How can I prevent a neighbour's network from knocking mine out?

Question

recently my powerbook has begun to pick up on my neighbour's belkin54g network and at the same time i cannot connect to my own network, or rather my own network appears dead.
how can i remedy this?
could changing the channel used by my airport extreme base station solve it? and if so how do i do it?

Answer 1

You should test out the following channels:
1, 6, 11 (and auto if you're feeling saucy).
Unfortunately, the automatic channel selection isn't a
good solution. If you start up an AEBS without all your
neighbour's wireless network up, then this automatic
selection mechanism won't be able to choose a right
channel.
The best way to build a wireless network running
smoothly on the long run is as follows:
- download iStumbler or MacStumbler on a portable,
- walk with this portable through all the places
where you want to use your wireless network,
- do it again for all the period of times were your
neighbours may also use a wireless network (mine do it
late in the evening),
- once you have collected all the channels your neighbours
use, select one which will be 3 channels away of all of
them if possible. If not select one channel which will be
as far as possible of all of your neighbours channels,
- finally configure your AEBS to use this best channel.
For your information, the rule of channels 1, 6 and 11 is
coming from the original 802.11b (also named Wi-Fi). This
rule was correct for electronic equipment which weren't
exactly clean on the border of their defined bandwidth
(22 MHz).
This rule hasn't to be followed anymore.
A channel use design based on channels 1, 5, 9, 13 does
work perfectly well with a lot of AEBS in the same building
and a lot of Mac and PC connected.
dan