11.21.07
WiFi in apartment buildings
Starting recently, I have been noticing some problems:
- My cordless phones have trouble making a connection, and when I try to talk on them, there’s lots of interference.
- My clocks and watches which set themselves each night from the NIST radio signal won’t set themselves anymore. (This has not happened before: the resetting has always been reliable.)
What I think is happening is that someone in one of the apartments has gotten a WiFi router that emits a really strong signal, strong enough to interfere with other apartments. Obviously, given the size of these apartments, a strong signal is overkill.
It could be a new tenant, setting up the router that was necessary in their previous place, or it could be someone who simply got a new router.
It’s certainly inconvenient. I probably could do without the clock’s resetting themselves, though I do like the accuracy, but not being able to reliably use the phone is a problem.
This is certainly a modern-day problem, but it’s not unlike other problems in which one apartment’s set-up interferes with other apartments—I think of smoky grills, loud wind-chimes, a bird-feeder, and so on.
But does it seem likely, you who understand WiFi tech, that this could be the cause? And would a lower-power router be the likely fix?
