Low Wifi signal

Recently we have been having problems with weak wifi signal at the far end of the house from the router. For ages the signal was great and just as good as if you were sitting near it.

Our Fire TV stick has recently been reporting weak signals from the wifi.

We are using the original Netgear WNR1000 we had when we took out our fibre. The white Thomson box never had great signal.

Is it worth getting a new router or updating the FW on the WNR1000?

You might just need to change the wireless channel, someone nearby might have setup a connection on the same channel that could be causing some interference.

A router with more physical antennas would give better signal strength.

Most likely a close neighbour has just got a wifi router.

Try a wireless channel change. Otherwise, get in touch with PlusNet and request their HubOne, it is a rebranded BT Homehub 5A and the range will be a lot better than your existing router.

If that fails, get a wireless repeater such as this https://www.amazon.co.uk/TP-LINK-RE355-Universal-Ext...

Rather than just guessing about channel sharing, install an app on your phone or laptop so you can see channel usage. I use this on my Android phone: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fa...

I have sorted out several people's wifi problems using this. The "auto" channel assignment that is the default on most routers isn't very effective. I would have hoped it sniffed around and used the freeest channel but judging by what I've seen that just isn't true.

I assume that is to the OP as I already know that.

Often this is misleading, since devices will choose 1, 6 and 11... People get an app such as this, and choose channel 3 as it appears to be free & screw up the spectrum for everybody following the standard convention.

Edited by ukhardy07 (Fri 24-Jun-16 09:57:39)

The problem is wifi access points tend to choose busy channels from my experience. The problem then with manually setting is that you set it to a channel that is currently clear and 5 minutes later a neighbours router may jump to overlap it.

I have been asked to go over to a friends because their wifi is performing poorly (and someone they know told them it was because of their ADSL filter!!!). I will hunt down a free channel and set it on that which will probably fix it but what's the betting a neighbours device will flip over to it automatically and the problem will be back.

has the aerial on the netgear been moved? maybe folded flat instead of upright?

Have the same problem with a Talk talk router next door, constantly follows my wifi signal, which then annoys my son on his laptop in his room.

manually change the wifi channel using a wifi analyzer as a test tool.