Help home wifi issues...

[kylec]

Hello everybody,

I was hoping someone could help me with connecting to my home wifi. I've read other forums and tried a couple of things but still no luck. I have no problem connecting to other wifi's. But when i try to connect to my home wifi it won't connect. Is it because i have a linksys and they suck or do i have to go onto the computer and allow my phone? I have a samsung captivate, any other captivate users having a problem with their home wifi?

 

[Ramzes13]

Since your phone works on other WiFi networks, I would rule out phone. Under WiFi settings, does your phone pull an ip from your network? I would start by physically resetting the router by plugging power for about 30secs, plug it back in and wait about a minute for it to re-initialize with your isp. If that doesn't work, then we can move onto next step like verifying your ssid and encryption settings match ( if you have any).

 

[BigCiX]

sometimes i have issues with my home wifi. It won't let me download apps and sometimes it does. Same with GPS. Internet works great though!

 

[mi04se1]

I dont have a problem connecting, but the signal sucks.

 

[bmoliver]

Hello everybody,

I was hoping someone could help me with connecting to my home wifi. I've read other forums and tried a couple of things but still no luck. I have no problem connecting to other wifi's. But when i try to connect to my home wifi it won't connect. Is it because i have a linksys and they suck or do i have to go onto the computer and allow my phone? I have a samsung captivate, any other captivate users having a problem with their home wifi?

I have similar issues with both my laptop and my phone and I think it is an issue with the router (US Robotics, in my case) not providing an IP address. When this happens, I have to reset the router for it to provide the IP address.

 

[Cuerbo]

Can you tell us how your router is setup? Do you have MAC filtering enabled? If so, did you add your phone's MAC address to the list so it can get an IP and access the wireless network. It's not a phone issue, it all worked for me since day one.

 

[bmoliver]

Can you tell us how your router is setup? Do you have MAC filtering enabled? If so, did you add your phone's MAC address to the list so it can get an IP and access the wireless network. It's not a phone issue, it all worked for me since day one.

I will have to check on this later today. In the meantime, I'm pretty sure I do not have MAC filtering enabled.

 

[DT]

First we need to determine what is/isn't happening!

1) Are you connecting but not able to reach outside services?

or

2) Are you not connecting to your router at all?



If you're connecting and getting an IP allocated (if you're familiar with the operation, you can hop into your admin and check) then it's possibly DNS. That seems to be where some of my devices are squirrely - I'd set a static DNS (Google has a freebie @ 8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4). For that matter I'd probably go ahead and set a static IP and gateway too.

Then grab something like IP Manager which lets you swap easily between IP configurations!

If you're not connecting at all, then I'd [re]confirm your security settings, i.e., WEP/WPA/WPA2, and make sure that grooves with the router settings. That generally will bounce you from the network and I've found "auto-config" for security is a little sketchy.

I can go into my phone if there's any specific setting you need, but it sounds like you have most of the basics of WiFi already down!

 

[Cuerbo]

BMoliver, let us know how it went with the WiFi issues. Don't know if you still need help.

 

[kylec]

Thank you everyone for your input. To answer most of your questions... Yes my captivate saw the network, however the auto config was set to wpa. I tried, probably everything from setting networks up on my computer, which sounds stupid now. lol to manually putting a static i.p. address on my phone. Finally i went back to my wifi settings on my captivate and added a new wifi-network. Same name that my phone saw, except i selected wep, punched in the password and abracadabra my captivate connected. So DT, u were rt all i had to do was change the security settings. Wow I feel really dumb. haha, and by the way what's the difference between all the security setting specifically wpa and wep? Once again my hat is off to everyone, thank you!!!

 

[DT]

Wow I feel really dumb. haha, and by the way what's the difference between all the security setting specifically wpa and wep? Once again my hat is off to everyone, thank you!!!

Don't sweat it

I won't bore you with the specific details, but WPA (and more so WPA2) are much better security protocols vs. WEP. In fact, some security people would go so far to say WEP is so trivial to hack, you might as well run open.

Your best bet is WPA/2 using AES (vs. TKIP) if everything supports it. Also AES encryption is handled via hardware so there's very little performance degradation.

I used to have issues trying to run mixed security modes, but really everything at this stage should have a WPA/2 (personal) mode available: phones, consoles, and of course any desktop/laptop/server.

 

[Cuerbo]

There are tools on the web to crack WEP in less than 10 seconds, definitely something you want to change as soon as possible. Performance for WEP is also slower. Doesn't take much to change this, you than just need to update all your devices. Another thing you want to do with your router is stop broadcasting your SSID and enable MAC filtering, these things along with WPA2 should give you a good lockdown.

 

[kylec]

Alright so how do I go about changing the security on my network? Do I need a different router or program. And my network is ran off of a pc, at the moment. So theoretically if I'm connected to this wifi with my phone someone could hack my phone?

 

[kylec]

Idk if this makes sense. But I set up the static I.P. and my phone only is connected when it is on. Now after i set up the new network with the same name yada yada, my phone connects to the one I couldn't connect to before. And it saids that the wifi network that i created is out of range. Okay so when i click on the wifi network that my phone is connected to for security it saids wpa/wpa2 psk and the i.p address. So I believe the network is secured with wpa/wpa2, or is my phone lying to me? Or did I do something on my computer to f this all up?

 

[bmoliver]

BMoliver, let us know how it went with the WiFi issues. Don't know if you still need help.

Sorry I lost track of the thread. I did check the router settings tonight and the MAC filtering is disabled. Basically, I have three devices that try from time to time to connect to my wireless router (no security) - the computer in the kitchen, my laptop, and my Captivate. Each of those devices will sometimes hang during connection while trying to obtain an IP address from the router. The only solution I have come up with is to reset the router from one of the two other hard-wired computers, at which point the router supplies the required IP address.

 

[DT]

Make sure your router has the latest firmware too (usually an option through the admin interface, or by downloading a file and uploading into the router via the admin UI).

Back when I first got our new router, it was a little flaky (just like you described), but a couple of firmware updates and it eventually straightened itself out.

 

[bmoliver]

Make sure your router has the latest firmware too (usually an option through the admin interface, or by downloading a file and uploading into the router via the admin UI).

Back when I first got our new router, it was a little flaky (just like you described), but a couple of firmware updates and it eventually straightened itself out.

The router is 6 years old (USR8054) and the last firmware update was in 2005, which is what is installed. I have a slightly newer router (Linksys WRT546 that has a 2009 firmware update that I may try when I get some time.

 

[kylec]

All set now... I just reset my security to wpa2 personal on the linksys site. Wow, i never realized my network was so unsecure. And my captivate connects with no problem. Knock on wood...

 

[bmoliver]

The router is 6 years old (USR8054) and the last firmware update was in 2005, which is what is installed. I have a slightly newer router (Linksys WRT546 that has a 2009 firmware update that I may try when I get some time.

I installed the new Linksys router last night. So far so good, but time will tell if it consistently provides an IP address on demand.

 

[hotguy69]

sometimes i have issues with my home wifi. It won't let me download apps and sometimes it does. Same with GPS. Internet works great though!

I have the same problem! It gets annoying. Did you ever find out what was wrong?

 

[Franceso]

My Captivate will work for several hours fine on wifi anywhere and then stops. I power down and turn it back on and it works for several hours and then stops again. I have cleared the cache but it does not help. Suggestions?

Frank