Cell Phone interrupts home network connection

By text do you mean sms message? By "on the phone" do you mean your cell phone? Cox phone? Do you have any kind of cellular extender?

Also, what modem and router do you have? Does it happen if wired direct to modem?

Yes sms messages and cell phones interrupt our service. We don't have an extender.

What kind of cell phones do you have? Model/carrier? What router or gateway do you have? Cell phone and Wifi should work on different frequencies, even though some of those frequencies are close to each other. The only time I have heard of interference is from bleed over, which is when either the interfering signal is very strong/close or the wifi antenna is not very good. 

Hi Mesuus,

Do you have Cox Digital Telephone Service for your home phone? Is the router or Gateway located close to things like a microwave oven, baby monitor, or a cordless phone base station? What model router or Gateway do you have? Log into the router/Gateway and change the wireless radio settings to use channel 1, 6, or 11. Does the problem get better, get worse, or not change?

I dont know everyones exact model but ill try my best to guess from what I remember. There is a Lg Thrill, Iphone 4, and Galaxy S4. For the router Asus RT-N66U.

We do not have Cox Digital Telephone Service. I don't think its close enough to the microwave to cause any problems. It has been setup like this for a few years. I have tried changing the channel to see if it changes any. No change at all.

Mesuus said:

If someone is on the phone the internet stops working completely. This is happening on a wired computer. I have tried to recreate the problem to test on other computers but no luck. This happens with cell phones connected or not connected to the wifi. I have updated firmware on the router. Changed ethernet cords out.

Let me make sure I understand the problem ... a single wired computer on your network looses internet when someone is on a cell phone, other computers on the same network still function correctly.  The only time you loose connection on that computer is when someone receives a text or is on the cell phone, correct?

Can you try connecting the computer in question directly to your modem, eliminating the ASUS router from the equation?  Do you still loose connection?  My first thought it is some form of ingress (cell signal leaking back onto Cox network) but if it's only effecting one device I'm not sure.  Anyway, check to be sure all cable connections are tight and secure and all cables are free of any cracking.  A break in the cable shield or loose connector can allow stray signals to get in.

Hi Mesuus,

Have you had a service call in the past few months? Allen's post made me think about a problem I dealt with a few years back. I found out that squirrels had chewed off a good portion of the cable shielding in a section of the coax aerial drop to my home. If you haven't had a technician out in a while, it might be a good time to schedule one.

Those d*m squirrels will get you every time   Our wiener dog chases them around the backyard all the time ... never caught one.  You are so right, Becky, if the shielding is chewed off or otherwise removed, the cable line acts like a giant antenna, picking up stray signals from all around.  Will play havoc with your SNR.  Glad mine is underground ... but the original run was not in conduit.  Cox did get it done, buried conduit more than 10 years ago and pulled another cable run.  No problems since.