[jnc007]

I'm having a hard time with the wifi in my house. I bought this place about 1.5 years ago. I had a wifi router for the first 6-8 months with no problem. I then started to have a hard time getting a good connection, holding one at all or worse yet not finding my connection.

To fix this I got 3 new routers from the Time Warner, I've replaced my router three times with three different brands, all name brands. I've called my current routers help desk and time warner and they both said it was the others fault. Finally, we have 3 computers and 1 PS3. We have a standard new 13" mac book, a 13" metal macbook pro and a HP laptop...plus the PS3. The connection is sometimes found and sometimes not found by all three with no rhyme or reason why. The PS3 gets the connection, but its super slow. I could be working on my mac pro for hours close it up for 5 minutes to use the bathroom, come back and the connection is gone. I can also tell you that we take these computers to a lot of different places. Coffee shops, college campuses and various offices I work at. Once we get the password in, we're good to go and it never has a problem.

I'm looking for any and all advice as to what could be causing this nightmare. Sometimes I can't find ANYTHING when the airport goes searching for a connection and sometime I can't connect to mine which is sitting next to me but I can get my neighbors accross the street.

Please help, this is driving me crazy.

Thanks

Josh

[ghporter]

Welcome to our forums!

From the sound of your problems, you probably have NOT been having problems with either Time Warner OR the routers. It sounds like there's been a lot of radio interference around you, which can ruin or prevent a connection.

Where are you located? Has there been any new construction nearby? A power substation, a radio transmitter, or even an office building could cause this sort of issue. And even if AirPort doesn't report specific wireless networks around you, that doesn't mean that they aren't there-they could be suppressing their network name broadcasts. Getting a connection from your neighbor across the street sounds a lot like they're on a different channel-one that isn't being interfered with. If you have never changed the channel on those routers from the default (usually channel 6 or 7 for B and G), that is a strong indicator that your problem is interference, not faulty hardware.

[steve626]

I agree with the suggestion that other signals may be interfering with your router(s).

You do not describe what type of router you are using. Is it an N router? If so, check the settings. You should avoid the 5 GHz band in areas with interference, it is less robust. As for the 2.4 GHz band, try a narrower bandwidth setting, the 40 MHz setting can provide higher data rate but the wider bandwidth makes it more likely you will overlap with other crowded signal bands. Try decreasing that bandwidth setting if you can find it. Finally, you can resort to the g setting (slower than n) or even b if need be (even slower).