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Help Weird Wifi issue shuts down internet

Psychocub

Lurker
Mar 28, 2016
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Hey Everyone,
So I have a LG G4 running on Android 6.0. It is not rooted. The problem I have been having with it is kinda weird. I have run into this problem 4 times now over the course of 5 days. At some point if you turn on Wifi on the phone, it kills any wifi connection to the router.(laptops, desktops and of course the phone) When you shut wifi off on the phone, the internet connection resumes as normal. Now I would have thought it was some kind of interference issue, but then I reset the phone to factory settings. Wifi on the phone and throughout the house works perfectly. I have reset the phone 4 times now due to this issue, and the phone will work normally for 1-2 days and then the problem comes back. 2 times it happened after downloading programs from the play store.(word 1 time and some game). Is this some bad Wifi update or something?
 
Welcome to our AndroidForums, @Psychocub...

Wow, that is very odd indeed :eek: :thinking:...

I think the first thing I'd look at would be the event logs on the router itself to see what it might be recording / reporting (you may have to enable logging first on the router--the means to do that are I'm pretty sure router-specific so I'm not sure if I could instruct you on how to do that for your router).
 
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Thanks for the responses!
@svim No hotspot/tethering going on, I checked that when it had the issue. I have a Westell router that assigns ips automatically.
@scary alien I just checked the log file on the router and it doesn't report any abnormalities. The thing is when it's having the issue, the internet slows to a crawl on the laptops in the house. Shut off the wifi on the phone it resumes normally. Do a factory reset (without a router reboot) and internet works perfectly on the phone and the laptops. It does the same thing at work when it has this issue as well on a differently branded router.
 
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It does the same thing at work when it has this issue as well on a differently branded router.
Well crap, that was going to be my next question, if this happens elsewhere. Also, it's really strange nothing out of sorts is showing up in your router's log.

Doing a quick search apparently Marshmallow allows you to change WiFi frequency bands. I don't think that's what is going on here but maybe worth messing with, the setting is in the WiFi Advanced menu.

If you feel up to a little project, a last resort recommendation is to install 'Wireshark' on a computer or laptop that's also connected to your home network. It's can dig pretty deep into your network traffic so note it can touch on some privacy issues for others connected to your household network. Anyway, turn off WiFi on your G4, install the program on a computer (available for several operating systems), start it up, and start a Capture. There will be a window with all kinds of network traffic flashing through it. Now turn on WiFi on your phone. Several entries specific to the assigned IP address of your phone will start showing up, at the point where your WiFi network goes down, there will be notations showing in Wireshark's window. Turn off WiFi in your G4 and when your WiFi network comes back up at that point you can stop the Capture, but don't close up Wireshark, you want to examine the table of data Wireshark collected, especially the points where you enabled your G4's WiFi and then disabled it.
https://www.wireshark.org/
http://www.howtogeek.com/104278/how-to-use-wireshark-to-capture-filter-and-inspect-packets/
 
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Re. the "wifi jammer" thing, I was going to suggest last night that it might be an app (which I will not name) that does exactly that.

However, it usually just shuts down a single connection and not a whole router.

Also, if you're not rooted and you've done a factory reset, it doesn't sound like it could be your device that's responsible for this via that router.
 
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I had a similarly weird wifi situation a while back. All of a sudden I'd lose connectivity across my entire network to the point that I had thought my ISP was having issues. When I called them I discovered that I was maxing out my upload bandwidth with Google trying to copy some movies I had on an SD card in an old tablet ... several GB worth. And, while it was copying the single 3.7 GB file, the entire network became unresponsive. If the upload wasn't complete, Google sync would try again later and start from the beginning.

It was a real head-scratcher for a while, but by removing the folders with huge media from the sync options, problem solved.
 
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I've had similar issues since my first smartphone in 2010 (EVO 4G).

As my devices grew on wifi (Desktop, laptop, 2 tablets, mulitiple phones etc), there is always something that gets "kicked off" the wifi once in a while. I usually reboot the router and it fixes the issue. We do stream alot with Netflix, Amazon Prime, Google Cast and some other apps I cannot mention here :)
 
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