Up and Down Wireless

Wireless can be fickle. One minute it's giving you all of its 802.11N love while you watch a Dexter marathon on Netflix, the next it's down filling you with the agonizing pains of Internet withdrawal. Then, moments later, it's back up with no apparent rhyme or reason. Let me give you a little rhyme for your reason.

Unless you live in the wilderness, it's extremely likely that your neighbors wireless network(s) extend into your wireless domain. Many consumer routers are set to broadcast on the same wireless channel (often channels 1, 6 and 11) which can lead to multiple networks duking it out for airtime in a relatively small space. The way I see it, you're left with two options. Make tiny matching foil hats for yourself, your laptop, and your router...OR you can change the channel. While the former is definitely more fashion forward, it's not very effective. I just wanted to see if I could get you to rush into the kitchen to grab some foil before reading the rest of this. Let's change the channel.

Signs (2002)

Now I'm banking on the fact that you understand how to make basic changes to your router. I'm going to assume that when you got it, you logged in to set up an SSID (your network name), set a security protocol and passkey, and hopefully changed the standard administrative password of the router itself. If you haven't done these things, you need to locate the make and model number of your router and Google it to locate the manual. Breaking into unsecured wireless network is about as easy as going to the fridge for a snack so it's important to do these things to keep people from leeching Internet access from you, or even worse, accessing your personal information.

Now let's take a look at what channels your neighbors are using. Download and install an application called NetStumbler. When you run it, you'll notice it removes you from your wireless network and uses your wireless card to scan local wireless networks. In order to return surfing, you'll need to close the application. NetStumbler couldn't be easier to use, especially for the information we're trying to access. Simply double click it and let it run for a minute and you'll see a neat little list of local networks and what channels they are on.

As you can see from our list here, some channels are quite packed. This is most likely because this was the default channel the router was set to and it was never changed. All you need to do to avoid this traffic jam is to set your network to one that is not being used, or at least, not being used very much. Just log back into your router, find the wireless channel settings, put yourself on a traffic free channel, and enjoy smooth wireless surfing.