I’m on a Mac with Airport. It’s in (let’s call it) “room A”. It picks up a wireless signal from a router in “room B” down the hall. From the day I hooked up (3 weeks ago), I had 3 or 4 “bars” of signal consistently.
Yesterday my boyfriend’s friend hooked him up a new Dell PC in “room C” (across the hall from room B) with a wireless adapter card (for internet) and a wireless TiVo card (for “sharing” pics/video with our downstairs TV)
Now suddenly I have one bar if I’m lucky, and have lots of problems getting online and sending e-mail.
The signal from/placement of/condition of the wireless router today is no different than it was a week ago. The only change is this new computer in room C.
What gives?
My first guess would be that the Tivo card is transmitting either on the same frequency or one very close to your existing wireless network. Try unplugging the Tivo card and see if the problem goes away.
I don’t understand why you’d suspect the Tivo card but not the computer one; they’re functionally identical. The Tivo is ON the existing wireless network; the whole point of adding the wireless card is to network it in with the others.
But the proposed solution is good: shut down BOTH the new cards, (the Dell and the Tivo), and see if the problem improves. Then bring them up one at a time and and watch your bars. The wireless network shouldn’t be disrupted by its own members, but perhaps one of the cards is faulty, and broadcasting a lot of “noise.” If one of them is at fault, try replacing it.
If the problem persists when both are down, you’ve probably got interference from something else: cordless phones or a neighbor’s network are the most likely culprits. 802.11 Wireless networks (including Airport) have a user-adjustable “channel” on them, from 1 to 11. The channels overlap somewhat, so there are really three valid channels: 1, 6, and 11. Try changing all the devices to a different channel, and see if the problem goes away.
A very-hard-to-track-down “Mac genius” friend just called me out of the blue (what a freaking coinkydink) and I had the opportunity to tell him of this problem too, and he, like you, mentioned the channel-changing troubleshoot. He also mentioned checking to make sure that the new user doesn’t have “internet sharing” turned on in his control panel, so I will try that first, then try the unplugging the wireless and TiVo cards next, and then doing the channel change thing last.
I’m a little foggy on how exactly you “change the channels”. Anywhere I can go to find a simple step-by-step for doing this for the PCs and the Mac?
Thanks for your help!
Unfortunately, the steps differ based on which specific networking components you have. If you’re using an Airport base station, you set it there with the “Airport Setup Assistant” located in Applications/Utilities, and I think it will change your card at the same time. (This assumes OS X).
On the PC, (assuming XP), it’s card-dependent. But start by going to Start -> Settings -> Network Connections, then right-click and choose “Properties” on your wireless network connection.
At the top will be a box that says “Connect Using”, list your adaptors, and have a “Configure” button next to it. Clicking that button will get you to the configuration for the card, but since each manufacturer writes their own, I don’t know what it will look like for you.
If you’re NOT using an Airport base station, but rather some other wireless router, you’ll need to configure it first. Often, that’s done by opening a web page to http://192.168.1.1 or http://192.168.0.1 , but not always (not all routers are web configurable, but most are. For the ones that ARE web configurable, those are the most popular addresses).