Droid is wrecking my home wireless connection

[m0nk666]

Can you try running it without WPA2 and instead just WPA .. I've had "weird" issues in the past with my router ( not the same make btw) but found when I switched from WPA2 to WPA, it seemed to sort some issues out. Worth a shot.

Regards

 

[jamo]

Everything seems to be working fine, again for now. If things don't mess up, I'll just keep riding the wave. If it messes up, I guess I'll try going to WPA, instead of WPA2. Also, how can I know what channel to go with, if I switch from default to a specific one? You guys are a huge help!

 

[jamo]

All right, scratch that. So, here's the checklist I've followed of things that haven't worked:

Setting Static IP on Droid
Using just G Band
Factory reset of Router
Turning off all security settings

I guess next thing I'll try is using WPA instead of WPA2 security. Good lord...

 

[kennyidaho]

There is actually an app for Android called Wifi Analyzer that will show you graphically which channels are the clearest around you.

 

[Sportster]

Router problems are such a major pain. I play WoW and if I attempt anything using my laptop concerning WoW, even just a simple update, the stupid router locks up and I need to go in the basement and reboot the thing. Good luck with this.

 

[jamo]

I just dled WiFi analyzer and it shows that the channels I'm using (1-4) are totally open in my neighborhood. So...we can check that off the list. I'm running out of options here

 

[m0nk666]

Everything seems to be working fine, again for now. If things don't mess up, I'll just keep riding the wave. If it messes up, I guess I'll try going to WPA, instead of WPA2. Also, how can I know what channel to go with, if I switch from default to a specific one? You guys are a huge help!

As Kennyidaho said, use the WiFi Analyzer tool to see which channels are free .. although if you state its using "auto", chances are that it is looking for the clearest channels when you reboot the router anyway .. Still its worth a shot.

Good luck troubleshooting .. and dont give up on the droid

Regards

 

[johnlgalt]

Indeed - sometimes it is unclear as to the real reason of the issue, - it could be the router firmware, it could be a very minor setting that is interfering, and it could be the DROID itself.

As I mentioned earlier, I have had no issues since I switched to G only on my router - it connects and stays connected, speeds are fantastic - for example, I just got this from my computer:



but this from my OC'd DROID:

.

Here is an Screen cap of it:

 

[johnlgalt]

It's weird how the screen cap is showing slightly different values than the image from Speedtest....

 

[SteveRyan]

I just dled WiFi analyzer and it shows that the channels I'm using (1-4) are totally open in my neighborhood. So...we can check that off the list. I'm running out of options here

That looks to be a brand new router. There is no reason why you should have to re-boot or update software or anything like that.

First, I would call Linksys customer support and have them take a look at it. They may be able to tweak the settings. Because your router is fairly new, its probably still under their free customer support time frame. If not, they will ask you to pay $29 for 1 time assistance, or $39 for 6 months of unlimited assistance. Linksys 1-800-326-7114.

Also, they may try to sell you a software upgrade; I dont think this will be necessary. im guessing that if they cannot solve the problem, then you have an internal Droid issue.

 

[jamo]

Yeah, I can check WPA2 problems off the list. Just like normal, everything worked for 10 mins. or so, and then I lost all connections. Man...

 

[kennyidaho]

That looks to be a brand new router. There is no reason why you should have to re-boot or update software or anything like that.

Well there is a firmware update for the system so clearly there is a need. Also rebooting a router has nothing to do with it's age. A router is basically a computer and issues can crop up that can be simply fixed by rebooting it. Often routers with low amounts of memory such as the OP's have issues. Because the router has a low amount of system memory available to it it often can choke up when asked to do to much.

First, I would call Linksys customer support and have them take a look at it. They may be able to tweak the settings. Because your router is fairly new, its probably still under their free customer support time frame. If not, they will ask you to pay $29 for 1 time assistance, or $39 for 6 months of unlimited assistance. Linksys 1-800-326-7114.

For that much money he could go by a better router that has a bit more memory and probably able to handle a higher demand. Go looking around on the net you'll find that the OP's router has issues. V2 of this router (which the OP has) has only 8MB of system memory versus 32MB which V1 had.

Also, they may try to sell you a software upgrade; I dont think this will be necessary. im guessing that if they cannot solve the problem, then you have an internal Droid issue.

Sale him a software upgrade for a router? Do you even know what you are talking about? They provide the latest firmware available for free and the OP has already installed it.

Internal Droid issue? Really explain to me what could be internally wrong with is Droid that is causing his router to choke up? His router is still keeping the connection to all the devices in the house - it's just failing to provide any sort of data to them. It sounds like to me that the router is having difficulty keeping up with demand. It's possible that perhaps how the Droid sends requests could be the cause but in that case it's going to be specific to all Droids.

 

[kennyidaho]

At this point I think you need to really start narrowing it down. You need to start off by just connecting your Droid and nothing else. If that works then connect another device if that works connect another device and so on. Try different combinations to..maybe start with your laptop and then your Droid.

This will help narrow it down to it being a problem with the Droid or possibly something with the router. There is also a high possibility that there is an IP conflict somewhere. Have you double checked that the IP addressed assigned to the Droid is not being used by any other device.

 

[Hangdog42]

Want a good piece of advice? Go find a router that supports custom firmware like DD-WRT or tomato and stop the cycle of users blaming their devices instead of blaming the router.

