My WiFi Just Kacked!

Yep, you know what I refer to, suddenly, for no good reason, the range on your WiFi drops faster than RIM stock!
What happened?
What do I do?
I had just this happen to me this week. Here is my brief and successful story, a jolly good yarn!

My setup, I use an Apple Airport Extreme base station, I have it plugged into a hard drive for backup and file sharing. It connects to an assortment of computers in our wood framed house.

Let me see:
3 Mac notebooks
1 Windows Notebook (sometimes 2)
1 iMac
1 Windows PC
1 iPad
2 iPhones
1 Android Tablet
1 Android Phone
at least that is the current setup.

There we are watching a movie in the family room and I want to check something on the iPad, No Network, hmmmmm, Steve walks into the office and does the old manual restart on the router.
No Joy!
I do have WiFi in the office, but nowhere else.
This is a problem, may be the router!

A quick trip to the Apple Store, maybe the router is done like dinner?

Bad news, out of warranty, has it really been 2.5 years since I bought it! Time flies.

Mac Genius says it may not be done, we check firmware, OK, up to date, then  check the range there, it seems to be working fine.

Now what may be happening is something new in my home office, not from me but a new source of electrical interference, from a neighbour, the city something.
He suggests I fix on a single channel instead of allowing the router to select it for me (automatic). (see gfx)
Like your cordless phones Routers can deliver WiFi over multiple channels.

So I select a single channel, I choose 7, luck number 7.

JOY!

I am not sure to this moment why it now works, but it is better than ever.
The moral of the Blog Post

If your Wifi deteriorates suddenly, try to lock in on a single channel, it may do the trick!