odd wifi question from a luddite - update - SOLVED [View all]

Last edited Fri Jul 27, 2018, 11:33 AM - Edit history (1)

thanks everybody! it was that step in post # 3. seems to have taken care of the problem. I don't understand any of it but it worked!

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wow things have been going pretty good for me, haven't asked a question in here in quite a while!

I have something called Wi-Power for internet. It is through the rural electric co-op and consists of a kind of dish antenna aimed at a tower on a nearby mountain. inside I have what I guess is a normal wifi router for the devices in use in the house. I know we have too many devices and one is too far away, but in general they all work most of the time, and have been for 2 years.

last April we started having a lot of problems with the signal dropping. the "fix" being to unplug the router and antenna for 15-20 seconds and then plugging them back in. when we first got this set-up we had to do this little exercize once a week or so, then this spring it started to be several times per day and got really annoying. we spent a couple months doing phone tech until they finally sent somebody out here to look at the wiring. of course the problem never happened while he was out here though they could see it happening remotely when it did. so I think all he did was change out the cord and power brick for the antenna.

That did end up helping with one of my devices - I stream radio from a tablet into a stereo. And that is working MUCH better. Before it would drop and never restart unless I got up and reset/refreshed the page on the tablet (after doing the plug thing). I don't know if it helped the signal to my desk top as I mostly read pages and don't watch a lot of video. The remotest computer still has problems but I am pretty sure it is the distance and not anything else.

Now for the problem. In the back of the house my son uses a playstation 3 to watch video and ever since the tech guy was out, he can barely connect at all anymore. we have played around with repositioning the router, doing the unplug-plug reset, and nothing seems to help. he says he sometimes can get a few minutes early in the morning and occasionally randomly in the day time but in general there is no connection.

I have no idea how playstation works, he said something about they have their own network and that is how he watches hulu, but netflix isn't on there??? I do not know what any of that actually means. do playstation get viruses like other computers? is it a coincidence that this happened right when a power source/cord got changed? I no longer have a laptop to test with, but a smart phone works on the wifi back there, so it seems the signal is present.

is there a troubleshooting procedure for the playstation? writing that, I realized I could just google it, so I will try but if you all have any other suggestions please let me know - same with any questions. thanks!