Broadband router niggles
Thread Starter
Broadband router niggles
We have a couple of router niggles.
1) a brand new Asus laptop will not log onto one of the wireless routers in our southern headquarters. The router is picked from the list and the password entered and it just sits rotating the timer widget for a minute or two and then gives up. Selecting the other outer, the one without direct internet connection gets proper connection as you would expect. I have the correct password...... I didn't think to check whether the computer is logging on to 2.4 or 5 GHz when it works and the opposite frequency when it fails.
2) in our northern headquarters the mobile phone signals are quite poor indoors on both of the networks our phones use. I get around this with my EE network phone by enabling wifi calling. My wife has set her Plusnet mobile phone settings exactly the same as I have set mine but wifi calling obstinately fails to happen. One of the places she goes to when tutoring has even less mobile coverage than our house does and, once she was given their wifi password, gets wifi calling as soon as she enters their property.
3) both of our mobile phones connect to the wifi in our northern headquarters for internet browsing purposes, it is just phone calls that don't happen on one handset..
Supplementary info. The structure of the northern headquarters house seems to block radio waves. We have poor reception on both DAB and FM radio. The mobile phones work OK once you step outside. I thought it was odd that my laptop doesn't see ANY other wifi routers when indoors. I know that the neighbours to both sides have broadband in their houses. Our wifi doesn't work as far as a detached garage built close to the house. When at our southern headquarters our wifi can be connected to my laptop in our summerhouse which is more than 100 feet from the main building. We see several neighbours wifi signals inside ours, the neighbours properties are somewhat further away than the immediate neighbours in our northern property. Both places are double brick walled with cavity insulation, I don't know what type of material is in the norther property, the southern one has blocks of rockwool fitted at first build.
Rans6..................
1) a brand new Asus laptop will not log onto one of the wireless routers in our southern headquarters. The router is picked from the list and the password entered and it just sits rotating the timer widget for a minute or two and then gives up. Selecting the other outer, the one without direct internet connection gets proper connection as you would expect. I have the correct password...... I didn't think to check whether the computer is logging on to 2.4 or 5 GHz when it works and the opposite frequency when it fails.
2) in our northern headquarters the mobile phone signals are quite poor indoors on both of the networks our phones use. I get around this with my EE network phone by enabling wifi calling. My wife has set her Plusnet mobile phone settings exactly the same as I have set mine but wifi calling obstinately fails to happen. One of the places she goes to when tutoring has even less mobile coverage than our house does and, once she was given their wifi password, gets wifi calling as soon as she enters their property.
3) both of our mobile phones connect to the wifi in our northern headquarters for internet browsing purposes, it is just phone calls that don't happen on one handset..
Supplementary info. The structure of the northern headquarters house seems to block radio waves. We have poor reception on both DAB and FM radio. The mobile phones work OK once you step outside. I thought it was odd that my laptop doesn't see ANY other wifi routers when indoors. I know that the neighbours to both sides have broadband in their houses. Our wifi doesn't work as far as a detached garage built close to the house. When at our southern headquarters our wifi can be connected to my laptop in our summerhouse which is more than 100 feet from the main building. We see several neighbours wifi signals inside ours, the neighbours properties are somewhat further away than the immediate neighbours in our northern property. Both places are double brick walled with cavity insulation, I don't know what type of material is in the norther property, the southern one has blocks of rockwool fitted at first build.
Rans6..................
Is it an issue with the Firewall on the router or laptop? Try turning them off BUT not for long!!
Channels? Congestion? Configuration? Maybe all three. You describe a number of issues, not all having the same cause.
I have a free app on my Android cell phone called 'WiFi Analyzer' which shows what WiFi channels are in use and by whom. Make sure you check the 5Ghz as well as 2.4Ghz bands. You may find that the dominant one is being used by your device that is having intermittent connection problems, and it is in use by another interfering one. Usually a suitable clear channel is selected by the router at time of bootup if it is allowed to select it in the configuration profile. If your neighbour has the same band as you in use, and the power outputs are similar, then you will have strong interference. Reboot your router and let it automagically select a more suitable band to transmit on as it boots up. The signal strength meter will be of immense help to identify shadowing and shielding by buildings and large metal areas, as well as confirm whether standing on one foot and facing Mecca may actually help. The app makes for significant understanding of how it all ties in together as the graphics and data is presented in a very concise and clear method. Well worth playing with for a few minutes, and keeping installed - a veritable Swiss knife troubleshooting aid I can't go without.
