There are many possible causes for having interference problems with your wireless network:

• The physical landscape where your network is placed: the apartment, office building or house where the wireless network is found. Walls and doors interfere with the signal of your network, lower its strength and the transfer speed.

• Electronic equipment you are using: microwave ovens, cordless phones, wireless headsets, Bluetooth devices, surveillance cameras operate at the 2.4 gigahertz (GHz) frequency used by most wireless networks.

• The physical distance from the router or the device emitting the wireless signal. The further away, the weaker the signal weaker. This always translates into a higher likelihood of being impacted by different kinds of interference.

• Last but not least, other wireless networks can interfere with yours.

When your wireless network has interference problems you can encounter one or more symptoms: reduced range for your WiFi network (generally much lower than what the manufacturer of your router mentions in the hardware specifications), sudden drops in transfer speeds, the wireless signal dropping out in certain places or at certain times during the day, your wireless signal strength going up and down randomly.

What Makes Wireless Networks Interfere With Each Other?

If two or more wireless network are placed close to one another, then they can interfere with each other if:

They use the same operating frequency (2.4 GHz or 5 GHz). The 802.11g and 802.11b standards use the 2.4 GHz operating frequency, 802.11n can operate both at 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz while 802.11a can operate only at 5 GHz.

They use the same channel or neighboring channels which overlap. A wireless router can send the wireless signal using a set channel, from 1 to 11 or 13 (depending on the router model and where it is sold). To make sure there is a smaller likelihood of overlapping with other channels, you should choose channel 1, 6 or 11 (or 13 if available for your router). By default, most routers are set to use channel 6, thus the reason for conflicts.

Identify Interference Problems from Other Wireless Networks With inSSIDer

Identifying the exact root cause for your interference problems can be quite a pain, depending on your location. If you are in a busy area with lots of wireless networks around, then your problems are most likely caused by the other networks.

So... how do you fix them? You can use a tool named inSSIDer (working download link: here). We covered the basics of using it in a previous tutorial: Find Hidden Wireless Networks & View Useful Information (Including the SSID). I recommend that you read it first, before going ahead with the instructions in this article.

Let’s assume you are trying to fix interference problems in your own home. If you are using android, download wifi analyzer software into your phone.