Brief synopsis of my issues:

 

I've got a WNDR4000 (Netgear N750 dual band router). Bought it 4 months ago. 3 months ago my wired and wireless started to become intermittent. RMA'ed the Netgear and picked up a Linksys E2500 for temporary use. It worked great. Received the "new" Netgear just a few days ago and installed it. Wired connection appears normal but out of the blue the wireless connection is extremely spotty, mostly in our kitchen where before it wasn't the strongest, but was completely usable.

 

I'm terrible with networking... so I've got no clue what could be wrong. I've read that microwaves (as in microwave ovens) are on the 2.4 GHz band along with cell phones and the rest of our little technological devices these days. The thing is - nothing has changed in the kitchen. I'm stumped as to why the signal strength would just go to little or nothing. I thought it was our laptop, but I checked my iTouch and it has the same issue.

 

Current router settings are 2.4 and 5ghz bands enabled, with maximum bandwidth on both

Name (SSID) NETGEAR63-5G

Region North America

Channel 153(P)+149(S)

Mode Up to 450 Mbps

Wireless AP On

Broadcast Name On

Wireless isolation Off Name (SSID) ButtercupAgain

Region North America

Channel Auto (6)

Mode Up to 300 Mbps

Wireless AP On

Broadcast Name On

Wireless isolation Off

 

What do the network guru's here recommend? Should I disable the 5GHz band? Should I turn on wireless isolation (what is that?) What could possibly be leading to the degradation of bandwidth in the kitchen?

 

List of devices using the router (usually not all at once):

 

iTouch (wifi)

Laptop (wifi)

Main PC (wired)

Secondary PC (wired)

PS3 (wired)

 

On the bright side I could understand the customer support rep for Netgear... whew... but an RMA after 4 months is ludicrous... Should I just eat the $120 I spent and blow another 70 on the Linksys?

 

In addition to that... the N750 says bandwidth up to 450 mbps. The Linksys I used only had 300 mbps. Will the difference be noticeable or not? FWIW I used my trusty Netgear WGR614v8 for the past 7 years without issue (a few router reboots but no major issues).

Could be that a nearby neighbor has changed something that changed your system. Happens a lot. Try changing the Channel.

I'll try. It's set to auto at the moment. Wouldn't that mean that if it detects interference it would change to another channel not in use?

Yes, auto should find the best channel but,...

Channels 1, 6, and 11 will not interfere with each other.

 

Check your cables too. You may have had one go bad.

So far orientating it vertically and placing it atop my desk has helped. I'm still stumped because it used to work under the desk horizontally... and now it won't (very well).