A Tale Of Two Wifis

comcast forced a router "upgrade" on us, after which my laptop could NO LONGER SEE OUR WIFI SIGNAL. this as newer devices in the house did just fine. meanwhile my (older) one continues to work just fine at school and in starbucks.

what gives? has some FORMAT or FREQUENCY changed in home wifi?

i lined up my PC next to one of these other, still functioning ones, and the list of avail networks is TOTALLY DIFF between the two (ironically with mine having more). that is, older PC shows 15 networks (neighbors) listed but not our own; newer PCs have ours plus 6-7 neighbors. not certain right this moment whether there was ANY overlap -- had been expecting TOTAL agreement until i checked!

one of the devices which DOES connect shows "Band: 2.4GHz" "Protocol: Wi-Fi 4" and "Security: WPA2-Personal" under properties. i cannot speak to the older PC, since it has nothing to connect to short of walking down to starbucks again. but might i conclude that the older router -- and that which the majority of our neighbors is still using -- has DIFFERENT settings for one or more of those?

conversely, is there some place to tweak such that my older PC can access them? comcast insists it is not the case that "your modem is too old; SOL" but beyond that, they can't come up with anything concrete.

HP 2000 with win10 -- "older" one
dell XPS-L521X also win10 -- one of the "newer" ones

 

Not a lot to go but one possibility must be that your previous router was broadcasting at the near universal 2.4 Ghz but the new one is broadcasting at 5Ghz. You will need to log in to the router in a browser to see if that is so and if necessary change it. Comcast will give you the login details if you don't have them. Alternatively use an Ethernet connection.

 

so 5GHz is cutting-edge, and a certain %age of users simply won't be able to access it?

so basically, i would need the homeowner to DEGRADE the signal to accommodate me? hmmm. not sure i can manage that. comcast should have just said "SOL" when i offered them the chance!

in fact, why can't one of their reps say even HALF of what u just did?! i suggested "new freq/system/protocol the last couple of years?" but i couldn't get even one to agree with that! not even like "more or less"....

 

hang on, the NEW one is the one showing "Band: 2.4GHz". isn't that the very thing you're talking about?

googling around, i see some kvetching about this "WPA2" thing. is THAT a thing? could my PC actually be looking for 'WPA1" or w/e?

ditto that "Wi-Fi 4". is there a Wi-Fi 3 or w/e that some of us are still expecting?

 

As you are not in control of the router you probably won't be able to access or change any of its settings. The problem could be something as simple as using a different wireless channel but the owner is the only one who can sort this.

 

yeah, the owner's not gonna change anything. are we agreement then that i'm just SOL in accessing it or similar hotspots in the future?

i actually "adopted" one of those relatives' (newer) laptops, so i'm back online no problem. but with comcast still telling me i "definitely can" access it after tweaking a few settings, i wanna know if this is really possible. plus the homeowner's pissed that 1 of 4 devices went kaput after comcast insisting nothing would. he's PAYING for this, after all....