How do I block an unwanted wifi signal?

The most important thing that has not yet been addressed in this thread is part 15 of the FCC rules and regulations:

1. The device may not cause harmful
   interference.
2. The device must accept any lnterference re-
   ceived, including interference that may cause undesired operation.

The best thing you can do is to make your network the preferred one on your computer.

Various Macs and PC's Mac OS X (10.4)

Build a metal shield across that side of your house.

Have you tried setting your base station to a channel quite different than the one used by your neighbor?

The only practical way to stop his wireless signal from coming into your house is to ask him to reduce the transmission power of his base station. Or ask him if he can move it to the other side of his house.

Make sure that your network is at the top of the list of preferred networks in network prefs, delete his network from the list if it is there and untick the box under 'Options' that says "Automatically add new networks to the preferred networks list". Click OK.
If you know the guy you could always play the friendly neighbour and point out that anyone could be poaching his bandwidth &/or hacking his computer via his open network, and that he should turn off SSID (then you wouldn't see his network if you've deleted it as per above) and turn on WPA security.

Have fun!

Adrian


ibook G4, iMac G4 (10.3.9) Mac OS X (10.4.4) Belkin Wireless F5D7632

If he's not interested in his wifi security I bet he hasn't bothered to change his password on his router, or maybe not even set one. You could always log into his router and switch off SSID for him! 😉

Errm... It's probably not ethical to walk you through a step-by-step process of hacking into his unsecured network but it's astonishingly easy. The fact that you can see his network at all is half the battle. The rest just involves a bit of online research as what, if any, default password is set for his particular brand of router and what the address (starting 192.168.......) of it is. That's probably more than I should have said, but I'd bet that I've said nothing new to a very large proportion of the posters here.

On a more practical & ethical note, if, having altered the settings as I've detailed above, your Mac is still asking if you want to join his network then his must be stronger than yours.(?) Try moving your wifi router/AEBS so that you get a stronger signal from it. Try changing channels. (I don't think you can do this on an AEBS) Experiment a bit. I've had to try several different channels because our microwave used to mess up the wifi signal.

Duane says "That just makes the problem worse because Terry will suffer the effects of RF interference but won't know the cause."

I can't see how it would make the situation worse. He'd be in exactly the same situation as he would be if his neighbour had set his router up properly.

Have fun!

Adrian


ibook G4, iMac G4 (10.3.9) Mac OS X (10.4.4) Belkin Wireless F5D7632

At least now he can see the network and determine where his interference is coming from. If you disable the SSID, you have done nothing to solve the problem and now it is not apparent where the interference is coming from.

It doesn't sound like the network is causing interference, just annoyingly trying to connect everytime he picks it up. If he were to go over to his neighbors house and show him how to SSID, then his computer wouldn't try to connect to it cause it wouldn't see it. It would be a great solution to this problem.

That just makes the problem worse because Terry will suffer the effects of RF interference but won't know the cause.