[SOLVED] Channel hogger

[abricru]

I only use my TCL phone to access the internet via wifi. Everything was great until the connection kept going out and I have to unplug and restart modem and router (R6300 v2 Netgear) My printer is not plugged in most of the time, but the smart TV is. I did a scan and found out there is one SSID that says merged with about seven or eight other ones, and they are using up all of the channels. My main question is just can somebody else using all the channels cause you to lose your connection or for it to slow down?
It must be pretty close by because the signals are very strong.

 

[kanewolf]

I only use my TCL phone to access the internet via wifi. Everything was great until the connection kept going out and I have to unplug and restart modem and router (R6300 v2 Netgear) My printer is not plugged in most of the time, but the smart TV is. I did a scan and found out there is one SSID that says merged with about seven or eight other ones, and they are using up all of the channels. My main question is just can somebody else using all the channels cause you to lose your connection or for it to slow down?
It must be pretty close by because the signals are very strong.

The merged SSID is from a commercial installation. There are multiple WIFI sources (access points) all with the same SSID. This is a typical implementation. For the signals to be very strong, it has to be nearby. For example your apartment complex could have common WIFI.
Competing WIFI can cause YOUR performance to suffer. There is not much you can do. Changing to a 5Ghz WIFI would be the best option. Your router is a dual band, so you can use 5Ghz.

 

[bill001g]

The thing you don't realize is it is highly likely all the channels are in use no matter where you live. A single tri-band router can use all the radio channels. It will use 40mhz of the total 60mhz on 2.4 and it will use 160 of 180 total on the 5g. Then you have people using multiple radio units in mesh systems.
Pretty much you have to assume all channels are used. Years ago I had a router that let you define multiple SSID. I put in the max 50 of them to scare people away, they thought there were lots of people using it.

This is the problem with scanners. They only see the beacon messages from the router they can't tell if there is actual traffic or it is just a idle router. If there is a lot of user traffic it can easily interfere with your and cause drops. It should just cause very bad performance you shouldn't have to restart your router. That sounds more like the internet is dropping. Can you test with a ethernet connection so you can tell if it is only wifi dropping or all users.