Interference from neighbours network

[Garyj881]

Mine and my neighbours routers are on the adjacent walls. I am with Zzoomm, they are with VM and they are advising the neighbours signal is causing my frequent WiFi drop outs.

What are my options other than relocating the router?

Is a mesh network something worth looking into?

 

[brendy]

Could just be the channels, a simple WiFi analyser app on your phone and channel change on the WiFi settings on the router may resolve any problems.

 

[Garyj881]

Could just be the channels, a simple WiFi analyser app on your phone and channel change on the WiFi settings on the router may resolve any problems.

Tell me more please. Zzoom have been altering the settings and changing channels for over 4 months with no improvement.

 

[leigh_boy]

You can use some free software google wifi analyser and see what’s is on what channel and then log in to your router and change the channel

 

[russ9898]

Could it be as simple as a faulty router and poor advice from your ISP? Admittedly, i suspect it is more likely to be a channel conflict as said previously but faulty hardware is always a possibility.

 

[Garyj881]

Could it be as simple as a faulty router and poor advice from your ISP? Admittedly, i suspect it is more likely to be a channel conflict as said previously but faulty hardware is always a possibility.

I suggested this and they replaced the router earlier this week.

 

[russ9898]

Out of interest, do you use a wired connection at all or purely wireless? Just wondering whether you have an undiagnosed line fault. If you have a wired connection does that continue to work when your WiFi has dropped out?

 

[Garyj881]

Out of interest, do you use a wired connection at all or purely wireless? Just wondering whether you have an undiagnosed line fault. If you have a wired connection does that continue to work when your WiFi has dropped out?

All the pcs are hard wired and work fine. Over WiFi, phones, tablets and streaming films via Netflix etc all suffer from intermittent slowdowns, freezing, buffering and disconnections. Zzoomm confirmed there are a lot of errors.

 

[paradigm]

Have you spoken to your neighbour about their wifi? It may be that they are experiencing similar problems and you are both messing with channels without ever settling on something that benefits you both.

Perhaps have a word and see if you can come to an agreement about channel choice, then stick with it once resolved.

 

[Orcvader]

Have you at least tried manually changing the channels like suggested before? For 5GHz, 36 to 48 is usually the most commonly used as they're not DFS channels and also more compatible with most devices. It will vary depending on your area, but I find 52 - 64 is completely fine to use, and it wouldn't suprise me if Zzoomm haven't tried these channels because of DFS reasons. In fact a quick check around my home area, none of the neighbouring networks including VM uses these channels, so I pretty much have 52 - 64 all to myself. Make sure channel width is at 80MHz so it doesn't overlap with the lower channels.

2.4GHz is harder to avoid interference so I would just make sure yours is using either 1, 6 or 11, and channel width at 20MHz.

Be sure to use a WiFi analyzer app, there's plenty of free ones on the app/play store. This can show you what channels to avoid.

 

[Gammawolf]

Have you at least tried manually changing the channels like suggested before? For 5GHz, 36 to 48 is usually the most commonly used as they're not DFS channels and also more compatible with most devices. It will vary depending on your area, but I find 52 - 64 is completely fine to use, and it wouldn't suprise me if Zzoomm haven't tried these channels because of DFS reasons. In fact a quick check around my home area, none of the neighbouring networks including VM uses these channels, so I pretty much have 52 - 64 all to myself. Make sure channel width is at 80MHz so it doesn't overlap with the lower channels.

2.4GHz is harder to avoid interference so I would just make sure yours is using either 1, 6 or 11, and channel width at 20MHz.

Be sure to use a WiFi analyzer app, there's plenty of free ones on the app/play store. This can show you what channels to avoid.

I know you know, but just to clarify this for any readers, if you are using 80mhz then you want your channel (control/index channel) to be 36 or 52 (or w/e the first channel is based on this table when you hover over the 80Mhz column options 5GHz Frequencies). If you do strictly as advised and use channels 36-48 or 52-64 and then set 80Mhz, you will likely overlap two 80Mhz bands as traditionally defined and be prone to more disruptions if both are in use. Depends on the software in your AP, some will guide you to not make this mistake, others will just let you do it assuming you know.

 

[Garyj881]

Ok, so update time.

