Ethernet link interfering with wifi signal

[molofishy]

I have been experiencing intermittent wifi issues for the past 1-2 years. I had aways thought it was my internet service provider - although interestingly, turning wifi off and on again on my laptop, usually solved the issue (temporarily).
Then last week I tried something new: I disconnected the ethernet cable that connects to my freebsd server (running v12.1) directly to the router. To my surprise, I've not been having any wifi issues since! Unfortunately this is a tradeoff: I no longer have a freebsd server I can access

I am happy to provide any additional info to help debug...

 

[a6h]

Please be specific about "wifi issues". In the meantime, if you are on a 2.4 GHz WiFi network, try different channels, especially 6, 11 and 1.

 

[richardtoohey2]

Don't think related to your issue but your report made me think of this: https://hackaday.com/2019/11/28/raspberry-pi-4-hdmi-is-jamming-its-own-wifi/

the Pi 4 emits some RF noise which is exactly in the range of WiFi channel 1

So sounds like vigole's suggestion definitely worth a try.

 

[msplsh]

The issue is likely to do with you having two routes to the internet using two different IP addresses. Setting a static IP on your ethernet with no default gateway will probably have the same effect as yanking the cable.

 

[molofishy]

Please be specific about "wifi issues". In the meantime, if you are on a 2.4 GHz WiFi network, try different channels, especially 6, 11 and 1.

I tried channel 6 (default was 1); and that seemed to do the trick.

 

[msplsh]

Yeah, I don't think FreeBSD had much to do with the circumstances surrounding this problem.