Hello everyone,

A client called me today and told me that her wireless was not connecting to neither her laptop nor her TV upstairs. When I went to the house I noticed a house full of twists and turns as well as a full set of stairs leading to the upstairs. I located the router in the downstairs living room (TP-Link 300M Wireless N Dual Band) which was hooked up to an Arris Surfboard Cable Modem (ISP being Comcast). Here is what I did to fix the problem:

1) Using an ethernet cable from router to my laptop, I accessed the router software by entering 192.168.0.1 through my Chrome browser.

2) Once into the router, I opened up the Advanced Wireless section (I had already confirmed that the SSD and password were working properly).

3) The wireless Mode was set to b/g/n. I changed it to N mode only. All of the gadgets in the house were wireless N capable. Why set the Mode to b/g/n?

4) I disabled the 5GHz band (5GHz is fast but has limited range and penetration capabilities. 2.4GHz is slower but has better range and penetration).

5) I changed the Channel Width from “auto” to 20MHz (the “narrow” 20MHz bandwidth works better with 2.4GHz networks).

6) I changed the wireless channel from “auto” to channel 11 (channel 11 works well with 20MHz channel width).

7) I saved all of the new settings and rebooted the router.

8) I went upstairs and the TV (Netflix) connected well and the laptop was showing three bars where before there had been no wireless connection. Internet was working well.

9) The nice lady was very happy. Paid me and asked for some of my business cards.

Best wishes,
Randy The Tech Professor