urban wifi interference

Who else is having this problem? It must be widespread by this point with everyone and every device going wireless. In my old apartment I'd get bumped off my connection any time the neighbour's cordless phone or microwave was in use. But where we are now it's turned into a major problem.

I can spend a whole afternoon watching it connect and drop almost by the second. Alternately, I'll have no signal at all when I'm sitting just 5 feet from the base station. When I pull down the list of available networks I see some version of this (though different one keep appearing and leaving):



Apparently, I'm picking up networks on the next block but sometimes I can't even see my own. Worse, it seems that if one's computer is looking to connect and it finds a network called 'default' it'll often just hop on to it by default, no questions asked. When this happens it means that my mail won't send because it's not going through my account. It also means that I have to leave encryption off to avoid having to log in dozens of times a day.

You don't really hear about this sort of signal pollution, just how 'free' the wireless world of the future will be.

Anyone in the same boat? Have any solutions besides running cables again?

Thanks you two. Yeah I've switched channels but with only 10 to choose from I'm guessing I'll be sharing no matter what with all of these other ones around. I'll try creating a new location. I did something before where every time the machine woke from sleep it would say it couldn't find my preferred network, and then ask me if I wanted to join the one that actually is my preferred one.