interference w/electrical water heater

I recently had an electrical water heater installed in my utility room, which is located on the bottom (2nd floor) of my house. The old one, which was gas operated, was having ignition problems and needed to be replaced.

My router has always sat a foot away from the water heater, but ever since this new one was installed, I've been having issues keeping a steady wireless connection on the top floor. I think my router is experiencing interference.

If I open a webpage in Firefox while on the top floor, I only get a "Connecting" message on the tab... but if I walk a little closer to the vicinity of the router, the page will finally load. I used to get a solid connection from pretty far away, but now I'm lucky to get anything at all.

I've tried diagnosing the connection with Windows because I sometimes notice a yellow exclamation symbol in the taskbar, I can't remember the exact phrase of the issue it finds, other than a 'fix' resets the wireless card and returns the 3-4 wireless bars I had. As for the router, it's 3 months new and has been working fine up until recently.

I called Netgear support and had them help me change the channel of the wireless frequency. Unfortunately that only made the channel stronger, but didn't prevent the interference from going away.. unless I remove the water heater, which is just silly. Due to the short ethernet/internet cables that run into that utility room (I think my ISP had it installed that way), I'm not able to move the router to a different location.

I really need some advice on this one, because I'm honestly quite stuck.

Other than moving the router and your internet cabling away from the heater I don't know what else to do. Your hot water heater should be on a separate electric circuit all by it's self.

I would say that the problem is neither the water heater nor the router, rather their relative proximity to each other (more specifically, the water heater and the wireless antenna on the router). The water heater (being made chiefly of metal) is, in effect, acting like a big reflector and this is seriously degrading the wireless signal. You can get antenna extension leads for most routers, so try that and see if by positioning the antenna above the water heater you get any improvement.

Take a look at these: Amazon.com: router antenna extension cable - Computers & Accessories: Electronics

Well a better antenna can't hurt. The instruction will come with it. It's no big deal to hook it up.

Alternatively, have you considered using your house wiring as the network? Take a look at these: Amazon.com: homeplug