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[DSL] Wifi pissing competition.Hypothetically of course.... Let's say you're on the verge of a wifi war. Let's say you've set up your home's wifi to a channel x. And within a week, your next door neighbor, changes his channel and starts broadcasting on channel x as well.
Sooo, in the interest of getting your wireless speed back up, you change your home's wifi to channel y. And again within a week or two at the most, he switches, and starts broadcasting on channel y as well.
Seeing as he is your next door neighbor after all, his signal is virtually as strong as yours in your own house.
Any suggestions as to what would be the Little Boy & Fat Man of wifi solutions?
Now I know... Part of my brain is saying just hop onto 5ghz and be done with it. But I can't help the feeling of having this little creature on my shoulder saying eff that, build your own Marconi tower. |
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How about hacking a microwave oven to transmit your signal. No way that's going to get jammed. Suggest wrapping yourself thoroughly in tin foil first |
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GuspazGuspaz MVM join:2001-11-05 Montreal, QC |
to Alittlegreen
How technically savvy is the neighbour? Simply disabling SSID broadcasts may be enough to evade him. |
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1 recommendation |
to Alittlegreen
Get another two routers and broadcast on all three key channels - 1, 6, and 11. Name them something silly like GUESS and WHICH and WIFI |
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to Alittlegreen
I was thinking, use two AP's each set to a different channel so only one is blocked at a time, but I love notfred's idea, just have to tone it down a little |
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to Alittlegreen
Unless that neighbor is keeping his WLAN busy all the time, you might not even notice the overlap in the first place.
In one of my previous apartments where I was getting booted off my WLAN all the time, I simply configured my spare router as a secondary access point, which is basically what Mac suggested |
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PlatooN join:2007-02-13 Kitchener, ON |
to Alittlegreen
short of the obvious physical things you could do ....
jack up the transmit power on your router and hope yours is better than his?
or you could ... *gasp* talk to him about it? |
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MaynardKrebsWe did it. We heaved Steve. Yipee. Premium Member join:2009-06-17 |
to Alittlegreen
Nikola Tesla worked on plans for a directed-energy weapon from the early 1900s until his death. In 1937, Tesla composed a treatise entitled The Art of Projecting Concentrated Non-dispersive Energy through the Natural Media concerning charged particle beams. Get reading Or you could go down this path » en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St ··· sh_PrimeBoth of these approaches will be far more satisfying than simply 'talking' to your neighbour |
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Packet LossPacket Loss Premium Member join:2005-06-12 Guelph, ON Ubiquiti Dream Machine SE SmartRG SR808ac
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to Alittlegreen
said by Alittlegreen:Hypothetically of course.... Let's say you're on the verge of a wifi war. Let's say you've set up your home's wifi to a channel x. And within a week, your next door neighbor, changes his channel and starts broadcasting on channel x as well.
Sooo, in the interest of getting your wireless speed back up, you change your home's wifi to channel y. And again within a week or two at the most, he switches, and starts broadcasting on channel y as well.
Seeing as he is your next door neighbor after all, his signal is virtually as strong as yours in your own house.
Any suggestions as to what would be the Little Boy & Fat Man of wifi solutions?
Now I know... Part of my brain is saying just hop onto 5ghz and be done with it. But I can't help the feeling of having this little creature on my shoulder saying eff that, build your own Marconi tower. Go all 5Ghz, forget everything. Works like a charm. All my devices are running on 5Ghz frequency. 2.4Ghz is old school. |
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to Alittlegreen
Easiest solution? Go 5ghz. Or hide your ssid so he won't know which channel you're on, OR do what macgyver suggested and set up 3 APs on the key channels and hog them to your self hahaha |
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Rukus3 join:2010-06-09 London, ON |
to Alittlegreen
Is it possible that his router is doing it automatically? DD-WRT has a feature that monitors nearby channels and picks the best one, though it didn't work too well in my case as it chose a very populated channel while another one was completely empty.
