Signal quality of wireless connection

[elzach]

I'm on the top floor of an 8 floor apartment bldg. The manager a couple of weeks ago upgraded the internet from True Online to 3BB. They also installed two routers per floor, instead of the one they had before. The internet before was completely useless, extremely unstable, we were lucky to get a connection, especially after 5 pm when people got home.

Now with the new set up it worked great for a few days. Instant connections and download speeds of 3-6 mbps. Lately I'm seeing problems again. I've been watching the "status" of the wireless connection. Under "speed" it goes from 54 mbps to 48 to 24 to 11 to 2 to 1 mbps... and back again to 11 mbps to 48 and everywhere in between, all in the space of a few minutes! I kid you not.

Is this normal? What does that indicate, other than we are in Thailand of course?

edit: The routers are: a new Asus N and an old Linksys G. I am 15 feet from the Linksys (thru one wall) and 25 feet from the Asus.

Edited May 21, 2014 by elzach

[RichCor]

Yes, unfortunately, normal and probably the equipment is mis-configured for multiple WiFi Access Point environment -- they APs and the user devices will interfere with each other unless each floor is set to an alternating channel [ch1, ch6, ch11, ch1 ch6, ch11, ch1, ch6, etc]

Speed switching is normal, as the WiFi needs to adjust speed for conditions. Each device connecting to it will each have distance and obstacles to overcome so the AP automatically adjusts per condition of the connecting unit.

If the AP units are set up as wireless repeaters (not hardwired back to the originating modem) then it will create further connection and speed issues.

​Technically, a building should be served by multiple incoming Internet Connections into a load balancer, and someone who actually knows how to plan and configure a in-building distributed net needs to position and configure the WiFi Access Points on each floor.

[rhythmworx]

Log into the routers and reconfigure them to suit your needs, don't change the password though.

I am assuming whoever put them there has left the default username/passwords.

Get the model number on google find the default username/passwords, open command prompt and do tracert [space] www.google.com

That should give you the routers address which you then type into your browser where you normally type URL's...which will bring you to the log in page.

Log in and go to work.

Download inSSIDer from majorgeeks.com and monitor the signal strengths and overlapping channels.

Edited May 21, 2014 by rhythmworx

[phazey]

Find out what the line speed of your condos ADSL connection is - or, do a speed test at a quiet time to see what your download is. Get the router admin to lock the maximum speed to this and not those silly 54mbps type speeds. You are retraining because the more people who are on the wilan, the more error correction takes place.

Also, try and request to shift channels - bettings are it's on a congested channel, so many other wifi units around you will cause interferance. If you have an android device, there is an app called wifi analyzer which will have you and give you the best channel to be on.

Bottom line: There is no need to associate faster than your line speed. Move away from congested frequencies.

Edit: also ask the router admin to hide the SSID (dont advertise it) incase n'er do wells jump on and take your valuable GoT downloading bytes.

Edited May 21, 2014 by phazey

[elzach]

Thank you everyone.