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About a month ago (after six months of trouble free operation) devices in my house started dropping wifi connection to my BT Hub 6 router. This would also disable wired devices (PC, TV). The light on the router would remain blue but nothing could connect to it - wired or wifi. A hard reset would solve the problem for random amounts of time - 10 mins to half an hour before it recurred.

Once the wireless devices were disconnected all attempts to reconnect (signal still there and strong) would result in various error messages: "Password incorrect", "Authentication problem", "Cannot connect" etc.

The wireless devices are an ipad, four android phones and an android tablet, three of which can use 5GHz the rest only 2.4GHz.

Spoke to BT who said there appeared to be a fault with my Home Hub 6 and sent me a new one. The problem started again almost immediately.

Bought a Netgear D7000v2 router, set it up but the problem continued along with the router regularly freezing (unable to access via wired PC). Turning it off and on again solved the problem this time rather than hard resets. All leds remained white (good) - no faults were indicated.

I then tried a brand new TP-Link AC2800 (Archer VR2800). This router no longer freezes but all wireless devices on 2.4GHz keep dropping however 5GHz and wired devices continue to work fine. All leds remain lit - no faults indicated on the router's admin webpage either.

All the different routers firmware was updated to the latest versions - no change.

I have changed the 2.4GHz channels from "Auto" and set the channels manually, trying all of them.

I have changed the positions of the routers (although still in the same room) and all the routers have different SSIDs and passwords.

I have used a wifi analyser to look at surrounding wifi networks - none of which appear nearly as strong as ours.

The connection to the internet (VDSL) remains up at all times.

After turning off everything else in the house that uses bluetooth to no effect, my guess is (by a process of elimination) that it would seem to be interference on the 2.4GHz band but I'm not sure how to find out what that is.

This weekend I intend to ask my nearby neighbours if they are experiencing any similar issues but before I start knocking on doors any advice would be much appreciated.

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    Unfortunately 2.4Ghz is a saturated band. Do some research on analyzing radio signal interference. “None of which appear nearly as strong as ours,” really means nothing. The fact you can see it at all, indicates a potential for interference. Unfortunately most routers come with auto channel selection turned on now and they float around on channels that are absolutely not supposed to be used. Therefore there is no longer a safe place to play if you are in any moderately populated area. Sep 21, 2018 at 23:12
  • Many thanks Appleoddity - I was afraid of that. I shall keep on investigating. Sep 23, 2018 at 8:11
  • you can also try to set bandwidth of 2.4 ghz wifi to 20mhz instead of 20/40mhz which is often the default setting. 20mhz is more stable
    – DarkBeccio
    Mar 27, 2020 at 8:09
  • Is someone running a de-auther?
    – Gantendo
    Jun 22, 2022 at 21:24
  • Did you ever solve this? I have the same, it's driving me nuts
    – theawesome
    Jun 30, 2022 at 7:55

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