Wireless Woes
by beck ~ April 18th, 2008. Filed under: internet, laptop.For the past couple of weeks I have been battling serious wireless issues with my O2 router. I am a new customer of O2 broadband so the router is only about 2 months old. Since joining, the router has worked fine but for a few weeks it has been dropping the connection.
Last week it just packed up completely. Vista could see the SSID but failed to connect at all. It wasn’t just Vista, my phone could not connect and nor could my PS3. After several reboots, resets and several hours trying to resolve the issue I ended up phoning O2 support who were very helpful. They tried all sorts of resets but absolutely no connection would work - btw connecting with an ethernet cable worked just fine, it was just faulty wireless. After about half an hour of talking to the chap on the phone, the wifi suddenly sprang into life and it has worked all week without issue.
Yesterday the same happened after again after a few hours of trying to resolve it, I phoned O2 support who concluded the router was faulty and ordered me a new one. I put the phone down to them and decided to go to town and get a new ethernet cable, one that would actually fit across the room. Came back from a few hours shopping and low and behold the wifi was working normally. Perplexed, I just left it and it worked fine all day.
Today the new router arrived and its a Mark II O2 router, smaller and nicer to look at. Seeing as my connection was fine I ummed and arred for a bit but decided to try the new router. Plugged it all in, and surprise surprise, no wireless at all. I plugged in the old router, it worked first time but kept dropping the connection. WTF was going on?
Back onto O2 support who were equally perplexed as I was. We ran through possible causes of interference - phone line, electrical cables, cordless phone and so on. All were possible, but unlikely because they had always been there yet the wireless died recently.
Finally we changed wireless channels from 11 to 6 and bingo! new router works fine and has done all night. Now of course the question is, why would a router suddenly stop working on its channel when it has worked fine for 2 months or so and I have no new devices in that time which could conflict?
April 19th, 2008 at 10:34 am
Could be that someone has setup a new wireless network in your area?
April 19th, 2008 at 10:56 am
HI Andy, I did consider that. There are several wifi signals my router picks up which have been there since I got it, but occasionally one or two new ones seem to pop up and then go away. Maybe 11 was blocked up. lol
April 19th, 2008 at 11:42 am
11 is the default channel on most routers, and the most likely cause of intermittent interference.
April 19th, 2008 at 11:46 am
Hi Neil,
As much as I applaud the way O2 support have dealt with my problems including getting a new router out to me within 24 hours, if they had suggested a change in wifi channel in the first instance they could have saved themselves a lot of time - and expense of a new router.
Maybe it is because the wifi worked for 2 months up until that point they didn’t consider it to be a channel issue. As more people got wifi in the neighbourhood, it just chugged up. Perhaps being in a first floor flat made it worse - having height above others might bring in more signals??
April 19th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
I used to be the only one in my area with any sort of wireless, but then I started getting dropouts, and it seems not one, but FOUR new wireless networks had sprung up, seemingly overnight. A change of channel (from 11 to 1) and all was well again.
April 19th, 2008 at 9:49 pm
One day on and everything is fine still. Reminds me, I must send the old router back to O2. They sent me a special envelope by recorded delivery. Why I just couldn’t send the old one back in the box the other one was sent in I do not know.
May 5th, 2008 at 8:27 am
Hi Becky,
Long time since we had a chat,but my friend had a similar problem with Tiscali and with her,it was every messenger service she used,Msn,Yahoo,Skype and GTalk,that kept dropping out,like every 10 minutes or so and she had to change her channel settings from 11 to 1.
We could be having a voice chat and i could tell when she was going to drop out,especially on Skype .Hope everything is ok with you and you are fit and well. Dave
May 6th, 2008 at 7:05 am
Hello Dave, Sorry I have not replied earlier, I have been sucked into GTA4 for a week and it ruined my life. lol
It seems that channel 11 is quite a common problem, maybe most manufacturers set the channel to 11 by default so if everyone is using it there will be issues. I know there can be issues using 11 with the wii, or was it 6? I cannot recall.