Q: My wife's PC loses its Wi-Fi internet connection about every other day. I don't know if it's caused by AT&T's U-verse wireless router or my PC's Wi-Fi adapter. I've been able to reset the Wi-Fi adapter, but that only solves the problem temporarily. What should we do?
Howard Cohen, Cooper City, Fla.
A: The periodic loss of a Wi-Fi signal could be caused by the impending failure of your U-verse router or your PC's Wi-Fi adapter. Or your Wi-Fi signal might be encountering radio interference from a garage door opener, a microwave oven or another nearby Wi-Fi router.
To locate a technical flaw, follow AT&T's Wi-Fi diagnostic instructions at tinyurl.com/z27c4np. Alternatively, you can log in to your AT&T internet account and choose "Troubleshoot & Resolve," an automated Wi-Fi diagnostic program. A new router costs about $100; a USB Wi-Fi adapter (to replace the PC's internal one) costs $15 and up.
To check for radio interference, try switching your router to a different Wi-Fi frequency to see whether your connection will become more stable. There are 11 channels, but the adjacent channels tend to overlap one another. As a result, choose channels 1, 6 or 11; that way you will be several channels away from the radio interference.
To change the channels on a U-Verse router, type http://gateway.2wire.net (the address works only for AT&T customers) into your Web browser.
On the resulting website, click "home networking" and choose "edit settings." Scroll down to the "wireless channel" heading and select a channel from the drop-down menu. Click "save" to give your router a new wireless frequency.
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