Some things in this life are simply unavoidable. Like going on a trip to Las Vegas and getting married lost fart, having a bald man in a family of werewolves, or being called to be part of a popular jury. Although the worst of all is possibly having a neighbor with a Wi-Fi signal so strong that it renders your home's own wireless network useless.
The truth is that managing WiFi connections can be frustrating on many occasions. Especially when you are convinced that the neighbor's signal reaches you better than your own.
My neighbor's WiFi is too powerful: can I block it somehow?
Of course! All we have to do is talk to the neighbor, see which are the walls that the 2 houses share, and fill those walls to the top with cement. Or better yet, identify those walls and hang a bunch of mirrors on them (note: mirrors are a great source of electromagnetic interference).
Jokes aside, there are many building materials that can hinder the free flow of WiFi signals. Something that would be interesting to consider if in the future we decide to remodel our apartment or change house. We could also choose to paint the walls with anti-wifi paint (yes, it exists!), Although the truth is, this last method seems more a scam than anything else. We could even turn our floor into a gigantic Faraday box! But there we may already be exceeding the limits of sanity ...
If we are looking for a realistic solution to block the neighbor's WiFi, as it is affecting the speed and availability of our wireless signal, we can try the following.
Install a free app that scans the WiFi signals around you
If we think that the neighbor's WiFi signal is causing us problems, the first thing we have to do is check it. To do this, we can install an app like WiFi Analyzer, with which we can measure the power of all WiFi networks that come to our house.
This app lets you know which are the most saturated channels and the power of each of the signals.In many cases, it is likely that, when checking the strength of the neighbor's Wi-Fi, we will realize that their signal is weaker than ours. It would be somewhat understandable considering that we are at the limits of its range.
Unless, yes, our neighbor has installed an Access Point or a WiFi repeater in a shared wall. In which case, we will have reason to be notably pissed off.
Talk to your neighbor
If we have no choice, we can knock on our dear neighbor's door and try to talk to him.
- If you have such a strong signal that it reaches our floor, it means that your home has more than enough Wi-Fi coverage. May we ask you please to check your router configuration, and to regulate the emission power (It is an adjustment that we can find in the configuration panel of some routers under the heading "Transmit Power”).
The "transmit power" option usually appears within the wireless settings.- We may also kindly request that move the router to a more central room. Depending on your wiring configuration this may be a more or less feasible possibility. If we also tell you that doing this will make your Wi-Fi signal reach all the corners of your house with the same power, you may take it willingly.
- If the neighbor rejects these 2 solutions, we can always ask him for a favor that will not cost much: change the broadcast channel. In this way, we can configure our Wi-Fi through another channel so that your router does not interfere with ours. It would be the ideal solution, and it would help both your signal and ours to coexist in peace and harmony.
The channel is usually on "automatic". From the wireless settings of the router we can change it and leave a fixed channel.The best defense is a good offense
If none of this solves our problems, we can always choose to turn the tables and fight back. Buy a few WiFi repeaters (I use the TP-Link N300 and it works great) and amplify the power of your WiFi in such a way that it is your neighbors who have to deal with you.
Another way out may be to configure as many devices as possible using 5G (if we have a router that broadcasts on both 2.4G / 5G bands) and pray that the neighbor is not using the same broadcast channel. If the right conditions are met we can obtain very good speeds and connectivity.
In short, it is best to talk to your neighbor and negotiate WiFi relay channels. If we also accompany it with a WiFi amplifier or repeater (we can find them for just over 20 euros), without a doubt we will have the problem more than solved.
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