (iPhone, dahling) does but a mate's Nokia mobile doesn't.

"tv sender" WTF?

TV Sender

Upgrade to N?

To change the channel, log onto the router and hunt for the channel setting. To log onto your router, find its IP by opening a command prompt and typing ipconfig. Where it says 'default gateway' that'll be your router's IP, probably 192.168.1.1 or 192.168.2.1 or maybe 192.168.1.100.

So type in http://192.168.1.1 into your web browser, then when it asks you to log in it'll be something like username admin password admin or blank password.

My Belkin N router is 192.168.2.1 and username=admin password=blank

When you get to the config screen you'll see a page marked 'wireless' or some such, then you'll be able to change the channel. You might also need to change the channel on your computer if it's not automatic… try windows help for that – but before you start messing with it as you'll lose your connection 🙂

Shirley I'd have to change channels on both simultaneously?

your computer should find it automatically no matter what channel it's on.

Thanks all

I'll leave this for another few months then ask again.

I have just switched to Homeplugs (Ethernet over mains wiring). Cost £90 to network 3 PC's to a router. It's miles faster, dead easy to set up and it always works. I never got wireless to work reliably on all my computers, it would work for months on end, then stop working, be OK for a week, stop working. I am glad to see the back of it. If you don't need to surf on a laptop, it's worth thinking about.

FFS.

Logged on to router, however its not accepting the WPA key as password – does this mean there is another password?

EDIT – got it!

Interesting. IT was set to chaneel 11, I changed to to "auto" – am presuming this is best?

Woo I am advised my connection signal strength is "Very good"