Wi-Fi Troubleshooting, Tips and Tweaks

Wireless Routers / Access Point Interference within the Home
When installing an 802.11b or 802.11g access point or router, beware of signal interference from other home appliances. In particular, do not install the unit within 3-10 feet (about 1-3 m) from a microwave oven. Other common sources of wireless interference are 2.4 GHz cordless phones, baby monitors, garage door openers, and some home automation devices.
If you live in a home with brick or plaster walls, or one with metal framing, you're may encounter difficulty maintaining a strong WLAN signal. Wi-Fi is designed to support signal range up to 300 feet (about 100 m), but barriers reduce this range substantially. All 802.11 communications (802.11a most of all) are affected by obstructions; keep this in mind when installing your access point.

Range of Wi-Fi LANs
Wireless Routers / Access Point Interference from Outside
In densely populated areas, it's not uncommon for wireless signals from one person's home network to penetrate a neighboring home and interfere with their WLAN. This happens when both households set conflicting communication channels. Fortunately, when configuring an 802.11b or 802.11g access point or router, you can (except in a few locales) change the channel number employed. If you encounter interference from neighbors, you should coordinate channel settings with them. Simply using different channel numbers won't always solve the problem. However, if both parties use a different one of the channel numbers that will assist elimination of cross-WLAN interference. Please note that usable channel numbers are regulated by law according to the country where equipment is been used, be sure to make sure you use channels allowable in your area.

General Tips
If you've finished installing the components, but your home network isn't functioning correctly, troubleshoot methodically:

Can't reach the Internet? Temporarily turn off your firewall to determine whether you have a firewall configuration problem, or some other issue.

Turn on and test your wireless adapters one by one, to determine if problems are isolated to a single computer or common to all.

To help you work methodically, as you build your network, write down on paper the key settings like network name, WEP passkey, MAC addresses, and channel numbers (then eat the evidence afterward!).

Don't worry about making mistakes; you can go back and alter any of your WLAN settings any time.

Finally, don't be surprised if your wireless LAN performance doesn't match the numbers quoted by the manufacturer. For example, although 802.11b equipment technically supports 11 Mbps bandwidth, that is a theoretical maximum rarely achieved in practice. A significant amount of Wi-Fi network bandwidth is consumed by overhead that you cannot control..