Too many routers!

[Cor1342]

Hello,
I live in an apartment complex (8 buildings, 4 floors per building and 8 rooms per floor) and I'm pretty sure EVERYONE has a wireless router. From time to time I get kicked off my internet or it just stops loading pages while telling me I'm still connected. Sometimes it will randomly connect me to someone else's wireless (and then ask for a password I don't have) Someone at Thanksgiving dinner mentioned I could set it up in a way that might avoid those problems but I can't seem to find any information on this problem. Any suggestions?

 

[john-b691]

First use a unique SSID that only you use and set your PC to ONLY use that one, It should never attempt to use someone else router unless you tell it to. Of course make sure you are running WPA or WPA2 since it prevents someone from intentionally hacking on you.
You could try to 5g rather than 2.4g to get around your interference issue. You would need dual band router and nic cards. There are many more frequencies available in the 5g band. It also does not penetrate wall as well so it should cut down the number of external people you see...but of course if you have internal walls those too block the signal more.

There is not a lot you can do when you are sharing radio frequency with all your neighbors.

 

[inzone]

Each router has a selection of channels that can be used and they all come with the default of 6 or a different one so you could try a different channel in the routers settings.

 

[ngrego]

That can be a problem in appartment buildings.

You can start by checking your wireless networks and removing any SSIDs that are not yours or networks you don't want to connect to.That will stop your PC from trying to connect to them automatically.

You could try changing channels, but that would only be a temporary fix. Most home routers use an "auto" channel selection setting, allowing the router to swap channels when needed. So if you change to a less used channel now it may be more used channel at a later time. If you have a wireless network scanning software you could use it to see which channels are used in your immediate area, then select a channel not being used by the strongest signals.

I wouldn't change the wireless frequency to 5MHz because not all devices can use the 5MHz band.