For days, I’ve been finding a solution to segregate my wireless router from the congested wireless network that seems to only appears around night time, 7pm to 11pm.
Initially, I ask for support from Planex, the brand of my wireless router and they told me the only solution is to find out which channels are congested and avoid those channels. The person suggested NetStumbler, a tool to checkout your friendly wireless neighbourhood.
So I hung up the call and went to download it. After I installed, nothing works. No data shown. I called the support again. And, this time, he told me that Vista don’t work with it. (Shucks!) Well, what’s new. I asked the person is there any alternative and his replies is “Netstumbler is the best freeware you can get”. Weird reply, I assume that’s a no. I hung up again.
Guess what’s next? Google! I google around, as always, and I found the simplest way to do it, without even installing a single software, thanks to Steve Clayton’s blog. Here’s how it works:
Just fire up your command prompt and type netsh. When the netsh> prompt show up, type:
wlan show networks mode=bssid
Now I’m able to see the invisible wireless neighbourhood and set it to the channel that nobody uses it. 
October 9th, 2007 at 11:37 am
In Linux, “iwlist scan” will do the equivalent. Just thought you’d like to know.
October 14th, 2007 at 4:36 pm
When I ran this command it didn’t show any invisible ones, just 3 that were already assigned channels. I know I’m thick but is this because it works differently in the UK?
October 14th, 2007 at 6:21 pm
It should work regardless of location. With regards to the invisible wireless, maybe it don’t work for invisible network.