Another useful tool is called 'OpenSignal' which has the ability to do speed and performance tests. It also has a display of closest cell towers and indicates which ones you are connected to. Also free and useful in your problem solving toolkit.
Check which frequency bands your cell phone supports. Often a carrier will only offer a small range of bands that are common to both. The https://www.phonearena.com/phones/compare website has a comprehensive database of most cell phones, and when you put your cell phone and that of your wife in the compare list, you can see what is common and what is not. Then check if your wife's cell phone has the same bands in the cellular and network sections. You may be connecting on a flimsy low power 3G signal and your wife on a 5G signal, as they are the only ones your carrier has available at that location that can be used by your respective devices. This may be eye opening when you confirm which of the bands and channels your carrier actually supports from the closest cell tower. Power off and on your cell phone and then attempt reconnection, as sometimes a cell phone will latch onto the first signal it can find and then remain on that one until it goes out of range, regardless of other more suitable ones.
If your neighbours WiFi signals are being boosted by larger antennas, illegal router transmitter settings or are overpowering, the temptation to use those signals instead of yours might be overwhelming. (If you can't beat them, join them - password cracking utilities exist if they are hesitant to proffer their password) This is not advice I recommend you take, just an option that may have fleetingly passed...
If you want to list the manufacturer and model numbers of all the devices in questions in your reply (both cell phones and routers), then we can probably offer more precise information. You will miss out on the fun however as you stumble about on the path of enlightenment.
Do us a favor. Please follow through on documenting your experience as you troubleshoot and what your final solutions are, as there may be others in the future that may benefit from your experience. Nothing more frustrating than seeing an unsolved problem forum thread go stale.
I have a free app on my Android cell phone called 'WiFi Analyzer' which shows what WiFi channels are in use and by whom. Make sure you check the 5Ghz as well as 2.4Ghz bands. You may find that the dominant one is being used by your device that is having intermittent connection problems, and it is in use by another interfering one. Usually a suitable clear channel is selected by the router at time of bootup if it is allowed to select it in the configuration profile. If your neighbour has the same band as you in use, and the power outputs are similar, then you will have strong interference. Reboot your router and let it automagically select a more suitable band to transmit on as it boots up. The signal strength meter will be of immense help to identify shadowing and shielding by buildings and large metal areas, as well as confirm whether standing on one foot and facing Mecca may actually help. The app makes for significant understanding of how it all ties in together as the graphics and data is presented in a very concise and clear method. Well worth playing with for a few minutes, and keeping installed - a veritable Swiss knife troubleshooting aid I can't go without.
Another useful tool is called 'OpenSignal' which has the ability to do speed and performance tests. It also has a display of closest cell towers and indicates which ones you are connected to. Also free and useful in your problem solving toolkit.
Check which frequency bands your cell phone supports. Often a carrier will only offer a small range of bands that are common to both. The https://www.phonearena.com/phones/compare website has a comprehensive database of most cell phones, and when you put your cell phone and that of your wife in the compare list, you can see what is common and what is not. Then check if your wife's cell phone has the same bands in the cellular and network sections. You may be connecting on a flimsy low power 3G signal and your wife on a 5G signal, as they are the only ones your carrier has available at that location that can be used by your respective devices. This may be eye opening when you confirm which of the bands and channels your carrier actually supports from the closest cell tower. Power off and on your cell phone and then attempt reconnection, as sometimes a cell phone will latch onto the first signal it can find and then remain on that one until it goes out of range, regardless of other more suitable ones.
If your neighbours WiFi signals are being boosted by larger antennas, illegal router transmitter settings or are overpowering, the temptation to use those signals instead of yours might be overwhelming. (If you can't beat them, join them - password cracking utilities exist if they are hesitant to proffer their password) This is not advice I recommend you take, just an option that may have fleetingly passed...
If you want to list the manufacturer and model numbers of all the devices in questions in your reply (both cell phones and routers), then we can probably offer more precise information. You will miss out on the fun however as you stumble about on the path of enlightenment.
Do us a favor. Please follow through on documenting your experience as you troubleshoot and what your final solutions are, as there may be others in the future that may benefit from your experience. Nothing more frustrating than seeing an unsolved problem forum thread go stale.
Last edited by Thirsty; 24th Mar 2022 at 11:46.
Fun times: Leave WiFi Analyser on as you take the bus back to the hotel from the airport and watch each passing router fade in and back out, and see how many are not password protected. Yikes!
