Just moved into a pretty big apartment complex and the WiFi here is driving me insane.
It’ll work fine for a few minutes, then videos start buffering, calls get choppy and sometimes pages just sit there loading forever. Speed can go from 200+ Mbps to barely 20 without me even moving.
I expected apartment WiFi to be a little messy but not this bad lol.
Anyone dealt with this before? Is there anything I can actually do or is this just the price of having 50 routers around me?
First question — is this your own router/internet connection or WiFi provided by the complex? If it’s your own router, apartment buildings are usually a channel congestion nightmare. Everybody’s router is screaming over everybody else’s. I’d start by getting as much stuff as possible onto 5 GHz.
@CodeWizard My own router. It’s a TP-Link I brought from the old place and it worked great there. And yeah, when I open the WiFi list on my phone I can see a ridiculous number of networks here.
That’s probably your clue. Run WiFi scanner like NetSpot and actually look at what channels all those networks are using. Don’t just pick a random channel because somebody online says it’s “best.” If your router is sitting right in the middle of a pile of strong neighboring networks, move it to something cleaner. Check both 2.4 and 5 GHz. Apartments can change a lot from one room to another too, so I’d check where you actually use the WiFi, not just next to the router.
Checked with NetSpot and holy crap, 2.4 GHz is basically a wall of networks. Changed the 5 GHz channel and moved the TV/laptop off 2.4. It’s not magically perfect, but it’s way better. Watched a whole movie without the quality dropping once, which literally hadn’t happened since I moved in.