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Sunday 15 January 2012

Solve wireless router connection problems

We would like to thank the original author of this review at www.punj.co.uk for granting us permission to publish this  particular blog content. The original contents of the review can be found at http://www.punj.co.uk/

Many people today connect to the Internet using a wireless router either provided by their ISP or purchased by themselves.  Wireless routers are great devices letting people connect to their home networks without having a wired connection between the device and the router. As an example you can sit in your garden and connect wirelessly to your home wireless router to access the Internet.

 

We have come across many occasions when the wireless router sometimes becomes problematic and intermittently disconnects the user providing an unsatisfactory connection. To help we are going to give our readers some useful tips on how to resolve these issues.

You may have experienced one of the following symptoms:

1. Your PC or laptop frequently connects and disconnects you from the wireless router.
2. You are connected to your wireless router but the wireless connection seems very slow.

We have resolved these issues on many occasions by just following some simple tips.

Some useful tips to resolve wireless problems

Nearly all wireless routers today come preset so that the user simply connects their wireless router to the ISP connection and by using the security key provided they are ready to surf the Internet.
The security key will normally be found on a sticker on the back of the router.
The manufactures try very hard to make the installation of the wireless router an easy experience for the user.
An example of this setup by the manufacturer would be that the wireless router comes pre-configured with the wireless channel pre-set to "Auto" or Channel "6".
Normally in all occasions an unsatisfactory wireless connection is due to external interference interfering with the wireless connection.
The external interference can come from neighbouring wireless routers and devices. Indeed even the neighbours microwave can interfere with your wireless connection.
A simple solution to resolve and fix your connection is by changing the channel your wireless router uses to communicate with your devices eg computer or laptop.
To change the channel you will need to go into the wireless router set up pages. You can find more information on how to get into your wireless router setup pages by reading your router manual or by searching in google for your router.
Once you are in the wireless router setup page you will notice that the wireless channel is set to "Auto" or channel "6". This channel setting can normally be changed. You can normally manually set the channel number between 1 to 13.
By simply changing this to say channel "2" you can resolve a lot of issues. You may even find that your wireless router can now be picked up at longer distances and stay satisfactorily connected for a longer time.


Some of the more experienced users will also tweak their devices in other ways in an effort to get the best wireless connection. How ever some of these tweaks can also result in making the connection unsatisfactory and even worse for the user. An example of this is one that we came across very recently.
We had a user who had the DD-WRT firmware on their wireless router. They were able to set the transmit TX power settings which basically either transmits the wireless signal at higher or lower power settings.
They thought by using higher power settings they were improving their wireless signal so that it would be picked up more easly by the wireless devices. However by setting this at higher power settings they were just saturating the signal to their wireless device. We recommend that you never increase the power transmit settings on your wireless router. Not only will you saturate additional noise but you will most probably shorten the the life of your wireless router. We were able to resolve this issue for this user by just lowering this slightly lower than the default setting. In our case this was lowered from the default setting of "70" to "50".

Some people will also access the wireless NIC settings within the wireless NIC device on the laptop or computer. Within the "Wireless Network adapter connection" you can get access to the wireless adaptor settings within the advanced menu. Here you can also see that on some wireless adaptors you can set the "Transmit Power". Some people think by setting this to the "Highest" setting they will be able to iimprove their wireless signal as it is now operating at the highest setting. All they are doing here is again shortening the life of their wireless adaptor and as stated before saturating the wireless signal. 
We again recommend that you choose a medium setting for the transmit TX setting.
The lower the setting the better the wireless connection will perform. Also the wireless NIC card will use less power which will result in less heat and a longer life for that device.

We are amazed that the tips we have detailed above are not given as standard by the manufactures support  personel.
We have come across many users replacing their wireless routers stating that the previous router that was purchased not so long ago as poorly made by the manufacturer. Indeed the same has been said for the free ISP supplied wireless routers.  In our opinion manufactures do try to make good quality products and ISP do want to provide the best for their customers. However by just changing the wireless channel will most defantly in most cases give amazing results.

Over the years we have resolved many wireless issues by just using the simple tips above.

So finally if your wireless router is playing up whether this is the one you purchased or this was given free to you by your ISP,  we recommend you try our tips here, Hopefully you will once again have your wireless router and devices working as they are suppose to.

If you have enjoyed our latest tip or wish to discuss this further then please leave your comments and suggestions below

punj

1 comment:

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