You’re saying it worked fine for months… was that with the same driver? And I presume both devices use different drivers, so that’s probably not exactly it.
I second @humpty’s idea.
Thanks for the tips.
(Before anything else, the problem still has not reoccurred so far 
)
Re crowding, I hadn’t thought of that. So I’ve installed and run LinSSID, but I don’t know enough to understand the results or what to do about them. Here they are.
Our modem is #1, in bright red.
#2 (bright green), #3 (bright blue), and #4 (brown) are listed as “Mesh”. The rest are various neighbours.
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Time graph
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Expanded view of wifi devices
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2.4Ghz channels
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5Ghz channels
Re 5GHz, our modem supposedly has it available but for some reason we have never been able to successfully connect devices to it via 5GHz, only 2.4GHz. Looking at LinSSID, there seems to be zero activity on 5GHz from anyone.
Re changing channels, I found out how to log into the modem’s control page and it seems there is a way to change things like channels. At the moment it’s set to “Auto” but I can also choose from channels 1 to 11.
From picture 2, it seems no one is using 2, 3, 4 ,5 , 7, 8, or 9.
I’ve never changed wifi channel before. Anything I should know before I try it? E.g. we have 10 devices connected (cellphones, computers, iPad, Rokus). Will they adapt automatically or will they all have to be restarted/reconnected?
Again, thanks for all your help.
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I would guess that your modem is really/also acting as the router.
In that case, since you’ve worked out how to get control of it,
I would leave the network-manager settings as default,
i.e automatic (this makes your laptop follow whatever the router selects).
You can see a lot of the other routers use channel 1. You
can tell by looking at the numbers or the number of bumps
overlaying channel 1.
Since you have the option of channel 11, I would try that
on your router/modem. The worse that can happen is that you
have to set it back to 1.
All of the router/modem clients (including your laptop)
will automatically follow your new selection (if they are set to auto) because the router/modem will tell them to.
The reason why 1,6 & 11 are popular is because as long as the whole world only uses these three, then these three will be separate from each other without interference. Ofcourse, if more than two devices uses say channel 1, then you will still have interference and/or one device has to wait until the channel is not busy, i.e a slow down.
This is why people sometimes want to change channel.
Also, there is nothing stopping you from using any of the other
channels (that are not 1,6,11), but it doesn’t seem your router will let you.
5Ghz offers more channels but it must be supported by both sides.
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Thanks.
I have wanted to wait until I experience the problem again before trying different things, so as to understand and be sure which action really fixes it.
But it has only happened once since I last wrote. That one time, to eliminate the possibility of it being a signal strength issue (and because I wasn’t in the middle of a business call when it happened), I immediately unplugged and moved the laptop close to the modem/router… and it was immediately fixed! Then, to really, really eliminate the possibility of it being a signal strength issue, I then moved it straight back to its usual location… and the problem did not resume. And it hasn’t reoccurred in the two weeks since.
I think just discussing solutions here must have scared the Wifi straight 
But I will try some of these ideas (probably first changing the Wifi channel) if the problem ever does reoccur.
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