A few days ago, I switched my router’s 5 GHz network to a fixed channel because my Wi-Fi extender was constantly losing signal.
Now my computer is acting strangely. Websites are intermittent, and pages are taking longer than usual to load, but my speed test results remain normal.
Now I’m trying to figure out if these two issues are related or if I’m looking for the wrong cause. Could a blocked channel be causing this strange behavior?
Yeah, absolutely. A speed test can look fine and the connection can still feel bad in normal use. Browsing, logins, loading pages, all that stuff is a lot more sensitive to latency, retries, and little hiccups than one big download test.
Could be a match, but don’t blame the timing yet. The new channel fixed the extender but might be choking your main devices — or it’s a total coincidence. First step: roll back the router to how it was and check if it still bugs out.
I’d scan the channels before tweaking anything else. NetSpot can show if that channel is actually congested or if it’s just a coincidence. That’ll help you figure out if the channel is the real issue.
Also, extenders are really good at creating exactly this kind of mess. You fix one symptom, then something else starts acting weird, and now you’re three settings deep wondering which change actually mattered.
@PacketDropper37 Thanks, I’ll fix the channel situation first before changing anything else.