Help Enabling Wifi on my phone, disables internet?

[Kevin Sole]

Good day,

I'm really quite confused as to what's going on.

As it stands, I have internet coming into the house (obviously), and the router creates a wifi hotspot (obviously). All the devices in the house (PS3, two computers) connect to the wifi fine; and the computer I use is connected directly to the router. This is all fine.

However, just as of the past week, whenever I turn the wifi on my phone (Samsung Galaxy S3), EVERY device has immediate DNS errors and the internet no longer works -- including the computer connected directly to the router, and the phone itself.

Once I disable the wifi on my phone, every other device works.

I've changed the wifi name, password, the channel. I pulled the battery on my phone and for a brief time, and then turned on the wifi and it worked for a brief time -- however, my roommates computer suddenly couldn't connect. Now my phone is back to disabling everything again.

I am utterly baffled, and can't seem to find anyone /via google that is having this same error.

Anyone, help?

 

[palmtree5]

Hi, welcome to the forums! Did you check to make sure your phone isn't set up to get a static IP from the router? If it is, it could conflict with one of the other devices

 

[Kevin Sole]

Hi, welcome to the forums! Did you check to make sure your phone isn't set up to get a static IP from the router? If it is, it could conflict with one of the other devices

Thank you!

I reconnected to the AP, and made sure it was set to DHCP instead of Static. For a brief moment I thought this fixed it, but no... internet access was cut off at every source until I turned the Wifi off again.

Any other ideas?

 

[Frisco]

Good day,

I'm really quite confused as to what's going on.

As it stands, I have internet coming into the house (obviously), and the router creates a wifi hotspot (obviously). All the devices in the house (PS3, two computers) connect to the wifi fine; and the computer I use is connected directly to the router. This is all fine.

However, just as of the past week, whenever I turn the wifi on my phone (Samsung Galaxy S3), EVERY device has immediate DNS errors and the internet no longer works -- including the computer connected directly to the router, and the phone itself.

Once I disable the wifi on my phone, every other device works.

I've changed the wifi name, password, the channel. I pulled the battery on my phone and for a brief time, and then turned on the wifi and it worked for a brief time -- however, my roommates computer suddenly couldn't connect. Now my phone is back to disabling everything again.

I am utterly baffled, and can't seem to find anyone /via google that is having this same error.

Anyone, help?

Hello and welcome.

If all devices including the router are configured for dhcp and other parameters are ok, then it's likely that the hunt for and ip for the last one in line (the last one to go wifi at the moment, coming off carrier's internet signal) is pushing them out of the range of available ip addresses.

You can go into the router configuration and assign a longer range of available addresses (the last three digits in the ip addresses).

 

[Kevin Sole]

Thanks for the response,

I'm going through all the settings for the router, and I'm not seeing the ability to change how many addresses are accepted; note that this was working just fine last week, and I didn't change any settings then.

I -can- reset the router to default settings. Last ditch effort, but it's an option?

 

[GTWalling]

On the phone try Forgetting Network. Reboot the phone and then let it rescan and input password. Just a thought.

 

[bobolinko]

Thanks for the response,

I'm going through all the settings for the router, and I'm not seeing the ability to change how many addresses are accepted; note that this was working just fine last week, and I didn't change any settings then.

I -can- reset the router to default settings. Last ditch effort, but it's an option?

Try turning off all the other wireless devices, and enable the wireless on the phone. See if you get internet access. If you do, enable the others again one-by-one, and wait a few minutes to see if internet fails again. Then post your results.

 

[Kevin Sole]

Try turning off all the other wireless devices, and enable the wireless on the phone. See if you get internet access. If you do, enable the others again one-by-one, and wait a few minutes to see if internet fails again. Then post your results.

Rebooted the router, disabled anything connected to the wifi. Roommate's computer connects, and things are fine. My computer is hard-wired, and fine. Turn on my phone's wifi, and the phone works, but my computer no longer does.

That it can disable a ethernet connection is REALLY confusing to me.

