WiFi dropping connection?

I am running a Macbook with a NETGEAR WGR614 v6 router. I am using the wireless connection. For maybe a month, my computer has been doing strange things with the internet. First, every so often the internet would hang and iChat would give me a strange internal error and render me unable to communicate to anyone. Since I changed my router's channel from 11 to 1, the internet connection bar periodically greys out completely and I have to manually reconnect to the wireless connection. Please help!