On that subject, have you run a malware/virus scan lately and done a software update on all devices, including your cell phones? Often manufacturers will slide in subtle fixes to major problems and only document the bigger issues to save embarrassment. Malware will often alter your device characteristics, often drastically as it attempts to replicate and destroy.
Last edited by Thirsty; 24th Mar 2022 at 11:43.
As you can probably guess from the replies so far..this isn't going to be straightforward. Home routers, especially the ones supplied free by ISPs, aren't all that great on wifi performance in general (one of my friends who's just moved into a house and got all new stuff from Virgin was advised by them to buy her own wifi router and plug it into theirs!).
There are so many variables in wifi it's almost impossible to give a diagnosis without coming to your house - Wifi Analyser as mentioned above is a great tool for seeing how the signal strength dies off in various locations. 5G band wifi (n/ac class) is faster but dies off with range faster than the (slower) 2.4 GHZ a/b/g class ones - a lot of routers have both but it can depend how ready your device is to switch between them as you move around, etc. If you're getting -80db or less on the Wifi analyser chart it probably won't work at all.
We also have two routers in the house - for a couple of reasons, one was to give wifi to the bottom ot the (100ft) garden and the other was so that the kids would have their stuff on one and we would have ours on the other, so theirs could be de-activated at night to stop them messing about with their gadgets instead of sleeping (yes I am that Dad, every child's nightmare, that knows how all this stuff works!).
Router location has a huge effect on range, a lot of people put theirs on the TV stand or window sill downstairs. Our downstairs one is on a shelf up 7ft high in the understairs cupboard, the kids one upstairs is on the back bedroom window sill facing into the garden. Higher is better - the titchy 3ft lead you get given to go from the phone socket/filter to the router is the biggest blocker here, mine is on a 10m shielded cable (RJ11 plugs both ends if you want to look for one) thus the router can go anywhere within a 10m cable run. The upstairs one is connected to that with a 10m eithernet (RJ45) cable run behind the skirting, as is the Xbox upstairs (always better to wire stuff that isn't going to move, gets it off the wifi, and it's faster for gaming). If I was having a house built or re-wired I would have the whole lot flood wired with CAT6 Ethernet and a couple of sockets in every room....not many people have that option though!
The upstairs one is configured as a wireless access point (not hard to do, on some it's just a tick box in settings), and for the kids also had keyword filtering and time rules (off at night) applied. The signal reaches the bottom of the garden....except for a brief dead point just outside the back of the extension, due to the amount of walls in the way etc.
Modern houses can be much worse for signal blocking, the cavity wall insulation may have foil either side, and modern heat reflective double glazing has a very thin film of metal sprayed on to it to reflect heat, if you have both of those the house could practically be a Faraday cage and block all kids of signals. Water pipes and the material of construction also have a bearing (an older house with thick stone walls is equally bad).
Going back to the ISP supplied routers......the theory states that you should be able to connect just over 250 devices to one router (using IPv4.....IPv6 is witchcraft and I'm not going there
) however they seem to crap out at about 15-18, they just don't have the processing power to cope (the DHCP process for allocating IP addresses to each device seems to fox them) . Purchasing your own decent one may end up being the only cure (so just using the ISP one as a modem).
The Wifi calling issue is an odd one, though could be the phone itself? I've not long upgraded from a Sony Xperia Z3 to a 5iii, and the new one holds Wifi calling fine, the old one just would not, nothing else has changed (I think the old phone struggled with its radio though, the bluetooth would crap out and need a reset before it would work again).
Re the Asus laptop - it might be set to only connect to 5G, not 2.4? Check properties of network connection, though would be unusual for it to come from new like that.
Ask away if anything else, my knowledge is mostly experience but I do work in IT and have done both CCNA and CompTIA courses along the way
There are so many variables in wifi it's almost impossible to give a diagnosis without coming to your house - Wifi Analyser as mentioned above is a great tool for seeing how the signal strength dies off in various locations. 5G band wifi (n/ac class) is faster but dies off with range faster than the (slower) 2.4 GHZ a/b/g class ones - a lot of routers have both but it can depend how ready your device is to switch between them as you move around, etc. If you're getting -80db or less on the Wifi analyser chart it probably won't work at all.
We also have two routers in the house - for a couple of reasons, one was to give wifi to the bottom ot the (100ft) garden and the other was so that the kids would have their stuff on one and we would have ours on the other, so theirs could be de-activated at night to stop them messing about with their gadgets instead of sleeping (yes I am that Dad, every child's nightmare, that knows how all this stuff works!).
