I put my money on bad hardware. If things worked as expected at some point, then it is certainly bad hardware. I have seen this over and over at the UofM networks and recently at my house. It can be one piece of bad hardware in the building that is causing all kinds of problems, or a single access point near your friend's location. Lots of good ideas here, but I can promise you Chuck that it will be really hard to pin-point the problem from your vantage point. You need more solid access, like, to hardware and software (configuration) to really find out what is going on. You can start guessing (and spend a lot of time) by using network scanners and software like traceroute, which is not intended to solve WiFi issues, but routing problems. I would take the advice of Mr Hayman; he knows what he is talking about. And I would also consider the overlapping channels, and channel saturation with too many devices to be problems. You may have multiple issues going on at once. Certainly hard to say from your description, which I understand is as well as you can do. I see the point of view of the building management. They certainly do not want malware to be thrown in there and potentially take advantage of a population that is historically targeted by scams. You will have a hard time helping your friend, I am afraid. I would offer this advice. Find a piece of software that can monitor the network activity in terms of droppped packets from the client side (that is your friend's computer). See if the network is erratic in speed and by how much. Find if there are repeated DHCP re-leases from the router, how many per time, etc. Look for logged failures that the software may keep track on its own. Put the software in use while something is streaming constantly and get some data. Then, ask a neighbour of your friend to try the same from a different location. If you get this kind of information from your side, you may be able to get somebody on this list to match it with their experience and pin-point the problem right away. Sorry I cannot be of much more help. I really wish I could because if I were in your friend's shoes I'd feel let down by the very technology that is supposed to make our life better.