Hi everyone. I manage a small network in a non-profit office on the ground floor of a commercial building. Nothing huge: router, a couple of switches, one file server, and two UniFi APs covering the office.
The annoying part is that people keep getting dropped from WiFi in the afternoons, usually somewhere between 2 and 4 pm. It’s not constant. Someone will be on a video call or working from a shared folder, then the laptop disconnects from WiFi or hangs for 20–30 seconds and reconnects.
Wired devices are fine the whole time. Server is fine. Internet is fine. It really seems like the clients are getting kicked off the wireless.
I added a second AP near the area where people complained most, but it didn’t really fix it.
How would you track this down? I’m wondering if there’s some kind of interference, but I don’t really know how to prove it.
Listen, to really figure this out, I’d do some proper radio reconnaissance instead of just scanning your neighbors’ SSIDs. Get a Wi-Fi analyzer (I usually use NetSpot) and look at the channel graph — you’ll immediately see what’s going on out there. Then run a quick scan of the room and look at the SNR/SIR (signal-to-noise ratio and signal-to-interference ratio) heat maps. That way, you’ll immediately pinpoint the interference zones and figure out whether it’s really radio noise jamming the network or something else.
Microwave? Not joking. Office buildings are full of “Bob heats up his sad leftovers at 2:15 every day” mysteries. Microwaves can wreck 2.4 GHz. So can random wireless cameras, Bluetooth-heavy stuff, cheap video senders, warehouse scanners, etc. If the problem is time-based and your neighbor sees it too, I’d be looking for something environmental, not your file server or router.
This is spectrum analyzer territory if you really want to prove it. WiFi tools show WiFi networks. A spectrum analyzer shows RF energy. Big difference.
Also double-check your UniFi settings. Turn off all those “auto-optimize” features if they’re enabled. Set channels manually. For 2.4 GHz, keep the channel width strictly at 20 MHz. Don’t let both access points broadcast at full power. Otherwise, they’ll simply start fighting for the same clients from opposite corners.