Other than asking him what's up (or to lower the power levels), I'd echo the suggestion to get on the 5GHz band. There's less interference from other devices, more non-overlapping channels, and the signal doesn't penetrate as deeply which stops this sort of thing from happening. |
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GuspazGuspaz MVM join:2001-11-05 Montreal, QC |
to Alittlegreen
2.4GHz is nearly worthless. There are only three non-overlapping channels, and in my apartment I see nearly 100 wifi networks on 2.4 GHz...
I've never managed better than 10 mbps per second over 2.4GHz, and that's with 802.11n which can do 50 mbps when there's no interference. |
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to Alittlegreen
My DLINK AP monitors the channels and picks the best one and changes as needed. |
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to Alittlegreen
lol whata dog and pony show that is |
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to Alittlegreen
I 2nd the rational answers of a) going back to wired, or b) talking to your neighbor.
The irrational answers are limited only by your imagination, tolerence for pain / incarceration, and immaturity.
My 00000010bits
Regards |
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anon989
Anon
2014-Jul-28 7:55 pm
It's probably auto change channels for your neighbor. Nobody in their right mind would take the time to match your channel for fun. Every time he changes channels it disrupts his own network.
If you really really want to piss him off then change the channel width to 40mhz and force his router to move far far away from your channel overlaps. Changing the signal strength to maximum will also have a similar effect. |
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mackey Premium Member join:2007-08-20 |
mackey
Premium Member
2014-Jul-28 8:01 pm
said by anon989 :change the channel width to 40mhz And set it to channel 3! /M |
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anon989
Anon
2014-Jul-28 8:02 pm
heh heh |
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I honestly don't beleive he has the technical knowhow to switch his channel. This must either be when his son / son in law pop in, or done in some automated fashion.
Even if I do end up migrating over to 5ghz, some of our clients are 2.4 only like a 3ds for instance. So I'd still need to continue using 2.4 as well.
And i don't know if there's any truth to it, but I've been told that if you stop broadcasting the ssid, would that make our cell phones & laptops constantly try to ping our wifi when we'd be away from home? |
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to Alittlegreen
If you are running an Openwrt or DD-wrt or a stock firmware that allows different country as default, use those channels at the top of the range(12,13,14) that you're not supposed to use at full strength. If it gets matched, you know its malicious. |
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Good idea, but this is just a 505n. And i just checked, the transmition rate is set at 100% |
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nitzguy Premium Member join:2002-07-11 Sudbury, ON |
to Alittlegreen
I find myself in this situation when new neighbours in my apartment building move in...I was on 11 for the longest time, and then all the sudden "Tony" showed up 1 day and I noticed myself disconnecting and my wireless performance going into the Tank. ....funny thing the default Channel 6 has only 1 AP and Channel 11 in my area now has 4 APs on it....the one on Channel 6 is showing up as -90dbm so I'll stick with that, and Channel 1 has 1 at about -80dbm so I'll stick with 6 for now.
I'd go 5ghz, but I noticed to save some costs, the missus laptop only has 2.4ghz, and we bought her laptop last year, or maybe 2 years ago, it has Windows 7..I was almost flabergasted as my now ancient 5 year old laptop running Windows Vista has a 5ghz radio....
Unfortunately my older toshiba laptop only has 2.4ghz but its connected to my TV in my bedroom and I use it to stream movies and tv shows I've downloaded internally and can't connect at 5ghz....
So, I need it around for some things....and its mostly annoying, when I move I'm going to try and resolve this issue permanently.
Anywho, good luck with your challenge. |
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DavesnothereChange is NOT Necessarily Progress Premium Member join:2009-06-15 Canada 1 edit |
to btech805
said by btech805:....hide your SSID so he won't know which channel you're on.... Not completely true. Just the other day, I was repairing a laptop computer here for someone, and as part of the testing, I took it to WiFi, after using wired for most of my work. The site survey part of Win 7 Pro (or of its WiFi interface's hardware app) DID see my WiFi, even though I do not broadcast my SSID, plus 3 other nearby networks which DO broadcast theirs. It let me try to to join my network, and as expected, prompted me for the SSID when I followed thru. I entered it, as that was my plan, but if that computer's site survey could see my WiFi at all, then surely it would be easy enough to determine the channel too. My last foray into the Tomato firmware of my router also showed the channels of all other nearby networks while doing a site survey, so that I could decide what would be a good channel choice for my own WiFi. I'm sure that plenty of other routers can do that too. |
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2 edits |
abcjak
Member
2014-Jul-29 1:46 am
at this point, your best move is to go to a 5Ghz. I went from seeing a whole bunch of people to being 1 of 2 people now. I was the only one on the 5Ghz wifi for quite a few years after i initially made the switch 5-6 years ago.
