Wi-Fi interference from smartphones

Community
1

So here’s an odd thing…

I have a desktop pc hardwired to a Netgear router (WPN824 802.11g 2.4GHz) and I use an ibook G4 with wi-fi for work testing purposes (ie I browse the web sat in my living room with it!!).

The ibook has always had an excellent connection record - very few dropped connections, really reliable.

So, getting to the point, last week in a fit of madness I bought my husband an iPhone for his birthday and replaced my elderly mobile phone with a Blackberry 9700.

All cool… except that the wi-fi connection is now dropping off regularly. I can get it back on the ibook by turning airport off and back on - but it’s obviously not right.

Has anyone else run into a wi-fi interference problem - specifically from smartphones? If so, what’s the answer?

Thanks!

2

Smartphones shouldn’t interfere with that frequency range, I would try turning off the wifi radios in each and seeing what happens. How close are your neighbors?

3

very close - but they’ve had their connection for a while with no problem. The problem started the same day I set up the 2 smartphones which is why I suspect them.

I’ve changed the channel on the router just in case.

4

They theoretically can cause ‘RF interference’ depending upon frequencies used. Potential sources of interference include; cordless phones, microwave ovens, and Bluetooth-enabled devices. The presence of these types of devices can degrade the performance of an IEEE 802.11b (Wi-Fi) Wireless LAN.

You might want to consider using a different band, e.g. 5-GHz transmission band if you have a lot of issues. It’s well-known Bluetooth can cause interference due to the lax specification.

5

Try leaving one phone switched completely off for 24hrs then the other one and keep an eye on the drop outs of your wi-fi connection. That will identify if it’s just one phone (and if so which one) or both.

Do you need either the bluetooth or wi-fi on either phone? If not you could disabled the wi-fi and bluetooth on both phones.

6

Thanks everyone - I suppose it was naïve of me to assume that the new wi-fi devices would just hook onto the same network and sit happily alongside the existing ones!

I’ve changed the channel from the default one netgear sets and I’ll try a series of experiments to see if that or the bluetooth or switching off wifi in the various devices does the trick.