Monday, September 05, 2011

Well, I think my wireless is working again?!

Today, mysteriously my Linksys router stopped serving sweet, sweet wireless signal so that my phone can download my email at blazing faster-than-3G speeds in my apartment. The usual fix for this is:
  1. Move the chair
  2. Crawl under the desk
  3. Unplug router and modem for 30 seconds ("power cycling")
  4. Laugh to self as "power cycling" sounds more like an Olympic sport than an electronic resetting method
  5. Crawl out from under desk
  6. Bang head on desk
  7. Curse loudly* (*if no children or small animals present)
  8. Go back to whatever I was doing when the wireless internet stopped working
As the XKCD guy would say, "My usual approach doesn't work here" - or at least it didn't today.

I fiddled with the settings, deductively inducing that it must be the Wireless Channel - there were lots of new wireless stations in my list today so I figure a new neighbour must have moved in next door and our wireless signals are fighting for superiority. Always the peacemaker/Canadian, I gracefully put down my sword/access to wireless channel #6 and switched to another non-default option. This worked. For like 5 minutes.

I came back on later and it was playing it's old tricks again, super slow and also I sometimes couldn't even see my wireless station in the list on my iPhone. So more fiddling, upgraded the router firmware (only from 2007?!), upgraded 8 versions up and got a fancy new login page.

Things seem back to normal now, maybe. I reset the router and powercycled (reminds me so much of the movie "Tron 2") again and looks like everything works again. My new theory is the dude next door must have bought a 2.4 Ghz wireless telephone and it's jamming my signal/harshing my vibe. We'll see if this holds up. If not, it might be about time I bought an 802.11N router or even go CRAZY and get a Gigabit one. To be continued... or, hopefully not, and this will just work without me needing to chuck this router out. :)

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