Bad connection to router despite being 10 feet away

My router is in my living room and my laptop is in my bedroom. The distance from the two are literally 10 feet apart.

I currently live on the 16th floor of an apartment building in Shanghai. Now for some reason, I get horrible signal to my router. Even with the door open or closed, it makes no difference.

I think the problem is that there is too much interference. My laptop detects another 20 hotspots to connect and ironically, some of those have a stronger connection signal than my own router.

When I use the WiFi Analyzer on my tablet, I see about 8 connections total. My router is on Channel 5, and the others are on Channels 1,1,2,6,6,9,9. My router is @ 5432 Mhz and -79dBm.

How can I strengthen the signal to my router?

Update: My tablet is constantly picking up new signals. Many routers are on Channels 1,4,9,11

krikara

Posted 2014-11-15T13:47:14.557

Reputation: 329

ch 11 would be as far from the others as you can get, I guess. Practically, it might just be a case of trying every channel & see which works best. – Tetsujin – 2014-11-15T13:51:21.220

@Tetsujin not entirely the case. See my answer for details. – LPChip – 2014-11-15T13:53:23.817

ah, I always forget DECT. Been a long time since I used a house-phone ;-) I was just going for 'as far away from everybody else as you can.' – Tetsujin – 2014-11-15T14:19:15.723

If you router is on "5432 Mhz and -79dBm" then it isn't on channel 5, and it is either much more than 10 feet away, set to very low power, or it has a thick wall between between you and it. – Alex Cannon – 2019-02-21T15:06:25.930

Answers

There are more questions about how to improve your wifi signal, so I'm going to only give a short answer, as I currently do not have enough time to look up the other topics.

Wifi should be set to channels 1, 6 and 11, because otherwise you will overlap with multiple channels, and as such your reception will suck.

Note that with channel 11, you will come in the range of wireless phones (dect) so if you have that a lot near you, you are better of at channels 1 and 6.

The theory behind this is that you do not just occupy that channel, but also 2 channels below and above it. So by being on 5, tou are also on 3 and 4 and 6 and 7. Those on 2 are also on 3 and 4. And even those on 1 are on 3. So basically 5 is the worst choice as you will hit every single person connected on the router. Look how strong the signals are on 1 and 6 and choose the best one, or try 11 and see if that works for you.

LPChip

Posted 2014-11-15T13:47:14.557

Reputation: 42 190

It seems like there are so many different routers on different channels that I would experience interference no matter what. Is there anything else I can do besides changing channels? – krikara – 2014-11-15T14:03:54.147

if it is less than 10 feet away - i'd use a wired UTP cable connection - until i fix the channel issue – Prasanna – 2014-11-15T14:36:48.223

No, unless you want to eliminate the wifi entirely by going through a cable. But sticking to 1, 6 or 11 is really a significant improvement worth checking into. I did so at my end. I used to be on channel 13 because no one was there. Went to 11 where people are on it, and my connection improved. Tested with going from 3 to 6 or 1 and noticed the same thing. My feeling said it wouldn't because no one was on that location, but it really works. – LPChip – 2014-11-15T14:56:49.247

Do you have any other suggestions? I have been testing out all different channels throughout the week, but to no avail. My computer, phone, tablet is consistently at 2/5 bars. – krikara – 2014-11-23T10:01:24.310

An other solution is to either replace the router or add an access point. routers nowadays are stronger, depending on the age and costs at the time of purchase, a new router might just be enough. – LPChip – 2014-11-23T14:48:58.857

As LPChip stated, WLAN equipment should use one of channels 1, 6 or 11.

Using partially overlapping channels can be even worse for the performance of all wireless stations than setting all stations on the same channel. WLAN nodes operating on the same channel can receive and decode other nodes and participate in the wireless medium access procedure. Each IEEE 802.11 data frame carries information about how long the channel will be occupied and WLAN nodes can optimize the channel usage using this information. If channels are partially overlapping, frames from other nodes cannot be received and are received only as noise, no optimization can occur.

While the channels are from the 2.4GHz band, you say your router is at 5432MHz. How about other free channel in the 5G band? 5G is more susceptible to attenuation by obstacles and often less crowded, so it might be preferable on short distances, YMMV according to the quality of your walls.

Increasing the transmission power of your router within the regulatory limits can make things better if other access points only then detect your router and backoff from the channel while you are transmitting, but most routers already transmit at the maximum allowed power or don't let the user change it.

At a first starting point you should test if you can have a better network performance on channels 1 and 6 and in the 5GHz band.

ua2b

Posted 2014-11-15T13:47:14.557

Reputation: 136