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At live events with 20+ wifi signals, I often find I can't get my iOS devices (iPod Touch and iPad) to stay connected to my wireless networks.

Simply put, the devices connect and have reasonable signal strength + bandwidth, but after an indeterminate amount of time (sometimes 30 seconds, or times 3 hours), the iDevice completely disconnects from the wireless network.

I have three wireless networks, all are 2.4ghz + 5ghz; auto-negotiate for channel and all are secured with WPA2.

Would I be better off using a wireless SSID that broadcasts a local network, but then routes the traffic over the LAN? On the face of it, that question seems to be what wireless does anyways?

I've performed some wireless analysis using Mountain Lion's Wirless Diagnostics utility. It looks like channel 11 is actually fairly free, so I have switched from auto (which had me on a heavily polluted channel) and moved to one that is hopefully less busy.

There are 194 wireless radios within range of my wireless routers. Is there any way to determine how much of an issue that could be?

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You need to do multiple site surveys at various times of day and over as long a period as possible. It is critical that you are on a clear channel as interference will be an issue if many APs are on same channel as your AP. It sounds like you have done some of the work but in many cases new APs pop up and cause interference and there is little you can do as they are outside your control.

You may be able to select a less congested channel and then add a higher gain antenna or move the AP to a more favourable location. Using 5GHz only may help and your site survey may point to how many are on 5 GHz band.

I have found inSSIDer a handy tool and there is a MAC version

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  • I started keeping a log yesterday morning on all three of my wifi network's speed as well as latency. Interesting data being collected - we're not being provided the bandwidth we paid for, either!
    – Davek804
    Mar 10, 2013 at 12:55

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