Wireless issues in the last few weeks since good weather

Just wondering if this is the reason or is it something else.

I share my internet with my neighbour as my internet contract is coming to an end, anyway it was a rock solid 12-16 meg till about 3 weeks ago then I started getting random drops after midnight, then more often and the weekend 2 weeks ago on the Saturday the connection was so bad that it told me my ping was like 600ms.

The ping has been fine since but the speed varies but the last 2 days it has been awful, I have to keep moving my aerial to get a connection and often that only works for about half a hour before it needs moved again.

It seems fine after midnight but then only get slow speeds on my desktop(but fine on laptop)

Also when I try the microwave I lose connection completly.

When I try my own internet connection I get the full 16 meg no problem wirelessly

Since nothing has changed at all since it was first working fine just wondered possible reasons?

Possibly another (new?) wireless user close to you is swamping the signal.

If you are using a Windows machine, download InSSIDer and have a look what channels and strengths you are up against. It gives a table and a graph.

Just had a quick look at what other signals are picked up by my pc, and one of my neighbours seems to of changed from Sky to BT(well a Sky connection has vanished and a BT one has suddenly showed up) so I wonder if their router is causing interferance.

Or it could just be network traffic as well

Will give that software a try if it doesnt improve.

InSSIDer is far superior to what your OS says it can see. The channel strength and overlap are crucial.

The 2 BT Connections say RSSI -69(and goes up to 72) max rate 130 (N)and are in orange.

The Livebox(my neighbours) comes up as -59- and as high as 64 max rate 54

Mine is -51 to -54 and in green max rate 54

Your numbers are the wrong way round ...

-69 going down to -72 means that the power level is halved

-59 to -64 means the power drops by 70%

That assumes they're proper "power" decibels (10 x log ₁₀ (P₁ / P₂))

I always assumed they're actually voltage based (20 x log ₁₀ (V₁ / V₂))

If anyone knows for sure which is right, I'd appreciate the information

Also forgot to say the wirelss channel is 1 on mine(Sky) 6 for the livebox, 1 for one of the BT and the other BT is on 11

In reply to a post by billford:

That assumes they're proper "power" decibels (10 x log ₁₀ (P₁ / P₂))

I always assumed they're actually voltage based (20 x log ₁₀ (V₁ / V₂))

If anyone knows for sure which is right, I'd appreciate the information

You are right, but RSSI is normally in dBm, dBW, dBk or similar.

Your formula of 20 x log ₁₀ (V₁ / V₂) is only used when comparing power levels based on voltage or amplitude measurements. and is equivalent to 10 x log ₁₀ (V₁² / V₂²) and if you work out a drop of 3dB using either of your formulas the first gives 0.5x power and te second 0.71x voltage which (assuming a constant impedance) gives 0.5x power.

Edited by MHC (Thu 23-Jun-11 23:56:42)

You've got the formulas wrong (look it up in Wiki, I cba'd to type them out again), but thanks for the info that it's power levels.

Edited by billford (Fri 24-Jun-11 00:02:32)