Staying in a basement apartment for a few weeks and having the weirdest WiFi issue.
The owner lives upstairs and has a separate WiFi network for guests. There’s an access point in the shared hallway, maybe 4 meters from my door.
Everything worked perfectly for almost two weeks.
Then one morning the guest WiFi just vanished.
Not disconnected with a bad signal. Completely gone from the list on my phone and tablet.
The host rebooted the equipment and said all the lights looked normal. Didn’t change anything.
A few days later my Windows laptop started occasionally seeing the network again, but with one bar of signal. It won’t connect.
Meanwhile the host showed me his phone connected to WiFi with full bars.
How does that even make sense?
I’ve tried forgetting the network, restarting my devices, resetting the laptop’s network settings. Nothing.
Could somebody have changed a router setting without realizing it? Or can an access point just randomly stop broadcasting properly?
Was the host’s phone connected to the actual guest SSID or just his own upstairs network? Because those are two very different things.
@Tokyo_sun.city Honestly, I didn’t check the name. He just showed me the WiFi icon and said it was working. There are two different network names, one for his apartment and one for guests.
Yeah, I’d verify that before anything else. His WiFi working doesn’t tell you much about yours.
If you’ve got a Windows laptop, try NetSpot. Open Inspector and check whether the guest SSID is actually being detected, what channel it’s on, and how strong the signal is. Do it right next to the hallway AP and then inside your apartment. If it’s barely detectable even a few feet away, that’s a much bigger red flag than having weak reception in a basement.
Are you positive that hallway box is an access point and not a repeater? If it’s wirelessly connected to the upstairs router, maybe it lost its uplink.
Random thought: could the guest network have been disabled by an automatic firmware update? Had that happen with a rental property setup. Main WiFi stayed online, guest SSID got disabled after the router updated. Owner kept telling us the internet was fine because his TV still worked.
@Altruistic_Stock_508 That sounds painfully familiar. The host did mention something about an update recently, but I have no idea whether it was before or after this started.
Worth checking. Just don’t factory reset somebody else’s networking gear without knowing how it’s configured.