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)

Perhaps your router instability leads to, you can make a router signal instability router signal enhancement by increasing the antenna. But I suggest you buy a new router that would be the best choice.

If just the mains plugs you mean then should be fine but if that was changed try without

As ukhardy07 has said, 2.4Ghz WiFi should ideally be on channels 1, 6 or 11. These are non-overlapping channels. Ideally, all surrounding networks should also be on these channels as access points running on the same channel, with different SSIDs, will "work together" efficiently to share that channel. As soon as someone starts broadcasting between these channels (2-5 & 7-10), this is no longer possible, and all access points see each other as interference and are unable to "work together", thus reducing overall speed and reliability for everyone concerned.

I do recommend you invest in a WiFi scanner like inSIDDer - it can show up many things. For example, I have a lovely neighbour next door who has suddenly started to beam some WiFi device on channel 3, with SSID "MINE" (about sums him up). I was running happily on channel 1, until I noticed this. He's now effectively destroyed any meaningful speed on channel 1 (channel 3 overlaps mainly with 1) and partially channel 6 (channel 3 overlaps slightly with 6), meaning I've had to move up to channel 11 (which thankfully is mostly empty).

It could be that you have some access points around you not playing nice with the 1/6/11 rule. Also, you may have some really selfish neighbours who insist on using 40Mhz bands (rather than just 20Mhz) which takes up 2 whole channels of the 2.4Ghz spectrum, which can really mess things up for single band APs running on 1/6/11 as the extra 20Mhz channel is normally a +/- 5 offset from the main one. A WiFi scanner will be able to show you this. My APs can run in this mode but it is pointless if the spectrum around you is crowded (which mine is) as no speed-up will be gained (plus devices have to actively support 40Mhz anyway).

From experience, this is how I go about choosing a good channel:

1) Fire up inSIDDer and look at what the picture is. If I can find a completely empty channel 1, 6 or 11, assign the AP with that.

2) If 1, 6 and 11 are all in use, identify which of those channels have the lowest WiFi signals on them, and choose that channel.

3) If it happens to be that all 3 channels are roughly equal from analysis of 2 above, I then begin to consider the speed that each network is running at (inSIDDer tells you this too). In general, higher speed WiFI standards (like the 144 Mbits/sec "n" standard) are going to utilise more channel bandwidth than the older 54 Mbits/sec "g" standards. So in this case I choose a channel where all APs are using an equal or lower speed standard to what I'm running.

4) Avoid channel overlapping at all costs. If you find just one channel where some "idiot" is broadcasting between 1 and 6, or 6 and 11, move to the remaining channel which has no overlap. If this is unavoidable, set your channel to the same channel as where most of the other APs are running.

5) Run speed tests and move your AP channel around (taking into account all of the above) until you find a channel where you get the most reliable and strongest signal. Be aware that inSIDDer does not show you everything. As MrSaffron has said, you may have interference happening on some channels which inSIDDer cannot show you.

Finally, if you do have chicken wire in the walls of the flat (as ukhardy07 has also suggested), might be time to move to something like the Devilo WiFi Powerline kits so you can expand connectivity through your mains ring, opening it backout to WiFi in rooms where you need it.

Edited by deleted (Fri 08-Aug-14 10:07:50)

Yes its one of those cheap routers

A strange situation, I was using my bedroom pc for about 10 days when my motherboard went on my good pc and it had 1 bar signal too in living room(but 4 in bedroom)

When I fixed the good pc and put it back I got 1 bar signal with the aerial or nothing without the aerial, I found out the connector was a bit loose so tried a spare aerial I had on the good pc and it went up to 4 bar signal but only about 12-20 meg speed.

I bought 2 high gain larger aerials from Ebay and they arrived today, I put it on and the signal stayed at 4 bars but the download speed shot up to 42 meg wireless which is the same as my laptop has.

Still need to get a good wireless speed in bedroom though, I have wired it in for ftping games and such across but I like to rely on wireless as a backup.

What doesnt make sense though is my card that had the broken aerial picked up almost constantly 1 oe 2 5 bar signals(and always no less than 5 bars) and also they only seemed to transmit in the evening.

For me to not pick up a signal about 6 feet from pc yet 5 bars of 2 other networks is strange.

Edited by deleted (Mon 11-Aug-14 17:48:46)