Firstly my neighbour is quite old and not tech savvy but I will talk to him about It. I have installed WiFi analyzer and can see he is using channel 6 on the 2.4ghz frequency. So I have moved to channel 13. I assume It would be better if he can move to channel 1?

I see on the 5ghz frequency, there is a hidden ssid on channel 44 which is very strong/close and my neighbour on VM is using channel 56 so I have opted to use 112dfs but I also have the option of using DFS long but currently it's the 2.4ghz frequency that's is causing the issues.

I will test out the new channels and speak with my neighbour to ask if with my help we can get him on channel 1 on 2.4ghz.

Also would channel width and mode be worth looking at?

 

[paradigm]

Don’t use Ch13 for 2.4GHz.

The only true (none-overlapping) channels are 1, 6 and 11.

 

[Garyj881]

Don’t use Ch13 for 2.4GHz.

The only true (none-overlapping) channels are 1, 6 and 11.

Ok, I'll try ch11 and see how it goes.

 

[Avalon]

All the pcs are hard wired and work fine. Over WiFi, phones, tablets and streaming films via Netflix etc all suffer from intermittent slowdowns, freezing, buffering and disconnections. Zzoomm confirmed there are a lot of errors.

it's the 2.4ghz frequency that's is causing the issues.

If you are convinced this is an 2.4Ghz interference issue, stop using 2.4Ghz by splitting the SSID’s and just use 5Ghz to test. I can’t imagine your devices are that ancient that they can run Netflix and not 5Ghz and two neighbouring networks (and one of those should intelligently adapt from memory) shouldn’t generally be a problem, which brings us back to your router.

 

[leigh_boy]

Don’t use Ch13 for 2.4GHz.

The only true (none-overlapping) channels are 1, 6 and 11.

You can use 13, I’m a certified ccnp wireless designer , while the USA use 1-11 so most the time we do that, 13 is fine to use just not commonly used

 

[Orcvader]

You can use 13, I’m a certified ccnp wireless designer , while the USA use 1-11 so most the time we do that, 13 is fine to use just not commonly used

Unfortunately even though it's allowed in the UK, there are still some devices here that don't properly support it. Example is smart home devices, I have a few that don't support channel 13 at all.

Ok, so update time.

Firstly my neighbour is quite old and not tech savvy but I will talk to him about It. I have installed WiFi analyzer and can see he is using channel 6 on the 2.4ghz frequency. So I have moved to channel 13. I assume It would be better if he can move to channel 1?

I see on the 5ghz frequency, there is a hidden ssid on channel 44 which is very strong/close and my neighbour on VM is using channel 56 so I have opted to use 112dfs but I also have the option of using DFS long but currently it's the 2.4ghz frequency that's is causing the issues.

I will test out the new channels and speak with my neighbour to ask if with my help we can get him on channel 1 on 2.4ghz.

Also would channel width and mode be worth looking at?

2.4GHz will always be congested, if possible move everything to 5GHz if you can. If it doesn't reach the other end of your home, consider running a cable to the weak area and placing an access point there. If that's not an option, there's mesh, but some mesh brands don't allow channel changing (eg, Deco's settings is extremely limited).

Channel width is always worth looking at. If it's too wide it will more likely interfere with more channels, hence why I recommended 20MHz for 2.4GHz and 80MHz for 5GHz in my previous comment.

 

[paradigm]

You can use 13, I’m a certified ccnp wireless designer , while the USA use 1-11 so most the time we do that, 13 is fine to use just not commonly used

Just because you CAN, doesn’t mean you should. 13 still overlaps with other channels (9-12).

 

[Dangerous]

You can use 13, I’m a certified ccnp wireless designer , while the USA use 1-11 so most the time we do that, 13 is fine to use just not commonly used

You can't be very good then Informing someone to use channel 13 on 2.4GHz . 1,6,11 and at 20MHz only.

A proper wireless engineer would say avoid 2.4GHz and migrate channels to 5GHz. Where possible look to using Band B as Band A will likely be congested with every Sky/VM router using channel 36 at 80MHz

 

[leigh_boy]

You can't be very good then Informing someone to use channel 13 on 2.4GHz . 1,6,11 and at 20MHz only.

A proper wireless engineer would say avoid 2.4GHz and migrate channels to 5GHz. Where possible look to using Band B as Band A will likely be congested with every Sky/VM router using channel 36 at 80MHz

I said you can use it, and you can.