Router location has a huge effect on range, a lot of people put theirs on the TV stand or window sill downstairs. Our downstairs one is on a shelf up 7ft high in the understairs cupboard, the kids one upstairs is on the back bedroom window sill facing into the garden. Higher is better - the titchy 3ft lead you get given to go from the phone socket/filter to the router is the biggest blocker here, mine is on a 10m shielded cable (RJ11 plugs both ends if you want to look for one) thus the router can go anywhere within a 10m cable run. The upstairs one is connected to that with a 10m eithernet (RJ45) cable run behind the skirting, as is the Xbox upstairs (always better to wire stuff that isn't going to move, gets it off the wifi, and it's faster for gaming). If I was having a house built or re-wired I would have the whole lot flood wired with CAT6 Ethernet and a couple of sockets in every room....not many people have that option though!
The upstairs one is configured as a wireless access point (not hard to do, on some it's just a tick box in settings), and for the kids also had keyword filtering and time rules (off at night) applied. The signal reaches the bottom of the garden....except for a brief dead point just outside the back of the extension, due to the amount of walls in the way etc.
Modern houses can be much worse for signal blocking, the cavity wall insulation may have foil either side, and modern heat reflective double glazing has a very thin film of metal sprayed on to it to reflect heat, if you have both of those the house could practically be a Faraday cage and block all kids of signals. Water pipes and the material of construction also have a bearing (an older house with thick stone walls is equally bad).
Going back to the ISP supplied routers......the theory states that you should be able to connect just over 250 devices to one router (using IPv4.....IPv6 is witchcraft and I'm not going there
) however they seem to crap out at about 15-18, they just don't have the processing power to cope (the DHCP process for allocating IP addresses to each device seems to fox them) . Purchasing your own decent one may end up being the only cure (so just using the ISP one as a modem).The Wifi calling issue is an odd one, though could be the phone itself? I've not long upgraded from a Sony Xperia Z3 to a 5iii, and the new one holds Wifi calling fine, the old one just would not, nothing else has changed (I think the old phone struggled with its radio though, the bluetooth would crap out and need a reset before it would work again).
Re the Asus laptop - it might be set to only connect to 5G, not 2.4? Check properties of network connection, though would be unusual for it to come from new like that.
Ask away if anything else, my knowledge is mostly experience but I do work in IT and have done both CCNA and CompTIA courses along the way
Daughter's new-ish work from home laptop pc , supplied by the Company, worked well for circa 6 months. Picked up wifi well.
Then just started dropping the wifi whenever it fancied. No obvious issues. Techie guru from work "took over" the pc remotely, and couldn't find the issue.
Ignorant me suggested using TP Link powerline adapters, instead of wifi.. She already uses a pair for her Sky Box. We tried that, but set up failed, (Instructions for adding V5 to V3 were wrong).
In trying to set this up, though, a slightly weak electric mains plug-socket problem was discovered, accidentally by me. . (You can tell I am no electrician). As the mains socket was not quite 100% perfect, or possibly as the plug from the router was not 100% solid in the mains socket, the router didn't always like the leccy that it was being given. A very short 2 gang extension lead was firmly plugged in to socket, the 2 gang part was laid on the floor, and the power lead from the router shoved firmly in to the extension, so it was robustly connected.
Domestic power supply sockets were not built for the hammering we consumers give them.
The wi-fi is now fine. One day I will force the new ferkin TP links to work.
Then just started dropping the wifi whenever it fancied. No obvious issues. Techie guru from work "took over" the pc remotely, and couldn't find the issue.
Ignorant me suggested using TP Link powerline adapters, instead of wifi.. She already uses a pair for her Sky Box. We tried that, but set up failed, (Instructions for adding V5 to V3 were wrong).
In trying to set this up, though, a slightly weak electric mains plug-socket problem was discovered, accidentally by me. . (You can tell I am no electrician). As the mains socket was not quite 100% perfect, or possibly as the plug from the router was not 100% solid in the mains socket, the router didn't always like the leccy that it was being given. A very short 2 gang extension lead was firmly plugged in to socket, the 2 gang part was laid on the floor, and the power lead from the router shoved firmly in to the extension, so it was robustly connected.
Domestic power supply sockets were not built for the hammering we consumers give them.
The wi-fi is now fine. One day I will force the new ferkin TP links to work.