 

[Kevin Sole]

Okay,

I have changed nothing on the router itself. Right now, I have my computer connected to the router, my roommate's computer, and my OTHER roommate's computer. All connected just fine.

When I turn on my phone's wifi, the only internet access that doesn't work ... is the phone. Which is a change from previous, where it shut EVERYBODY down. The only thing that actually changed, was getting my other roommate's internet working -- she couldn't connect to the wifi when it was password protected; I eventually figured out that it wasn't using DHCP for the IP, and once that was fixed, it connected fine.

And somehow miraculously fixed everything except my phone.

This isn't making much sense to me, I'm sure it's not making sense to anyone else. But any thoughts are certainly appreciated.

 

[funkylogik]

Can you use one of the computers as a wireless hotspot (there must be software available) for your phone instead of running the phone straight from the router? :beer:

 

[Kevin Sole]

Still having issues; I was hoping (somehow, miraculously) they would resolve themselves, but no go.

I managed to connect to wifi elsewhere, and things worked fine. But when I come home and try to access the wifi, it all goes to hell.

It seems to work for several seconds, and then I start getting DNS errors on my phone. And then the PC, which is connected directly to the router, also becomes unable to load pages. Both the phone and the PC say it is due to a DNS error.

I still haven't reset the modem/router to default settings. Anyone recommend that, or have any other suggestions? I have tried everything I can think of.

 

[davoid]

Could you try following bobolinko's suggestion above, and see what happens. After disconnecting all the other devices, PCs, etc. try to connect the phone by itself. See if it works. If it does connect, then try reconnecting your other devices one by one and see if it is one device in particular that is causing the problem - which would be indicated by an error when you try to connect that PC.

And I don't see any harm in resetting the router unless you have porting rules set up which you would lose.

 

[rexster314]

Leave everything on your previous setup alone. Forget the wireless connection in your phone. Go back in your phone, and get the MAC address then go into the router and set a static IP for your phone. See if that works.

 

[Kevin Sole]

As per suggestion, I disabled every connection to the router in the house, and tried enabling the wifi on the phone. Loaded up Chrome, and ... still unable to load any pages. DNS error.

How do I fix a DNS error on my phone? I don't even know how it would have changed.

 

[Kevin Sole]

Leave everything on your previous setup alone. Forget the wireless connection in your phone. Go back in your phone, and get the MAC address then go into the router and set a static IP for your phone. See if that works.

How do I know what to set the static IP as? Assigning a MAC address in the router requires the exclusion of all other devices not listed. Which, if my wifi suddenly starts working is nice, but extremely temporary. I'm not going to be "enabling" a MAC address for everyone's devices in the house.

Understand, I was connecting to the wifi just fine for months, up until 2 weeks ago. I didn't change anything on the router, then, nor on my phone. So I don't understand why this is happening.

 

[rexster314]

How do I know what to set the static IP as? Assigning a MAC address in the router requires the exclusion of all other devices not listed. Which, if my wifi suddenly starts working is nice, but extremely temporary. I'm not going to be "enabling" a MAC address for everyone's devices in the house.

Understand, I was connecting to the wifi just fine for months, up until 2 weeks ago. I didn't change anything on the router, then, nor on my phone. So I don't understand why this is happening.

No it doesn't. Look at your router settings and see what range of IP addresses you have. Then look and see what addresses are not taken by way of DHCP. Somewhere (because I don't know what kind of router you have) in your wireless settings there is a block available to assign a static address. Enable that, enter the numbers in your device and see if it connects. I've done that for printers on my network that don't get along with DHCP and it doesn't bother the rest of my DHCP devices whatsoever.

 

[Kevin Sole]

Well, thank you everyone for your input.

I tried what you were saying, Rexster, but to no results. I ended up restoring the default wireless settings, entering the old wifi name/password and reconnecting ... and miraculously, everything is connected just fine!

Hopefully it stays this way? I don't even know what fixed it. But I'll take it.

Thank you all for trying.