Slow wi-fi (sudden speed drop)

I use 2 computers, one a home built PC (running XP) in my office on which I am now getting an invariably satisfactory 6Mb. The other is the wife's laptop (Win7) in another room which till recently was receiving about the same speed. But no longer. I use the BT Home Hub and though we keep it in the same position the speed now is always less than 0.5Mb, though the signal strength says "Excellent".
Moving right next to the router makes no difference but if I plug it in direct via the Ethernet I get, of course, 6.0Mb. Can I assume the obvious that somehow the BT router has gone phut?

Most grateful for any suggestions.

It might be caused by interference from someone else's wireless router. Try installing a tool such as inSSIDer on the laptop. This will show you what wireless access points are visible and the channels that they are using.

Thanks for that, have downloaded but there's no "getting started" help at all. Have scanned forums but no luck. However I don't feel it is interference as it stays at 0.5 even when right next to the BT router.

You need to change the wireless channel

http://bt.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/9605/...

Follow this here.

If it's on auto, try channel 11, 6 and 1.

One of them is bound to work.

Channels 1 - 5, 6 - 10, and 11 - 14 all overlap.

So changing from channel 1 to 2 will make barely any difference as it's still picking up the same interference.

So yep, channel 11, then 6 then 1. Start higher, as stuff such as cordless phones and baby monitors & doorbells etc use lower channels generally.

In the guide it says to use channels 1, 7 and 11 (ignore this). I am assuming this is a mistake, as it should be channels 1, 6 and 11 that do not overlap. 7 would overlap with 11.

Edited by ukhardy07 (Sat 07-Jan-12 10:34:38)

Gee whiz. That's cured it. Changed to Ch 11 and up to over 6Mb. The signal I was receiving was by far the most powerful - 4 others shown but miniscule - so can't really understand how this caused the big drop even when right next to the router. Anyway it works so thanks again.

Glad it's sorted.

I generally find that wifi networks aren't an issue.
It's not really the number of networks on a channel but the type of network.

E.g. a wifi router is quite conservative. If several routers are all on the same channel things are usually ok...

The usual suspects for me are other things. E.g. a baby monitor or a cordless phone or a tv-video transmitter.

One of these is often enough to cause problems on that entire channel range. & of course when you scan for wifi networks you do not find the baby monitor, the cordless phone, the wireless doorbell, the microwave oven etc...