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[Corroded]

Ahhhh...  yet again an area so saturated with WiFi routers that having a wired network looks better and better. 

I'm with Furry on parts of this.  Try getting together with some of your surrounding Condo/Apartment Dwellers and see if you can set your selves up as a interdependent cooperative WiFi setup.  If that does not work get with the building people and try to get it as a building wide setup.  There are lots of turn key systems that can be implemented with a little savvy and some time. 

It's that or wire your place.  I really do not see much else, the SoHo routers are not made to take the abuse that it seems like you and your fellow dwellers are putting them through.

[BaronRon]

Thanks for your comments!

I will talk to some more residents and see how widespread this problem is. If I can get enough of them to complain maybe we can get the ball rolling. In the event that I can't mobilize the troops. Is there anything I can do, short of building a giant Farraday cage around my appartment, to reduce outside signals?

Also, whats the strongest SOHO wi-fi out there?

[Corroded]

It's not going to be the router so much as the signal penetration.  A faraday cage would help.    My house is aluminum framed and most radio is lost inside here.

I used to use this a lot on my old laptop to show people the saturation in their area.  It is good @ seeing signals weaker than are reported by other applications.  I have not used the newer version.  Try it and see if you can spot a router/access point that was "hidden"  it even shows routers with hidden SSIDs.

http://www.netstumbler.com/downloads/

I'll have to reload this onto my new laptop and see what crap is in my area here.

Are you in a metro somewhere like NYC or Chicago?

[BaronRon]

Hi Corroded.

I'm in Toronto, Canada. I tried netstumbler but for some reason it says no APs detected. So I'm using inSSIDer instead. I can pick up over 30 APs in just under 5 mintues. What bothers me is that everything was fine up until a few weeks ago. Could it really be that just one more person installed a wifi and it was the straw that broke the camel's back? I didnt notice any decrease in performance up until it stopped working consistently. Do you know if we could see this effect if someone installed a commerical router in the area?

[Corroded]

There is an off chance someone moved in with an old 2.4 rig of some kind that is intermittently blasting the floor(s) of your building.  

I used to see radio interference from ship radar that seemed random until I placed with a passing ship and the rotational period of the radar.  

Do you live near a radio station, LEO shop, or other place that may have erected some sort of tower/transmitter nearby?  

Did they roll out WiMAx or city wide WiFi there recently?  

Are there new cell antennae on an adjacent building in the line of site with your place?  

I know there are radio disruptor devices capable of knocking down radio traffic on specific freq's as well.  You can buy devices to cut off cell service in your place as easy as plugging them in...

Do you drop if you are in the same room as the router?

Wire it. Faster connection anyways.

__________
I just pulled inSSIDer and netstumbler.  netstumbler does not work on my laptop.  inSSIDer gives me about 13 active AP's in sight of my 4500.  No interference.  Some of them are commercial ones from the local WiFi DSL provider. 

[BaronRon]

Hi Corroded,

I'm far away from shore and I haven't seen any large towers errected nearby in the last few weeks. All great ideas but I just can't connect the dots to something outside of this building. I'm not actually in the downtown core, I'm quite a bit away so we dont get a city wide WiFi out here. The other day I was getting plenty of deauthorization messages from my D4500, so I thought it was a deauth flood attack. But maybe its some sort of jamming device? How could I figure out where its coming from?

Also, my router is 4 feet away from my laptop. I may just wire it, but I would hate to think one person could spoil it for the rest of us.

Thanks for your help!

[Corroded]

I would not think that either but I have seen older 2.4 phones mess up peoples wifi.  Spread Spectrum is supposed to get rid of that but not always.      

Can you find out if someone moved in about the time you started having the issue?  See if they might have an older cordless phone or real old Wifi router, an "a" perhaps?

I am at a loss beyond this point.

[Trikein]

Well I just did some light research and you wouldn't happen to have a Intel wireless NIC would you? Found a bunch of forums post on egghead, DSLreports, PSN, Wii Forum, etc, all with issues between D-link routers and Intel cards. Intel cards are super common though, so could mean nothing.  Eitherway, heres some tips I dug up will searching.

1. Turn your off the Power Saving Protocol (PSP) on your laptop. This might also be known as setting it to CAM or Always Awake. More info here:  http://www.intel.com/support/wireless/wlan/sb/cs-006205.htm
 
OR (because this kills battery life)

2. Lower the Beacon Period: 192.168.0.1 > Advanced > Advanced Wireless > Beacon Period.
Default is 100. Some people have better results with a Beacon of 30 or so. Picture the beacon being like schronizing your watches before a mission. The more times you do it during a mission, the more cordinated you will be.

AND

3. Increase your DTIM: 192.168.0.1 > Advanced > Advanced Wireless > DTIM Interval
DTIM is the amount of frames a wireless client (Wireless NIC) waits before it "wakes up" to transmit or recieve data. Default is 1. If your lowering the Beacon to improve dependability, increasing your DTIM can perserve battery life.


Basically here is the deal. Theres some different technology out there to peserve battery life. The core of it to not have the laptop listening for anything when the router isn't sending, and not have the laptop sending when the router isn't listening. When all things are perfect, it works great. But its like fireflies trying to use morse code in a forest jack full of fireflies. When you have so much noise, the system can start to become inaccurate. The looser you make that power saving system, the more dependable (and better performing) it becomes, but the more battery you burn. If this is a wireless desktop or a laptop thats plugged in all the time there is no reason for PSP to be enabled.

Keep in mind this is one possibility of varible in your problem. There may be, and probably are, other parameters as well. Thats why its important to start with a router that is default and a wireless NIC with updated driver with default values. Change one thing, monitor, evaluate, change it back, repeat.

[Corroded]

good post Tri   

[BaronRon]

Thanks a lot Trikein! I will try out your suggets and report back!