Jumping routers

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- Mike from Moriches
  
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posted
12 years ago

Sat, Dec 31, 2011 8:43 PM

Greetings I have a Cisco router and my neighbor has a Netgear router. My laptop connects wirelessly to my router, but when my neighbor turns on his router, my laptop connects to his router, right in the middle of a download. My laptop stops working until I click on the bars icon in the system tray (Windows 7). It shows I'm connected to the neighbor's router with "Limited Service." I click on my router's SSID and then click on "Connect," and I'm back in business. Is there a setting that locks the wireless adapter to a particular signal (my router), and will keep it from jumping to the neighbor's router across the street? Thanks, Mike from Moriches

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- Pen
  
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posted
12 years ago

Sat, Dec 31, 2011 9:07 PM

it sounds like you have "Connect Automatically" checked for your neighbors signal. Open the network and sharing item then the connect to a network and check the properties of his signal by right clicking it.

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- Jeff Liebermann
  
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posted
12 years ago

Sun, Jan 1, 2012 2:48 AM

Agreed. Setting your neighbors SSID to "Connect Manually" will work. However, the original problem seems to be that both routers have no encryption set. They may also be operating on the same RF channel. I suggest that you also try:

What channels the router is set to use. My guess is that it's set to "auto" which is a bad idea. Pick a channel from 1, 6, or 11. Make sure that it's different from the neighbors channel.
Setup and use WPA/WPA2 encryption.
Make sure you don't have the SSID of either or both routers set to something dumb like Linksys, Default, Any, or Belkin.
Check if your unspecified model laptop is using a vendor supplied wireless connection manager instead of the cryptic piece of junk supplied with Windoze 7. If you're running Intel Proset, Lenovo Mobile Broadband Connection Manager, Broadcom Control Point, or whatever Dell, HP, Acer, Asus and Toshiba are supplying this week, consider yourself fortunate. Check if they have a similar setting to avoid connecting automatically to anything that's in range.