Wireless router keeps dropping connection - anyone else had this? Any advice please?

[TheHeathenOfSuburbia]

So, yesterday we set up a wireless router for the house.

We have cable modem => netgear router => cable to PC, Wi-Fi connection to Wii and laptop.

Got the Wii and the laptop all linked up fine, have downloaded stuff etc. Problem is, every so often the Wi-fi signal seems to disappear altogether. Both the Wii and the laptop complain about it at the same time, which makes me think the fault is with the router. We brought the laptop up to the same room as the router in case it was a signal strength issue, but it still wasn't finding our Wi-Fi (though it found seven of our neighbours' connections, only two of which were secure )

Anyone got any idea why this might be happening, or how we can fix it? All advice gratefully received....

Try setting the wifi radio to a different channel. 1,6 and 12 are good choices.

How long does it last for? We found it happened on and off for a while and turning the router off for about 10/20 seconds and then on again usually rectified it

Alternatively nick your neighbour's connection for a while if they're foolish enough not to secure it!

Thanks for replies, the connection went down just after I posted this so I gave up and went to bed!

Have been turning the router off and on again (as that's the only advice offered by 'Windows connection troubleshooting' ) but don't think it helps. Hard to tell as it seems to be essentially random... Goes down for maybe 5 mins to half an hour?

Am trying to avoid the temptation to nick the neighbours'!

Will try changing the Wifi radio once I figure out how to do that, thank you...

To change the wi-fi channel, you'll need to go into the setup of the wi-fi section on the router control panel, and might need to select Europe first (the number of channels differs around the world).

Some wi-fi adaptors show the channel numbers for all the networks found - so just choose a channel number not used by any neighbour. (Though the channels actually overlap a bit, so there can still be some interference from a next-door neighbour).

If you continue to get problems, it might be worth mentioning the Make and Model of the router in case others have seen "known problems" with a particular type!

It's probably interference, either from a neighbours router on the same channel or from another piece of kit, e.g. DECT phones or video baby monitors.

Other routers can be detected with the right software and you can pick a channel that isn't too busy.

If the interference is not from a wireless router then you need specialist kit to see where the interference lies. It's usually cheaper to just try different channels until it settles down.

have you chekced on your pc whether the wired connection goes down at the same time?

DECT phones are apparently usually on Channel 6.

If you can't get connectivity in the same room as the router itself, then I would suspect there is interference - we have WiFi at work in our canteen area and that gets wiped out by someone turning on a WiFi printer!

The only other issue I've ever come across was the WiFi shutting down due to over temperature.

Ah. Now, we have a DECT phone, and the router is set to channel 6... I feel a penny dropping...
And come to think of it, the phone is in the same room as the router.

Ok, so, I'll go away and investigate my channel options. Thanks for all your help, I'll post back later if/when I get it sorted...

Yup, changing the router channel to 11 sorted it out, all seems to be going OK now. Touch wood.

Cheers, all!