On 10/07/13 09:25, steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk wrote:
I then try to work out which channel is clearest for me. I've got lots of home hubs round me all on channel 1, and a few on channel 6, so I've gone up near the top.
Yeah, it doesn't matter here, as in addition to mine, there seem to be at least a TP-Link, a ZyXEL and an unknown that remain fixed on channels 1, 6 and 9(!), and then at least 4 home hubs that jump around the channels failing to find interference-free homes. The degradation to unusuable seems to have been triggered by installation of a fourth home hub - as they only ever seem to use 1/6/11,
Anyway, I suspect there is no clear channel.
I've also used the gui-tool wifi-radar to do the same sort of thing.
Thanks for the tip - wifi-radar seems to show more in the screen space than the wicd or network-manager GUIs, which makes it easier to see what's going on. It seems almost all of the channel-hoppers are on 11 at the moment, which is where mine was.
The alternatives? You can try powerline. Never tried it myself as I'm put off by the cost. [...]
Powerline devices look like they have a similar price range to 5GHz wifi, but it's probably just my lack of knowledge about both making it look like that.
The problem with both the above is: do you want to have your laptops plugged in to the network whilst you're using them? Perhaps that's not an issue, pehaps it is. But what about other devices like android phones - you can't plug them in to the network - so you're going to have some sort of Wifi, so why not try the wifi route first?
Well, it's annoying to have a wire, but less annoying than dropped connections. If all else sucks, the phones can use the mobile network.
Checking the "iwlist wlan0 freq" output and the "pre-launch white paper" for one of the laptops and one of the phones, it looks like they do 802.11n but not 5GHz. So it's either kitting out the laptops with dongles, or I'll go for the powerline or cabling ideas after all.
Thanks everyone,