As mentioned, hiding the SSID won't do much if this person really is matching channels with you because it shows they already know more than the average home user. There are tons of programs and apps for all devices to check out the wifi around you and hidden ssid's just show up as unknowns. All the other info about them is still displayed such as brand of router hardware, security used, signal strength, etc. Not many people are using dual band at the moment but something tells me that if there's a guy changing channels to mess around, he's also techie enough to have dual band hardware. |
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kevinds Premium Member join:2003-05-01 Calgary, AB |
kevinds
Premium Member
2014-Jul-29 4:24 am
said by abcjak:hidden ssid's just show up as unknowns Sniff the traffic, only takes a couple packets (even encrypted ones) to see the SSID name |
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to Alittlegreen
I am amused by the suggestions of people SSID names I live in a densely populated area and find that most routers are set to channel 1, or 6 out of the box. Sometimes people set it to channel 11 or worse AUTO! I just bit the bullet and bought the Netgear Nighthawk R7000 router and use 5 Ghz as much as possible. I no longer have speed issues and can't be bothered with the 2.4 Ghz traffic. In my experience, hiding the SSID poses issues with my devices as some only connect when they see the SSID broadcast. |
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Txbronx cheers from cheap seats Premium Member join:2008-11-19 Mississauga, ON |
Tx to kevinds
Premium Member
2014-Jul-29 10:42 am
to kevinds
said by kevinds:said by abcjak:hidden ssid's just show up as unknowns Sniff the traffic, only takes a couple packets (even encrypted ones) to see the SSID name I demonstrated this with my neighbour. He laughed that no one can find him and bragged his son is incredibly tech-savvy. Grabbed my diagnostic laptop which runs BackTrack and had his wifi name and password in about 15 minutes. There really isn't any way to hide your wifi if I want to find it short of shutting it off. Though the average consumer wouldn't be running software to do this stuff, a simple app on the phone can be used to sniff even hidden SSID's i believe. I run 3 routers in the house, one high end Netgear router that has 5ghz. The others for 2.4 ghz since so much still uses that old technology. I'd highly recommend anyone to switch to 5ghz, it's worth every penny. |
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MaynardKrebsWe did it. We heaved Steve. Yipee. Premium Member join:2009-06-17 |
to Alittlegreen
You could always rig up a "cantenna' or add a 12+dBi antenna to your router. |
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nitzguy Premium Member join:2002-07-11 Sudbury, ON |
nitzguy to Tx
Premium Member
2014-Jul-29 11:00 am
to Tx
said by Tx:said by kevinds:said by abcjak:hidden ssid's just show up as unknowns Sniff the traffic, only takes a couple packets (even encrypted ones) to see the SSID name I demonstrated this with my neighbour. He laughed that no one can find him and bragged his son is incredibly tech-savvy. Grabbed my diagnostic laptop which runs BackTrack and had his wifi name and password in about 15 minutes. There really isn't any way to hide your wifi if I want to find it short of shutting it off. Though the average consumer wouldn't be running software to do this stuff, a simple app on the phone can be used to sniff even hidden SSID's i believe. I run 3 routers in the house, one high end Netgear router that has 5ghz. The others for 2.4 ghz since so much still uses that old technology. I'd highly recommend anyone to switch to 5ghz, it's worth every penny. Conversely, reduce power might solve your problem. If you can't connect to the AP....then there's no way to connect . That might pose problems for devices away from your AP, but...as always YMMV. I'm going to think of rejigging my setup pending my move to a new address. |
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TwiztedZeroNine Zero Burp Nine Six Premium Member join:2011-03-31 Toronto, ON |
to Tx
Indeedy, then theres the Pwn Pad
loaded up with pwnie express or other packages. Lotsa fun to walk around your neighborhood with and less bulky than carrying a laptop. |
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