WTF is up with my wireless?

Not really for the tek crew, just a general problem that i need solving. Seemed best place to ask in this forum.

So I the router is in my roommate's room which is quite far away. But Windows says the connection is fine (which i doubt), and connects fine with it. Sometimes it goes great, but every now and then, and sometimes quite frequently it decides to take its time.

Ive found out that when it does this the ping to the router jumps up ludicrous times (>500, timeout's). Funny thing is that when im not loading anything (sometimes) it calms its shits and goes back down to reasonable times (2-60ms, considering distance).

http://oi60.tinypic.com/nwyh68.jpg

It may be that my ISP is throtttling us, but I dont know exactly how to test for this, because when it works it works fine...

I also havent found any other thing that makes it happen, doesnt matter whether my roomates are home or what time of the day it is, it just happens when it happens.

Thanks
Raudius

 

TL:DR : Somtimes this happens. Why?

Download wifi analyser on your phone and see what channels are being used in your area.  One cause of this may be a crap ton of interference from multiple signals being broadcast on the same channel.

WiFi has lots of problems, walls, traffic, electrical equipment, other APs can affect the signal. What's it like if you run your tests right beside the router?

i had a similar issue happen when my school's network was under high load, and between a driver update on my laptop and an access point upgrade at my school the problems went away.

you could try changing your access point's channel, and updating the wireless drivers on your pc.

If you think its an ISP throttle, hook up with an eth and ping test again. It should be better. 
Run a Tracerout over wifi and look at that first hop. do it a bunch of times on the same destinations. That first hop will be your computer to the router.

If that first hop is ludicrous and irregular, THEN you can start to troubleshoot your wireless signal. (wifi analyser

 

Source: I work in the wireless department of the devil ISP.