Be a Good Neighbor and Turn Down Your Wi-Fi!

In response to my recent post on neighbors scamming your Wi-Fi, a reader writes: It is against the law to have Wi-Fi trespassing through my house. I will put up a sign if necessary. My point is, if you leave your car door open on the street, you invite thieves over. Use your WEP key or pay somebody to lock it up. Don't freaking tell me I am stealing your Wi-Fi.

This reader brings up a good point. If you live in a densely-populated area, turn down your Wi-Fi! I live in New York City, where nearly any location will bring up a half-dozen or so hotspots. In my apartment alone I get about 15 wireless hotspots showing up on my computer's wireless network utility at any given time.

"Just as I would say don't play your radio loudly, I would also say don't blast the signal on your Wi-Fi equipment," says Dana Spiegel, executive director of NYC Wireless, a Wi-Fi advocacy group. "This is a case where you should practice a good neighbor policy."

Blasting your Wi-Fi signal into a neighbor's apartment or house can interfere with their connection (slowing down their web surfing or even disconnecting them entirely). Wi-Fi signals are radio signals, so the problem is similar to the way that a microwave might interfere with a cordless phone, resulting in cut-out calls or static-filled reception.

If you have two or three neighbors, or if no one else in your neighborhood is actually using their Wi-Fi connection to surf or file-share, it's not a big deal, but say you're an urban dweller with 100 or more neighbors on the same block, some or all of whom are also actually using a Wi-Fi connection. In the latter case, you might be causing or getting problems from too many hotspots in one place. And if you live in an urban area, you definitely don't need a Wi-Fi extender that blasts the signal to even more places.

So how exactly do you turn down the volume on your Wi-Fi? Most routers come with volume settings (usually called "power" or "signal" output or "transmit" settings). Keep it at the minimum setting for small studio apartments in densely populated areas. For everyone else, the default settings that a router ships with are usually sufficient, but trial and error is probably the best way to go. If you live in a rural area with no nearby neighbors, go nuts!

Does anyone have first-hand experience with Wi-Fi slowdowns caused by too many actively-used hotspots in one place? Is a neighbor's hotspot crowding your airspace? Is it slowing down your surfing?