How To Resolve Intermittent WiFi Connections

Intermittent WiFi Connections can drag down your productivity and your enjoyment online. Having your connection speed up and slow down and stop altogether then go again can drive one crazy. Especially if the connection was working fine and you did not make any changes to your software or hardware. How can you tell if the problem is the modem, OOMA, router, Wifi adapter, browser or who knows what else? We searched the Internet and asked one of the experts we know and here are some of the tips we found to be the most useful.

"Changing from mixed, to Wireless G only, and changing channels from channel 6 to 11 made our connection much much more stable."

Intermittent Means the connection is inconsistent...

Interference:

"Is there anything else connected to the cable modem, like a TV, DVD or VCR? You might disconnect them as a test, to see if they are interfering. Cordless phone interference? Any standard 2.4Ghz device near a WiFi device could cause interference issues."

Mixed Mode:

"If you can, go with only one or the other, B or G mode. Different adapters running in different modes could certainly create issues or bog down the connection. B would be more robust and reliable, but limited to 11 MB/sec. If it's just the Internet involved, and more than one PC is not networked together transferring data between them, 11 MB/sec should be fine unless your broadband speed exceeds that."

TX Power:

"Most routers are less than 50mw. DD-WRT defaults at around 70mw which should be more than plenty for a typical residential setting. I like going with a higher gain antenna if possible vs. cranking up the TX power. Most signal issues are at the client end adapter or laptop, where the TX is minimal and often not adjustable, so having a higher gain antenna on the router side increases the receive sensitivity which compensates some for that and provides a more reliable link. Be wary of some made in China Ebay antennas. They're mostly crap."

DD-WRT See our article on this free open source router firmware.

Channel:

"Spectrum analyzers could help pinpoint such interference, but are quite spendy. Also, try scanning for other wi-fi signals to see if a neighbor may be on the same channel. If the router/s is/are set to "AUTOCHANNEL". The channel could keep shifting if interference is present, thus the client/pc adapters will momentarily break the connection to re-lock onto the new channel. Try setting the router to a static permanent channel or another channel if that is already set. Most PC adapters should automatically follow unless there is an option for manual channel selection. It could help to run a CAT cable directly from the modem/router to the PC to eliminate the wireless. Also, try swapping CAT cable between modem/router, and COAX cable to the modem. "
"Try sticking with channel 1, 6 or 11. Each (standard) channel is 5Mhz wide, but uses 20MHz of total channel width. Anything other than 1, 6 and 11, and there will be channel overlap which could make matters worse."
"Many routers use channel 6 "out of the box." Multi-frequency antennas are designed (tuned) at a center-point frequency in the middle of the range. Going above or below channel 6 will diminish optimal TX/RX, but should not be that major. Also, the higher the frequency (Channel 11) the greater the inherent signal losses become, especially running longer coax cable. You might need to experiment on what channel works best, especially if other people are using channel 1 or 6 near by..."

TX/RX signal levels:

"Most cable modems should have a status/config menu where you can check various tx/rx signal levels. They should fall within a specific range for proper modem operation. The ISP should know what the acceptable values are and you may be able to check locally via the modem web interface."

Adapters:

"Is each PC using an external adapter or built-in? You may want to try to eliminate one adapter at a time to see if a particular client adapter is causing the problem."

1Try a different channel and remove any interference you can. Example: do not have a cordless phone too near your router.

2Consider using the process of elimination to see if you can narrow down what device is causing the problem.

3Advanced: Try DD-WRT firmware to add more features and have much better statue reports for trouble shooting.