Why is my wireless signal non existant in my flat?

When I first moved in I used a 3 dongle and it worked for about 2 hours until I had to charge it, then it stopped working, either no signal at all displaying on my laptop or 5 bar but it kept dropping, I tried 2 different phones as well and they had same problem.

After my broadband was activated I got about 2 bar signal on my desktop pc but only about 18 meg speed, my laptop got about 45 meg around the entire flat, in my bedroom I got about 3 bar signal for the desktop in there but dial up speeds.

I tried changing all the wireless channels and no luck.

I sometimes pick up 1 or 2 neighbours broadband signals but the strange thing is ALL of them come through as 5 bar no matter if its desktop or laptop and I can get 1 of my neighbours connections 5 bars in every room!

Why is the signal therefore so bad in my flat? Its a oldish flat about 40-50 years old.

Also what is strange, when I moved in I put router on carpet as had no table to put it on and got my 2/3 bar desktop signal, I then put it on a small desk in same location now neither of my desktops get ANY wireless signals and the only difference is its about 3 feet off the ground.

Depends on the router and how signal radiates from the antenna. Small changes can give big changes in performance

Also check settings on router as may be using a low power setting perhaps

if the router has an external aerial, check that its making a good connection.

else as mr saffron suggests, change the position of the router, (stand it up, or lay it down),

edit, what router is it?

Edited by ggremlin (Thu 07-Aug-14 11:23:41)

Its just a generic technicolour, but if it was he router why did I have identical problems with my phones and dongle when tethering them, I tried changing wireless channels with no luck

Some local device giving out interference in the 2.4 GHz band e.g. cordless phone, Bluetooth, cctv, baby monitor, microwave

When I moved in I had none of those, however the wireless signal for the broadband has only dissapeared completley since I put my cordelss phone base next to router as well as a gigabit switch.

So it is wireless interference caused by the base station?

Or out of band interference from a power adapter. Time to move things around or just switch off temporarily to see if that has any effect.

Tried it with the plug for my cordless phone removed and still the same.

I had a thought, I have the router and the modem plugged into a surge protected extension, could that affect it?

Make sure you are using only channels 1, 6 or 11.

It could be that the room the router is located in has a wall that has chicken wire inside it
See: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2010/jan/...

As a good test, do you have a smartphone such as an iPhone?
If so, turn on the personal hotspot setting, stay on this screen (do not go off this screen - changing screens stops it working correctly), this now makes your router into a wifi Hotspot.

Place the iPhone next to the router... do your devices see the signal as weak as the original router?
An iPhone should give off a much weaker signal than the router, so it should by rights be much weaker. If it's the same / better then you know the routers pretty junk. EDIT: The WiFi is so bad that turning my homehub on next to this router, would mean I couldn't even connect to the technicolour WiFi as my homehub literally overpowered it that much on the same channel. Having both a sky hub and homehub on same channel next to one another - worked fine on both. I assume it's because the Sky hub is a fairly strong range as well. So it's possible neighbours devices with a much stronger WiFi output aren't helping as they're overpowering the measly signal.

Also is your router one of these? http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/71UgdlsyEqL._S...
If so they have terrible WiFi range. Well compared to the homehub I have it's truly abysmal...

Edited by ukhardy07 (Fri 08-Aug-14 01:27:42)