Just moved into a fairly big apartment complex and my WiFi has been way worse than it was at my old place.
The connection itself is fast when it behaves, but I keep getting random lag spikes, videos dropping quality and occasional disconnects on my laptop. It seems noticeably worse in the evenings too.
Same router, same laptop, same internet plan. The only thing that changed is the apartment.
I knew having a ton of neighbors could make WiFi worse, but can it really make that much of a difference? Anything I can do besides running Ethernet everywhere?
Oh yeah. Apartments can be RF hell. Open the WiFi list and count how many networks you can see.
@Skeptical.pragmatist Just counted 26 networks from my couch lol. Most of my stuff is already on 5 GHz though, which is why I wasn’t sure interference was still a likely culprit.
I’d use a WiFi scanner for this kind of thing instead of going by the network list. Apparently NetSpot is pretty good and it’ll even show hidden networks, so you can get a better idea of what’s actually around you and which channels are busy. 26 visible networks is already a pretty good sign your airspace is crowded af.
5 GHz can absolutely still be congested, especially if everyone is running 80 MHz wide channels. Check what channels the surrounding APs are using and how strong they actually are from your apartment. NetSpot would be useful here for this kind of scan, since it can also show hidden networks and give a clearer picture of channel overlap. I’d do it in the evening when the connection sucks, not just during the day. If several strong networks are overlapping yours, try moving to a cleaner channel. Sometimes dropping the channel width helps too if the spectrum is packed.
Everyone wants maximum channel width because “bigger number faster,” then 15 routers all try to occupy the same air. If 40 MHz gives you enough throughput and stays stable, I’d take that over an 80 MHz speedtest hero setup that falls apart every evening.