VM Man with Leakage Aerial

[jgrove]

My wife arrived home to find a VM man outside out house (not on our property) with an aerial and meter in his hand claiming we had a leakage effecting wireless networks in the area? Claiming we had to much power causing problems to other users. Not sure why as we have a standard protected wireless network in our house provided by a netgear srxn3205 router. Our reading was 215? however my wife pointed out that the man who lives next door is a techno geek and we knew he had cable and he spends most of his life in his room plugged into the net, the man then moved towards there house where the reading was over 500?

Can anyone shed some light on what this all means and how the ended up outside my house?

Cheers

[Milambar]

Also, your wireless is none of VM's business. You could crank up the power on the wifi (if that were actually possible) to crystal palace standards, and it'd still not be VM's business. Though you might get a visit from some other authorities.

[Kymmy]

RF is very notorious to track down, without really decent tracking equipment you can believe you have the source then it'll turn out to be bouncing off buildings and will be elsewhere..

Your neighbour probably has an imported 2.4ghz device that exceeds UK power limits ( I have a few devices like that but only use them at events for video transmission over a few hundred meters ) The overpowered and a lot of times unfiltered devices can interfere with other users to a point where the signal of some cheaper routers can be swamped making them totally unusable...

It's not though normally upto VM to track these down and legally they can't do sod all apart from reporting the offender to OFCOM

[TJS]

Originally Posted by Milambar

Also, your wireless is none of VM's business. You could crank up the power on the wifi (if that were actually possible) to crystal palace standards, and it'd still not be VM's business. Though you might get a visit from some other authorities.

Nah; you need a license to cover long distance

[Graham M]

Correct, that doesn't stop anyone from doing it

[Kymmy]

I do have a 50w amp that will cover that frequency sat on the shelve Never used it on 2.4Ghz but works well on 2.3Ghz

[Graham M]

You could resell Wireless Broadband , 50W that would cover... 10 miles of reasonably hilly ground?

[Kymmy]

If I sit on top of the local hill with a small yagi I can get about 80 miles with speech

[jgrove]

So it would seem that my neibough is using an overpowered wireless system for use in the uk? hence why my network often stops working? I am unsure what happended next as he said he needed to see what services they had and then get permsion from them to go on there property?

All seems a bit odd unless someone has complained to VM?

[Graham M]

Probably nothing as it is nothing to do with Virgin

[Kymmy]

Still doesn't matter, might not even be a router, could be phone, video sender, baby monitor or even a microwave..

He's got no reason to talk to the VM person even if he's a VM customer..

ONLY way to deal with it is to report the interference to ofcom who will send someone to investigate

[jgrove]

Seems weird that VM even cam out then?

[Milambar]

Very weird indeed.

[Kymmy]

Probably doing a local install and wondered why the customer couldn't get wifi on their hub

[qasdfdsaq]

Interference from wireless should have no effect on VM's network. More likely they're talking about cable interference, i.e. on the coax line. Engineers going out to track these down is a common thing to improve everybody's service.