"Walter E." wrote in message

stuff snipped

What can possibly account for the fluctuations in signal strength, though
I
am not making any changes to the system??

First, get yourself a free app called WiFi Analyzer. You can't really
figure this stuff out without it. It shows a graph of all the WiFi signals
in your house, their strength and the channels they are using. Invaluable.

The 2.4GHz spectrum is vastly oversubscribed with nanny cams, cordless
phones and dozens of other items that transmit on that band. If your
neighbor's router (or yours) resets, it often goes into a mode where it
hunts for the best channel.

My analyzer showed me that when I started up my system, I was using the same
channels as my neighbor. After I got WiFi, so did my neighbor and
transmissions were clearly affected. After about a week, all three routers
ended up camped out in different ranges and transmission improved. It also
improved when I disabled the wireless videocam I had in the attic that was
monitoring the rotation of the attic TV antenna (cheap rotator!). I believe
in some areas power companies use WiFi to transmit usage data. My
connection always slows down in the morning. Alleged 150Mbs service drops
to 2 and while directly connected computers slow down, it never approaches
the problem I have with WiFi. How close to your neighbors are you? What do
you see? How many other SSIDs show up on the "connect to other routers"
list?

Orientation and position are important, too. I looked at my house
(plaster/lathe walls) with the analyzer and an eye to where I would be using
WiFi. Don't locate your router near a window (unless you're going to use a
tablet outside) because most of its RF power will be radiated into space and
lost. Place it as centrally within the house as you can. Keep in mind that
location should provide as close to "line of sight" access to all your
receiving devices as possible.

The one thing missing from the analyzer is the ability to see what other
kinds of 2.4GHz devices are operating in the area. Jeez, just turned on
the analyzer to see if it had the noise option but I missed it and now I see
that there's another user in the neighborhood!!!!

With the analyzer I can go for a stroll and figure out who this
"Kroppenheim" character is and where so I can account for the interference
in case I have to move my router (still have some dead spots - used the
TP-Link AC repeater and all it seemed to do was double my problems - it's
disconnected for now).

--
Bobby G.