+1

There is no reason that a decent router can't handle any device connected to it. I've been running Tomato on my Linksys WRT54GL and it handles any device I throw at it, my Droid included. Changing all of your networks configurations aren't doing any good, which to my way of thinking suggests you got a bum router.

 

[jamo]

Ok guys, so it seems like it's not going to stop doing it no matter what I try. Any recommendations on wireless routers that won't screw up? Appreciate the assistance!

 

[messenger13]

I Googled that router's model number and got pages and pages of people with issues that couldn't connect to laptops, smartphones, Wii's, XBoxes, PS3s, and so on. Sometimes, things just DON'T WORK together. Accept it and move on. One of the biggest fallacies today is that "everything should work together". Well ... experience teaches us otherwise.

Three choices ... pick one.
A - Buy a new router
B - Buy a different phone.
C - Don't use WiFi at home.


One last question ... what happens if you turn every host (wired & wireless) OFF that goes through that router, and just connect the DROID to it? (I just saw that kennyidaho asked the same thing. Did you try it?)

 

[Hangdog42]

Ok guys, so it seems like it's not going to stop doing it no matter what I try. Any recommendations on wireless routers that won't screw up? Appreciate the assistance!

Check out some of the routers that work with Tomato. installing 3rd party firmware isn't without risk, but I've found it turns a pretty vanilla router into quite a capable beast. You could also check out the DD-WRT supported devices page.

Sometimes, things just DON'T WORK together. Accept it and move on. One of the biggest fallacies today is that "everything should work together". Well ... experience teaches us otherwise.

I'm going to respectuflly quibble with this just a bit. One of the issues I see over and over is people buying the absolute cheapest kit they can find without thinking about how it is going to be used. Jamo has a lot of gear connected to this router and I suspect kennyidaho nailed it: The router just doesn't have the guts to deal with it. 8MB is not a lot of memory for a router. TCP/IP and 802.11 a/b/g/n are pretty understood standards, and I can't think of any way to screw it up so that it only causes problems in specific instances. If this really was a problem with the Droid, EVERYONE would have the problem.

 

[messenger13]

I'm going to respectuflly quibble with this just a bit. One of the issues I see over and over is people buying the absolute cheapest kit they can find without thinking about how it is going to be used. Jamo has a lot of gear connected to this router and I suspect kennyidaho nailed it: The router just doesn't have the guts to deal with it. 8MB is not a lot of memory for a router. TCP/IP and 802.11 a/b/g/n are pretty understood standards, and I can't think of any way to screw it up so that it only causes problems in specific instances. If this really was a problem with the Droid, EVERYONE would have the problem.

You can quibble all you want. Linksys makes half decent routers/WAPs for home use. But the fact is, some of them are just NOT compatible with certain other pieces of gear. The XBox, Wii, and PS2/3 forums are riddled with these issues. If you Google "My router can't connect", you get 3.6 MILLION hits. OK, half the time it's user-error. But the other half, I'm not so sure about.

"The router just doesn't have the guts to deal with it." Naw. I've seen people (cheap business owners) buy a $50 wireless router for their establishment and run 20 hosts thru it ... no problem.

(As a side note, I'm a Cisco guy so I know a leetle about switches, routers, gateways, WAPs, etc.. This morning, I had a TCP/IP stack of waffles for breakfast. )

 

[Droidophile]

Wireless is wierd my friend, here's a few more things to try:

• Get router out of basement. Too many utilities, water pipes, wires, that can cause wireless Radio Reflections, etc. This phenomenon will actually allow you to connect but when data transfer begins all hell breaks loose. Remember location is everything for the best wireless signal. Line of sight is best. Not through walls and pipes and appliances, etc.
• Disable Auto Channel and use either 1, 6, or 11. Never any other. The channels in between cross-over with each other's frequencies.
• For a test, shut off all wireless telephones. Pull the batteries. Even DECT 2.0 and 900mhz phones have been known to bleed and foul up wireless. (Thanks Uniden and V-tech)
• Disable all bluetooth devices and shut off their respective radios. All of them (PCs, Phones, Droid, Laptops, Headsets, Wii, etc) BT uses 2.4 ghz. Get that variable out of the picture for now.
• Disable all other wireless devices but your Droid and only try to connect that for now.
• WPA2 is messy with equipment. Not sure why. You think it would be the best. Use WPA.

Those are a few things I can think of at moment. No coffee yet....

I use a WRT54GL with Tomato here. You simply can't get a better rig for the price. It works so nice. Everything connects every time.

 

[Fadikine]

What type of apps are you using on your droid? I noticed that VLC remote seemed to kill my connections on my router because it started issuing multicasts that seemed to bring my network to a hault when I tried streaming a video through VLC. It is possible that your router is just running into too many requests and packets at once.

 

[johnlgalt]

Hmmm - a lot of stuff going on here, and a lot of good advice - but you still need to get back to basics.

1) connect only the DROID, disconnect everything, clear all info in the logs, and clear all statistics - run it like that for at least 24 hours to see how things work. After 24 hours look at the log and see if you have a lot of connection drops inside your network - and look at the statistics to see if you have a lot of errors / dropped packets. If so, your DROID is not playing nicely with your router, and is most likely the root of the problem. (Which reminds me - it may be something as simple as disabling multi-casting, if your router supports that as a toggleable option). In this case you'll need to check out the advanced settings of the router and figure out where it is not playing nicely with the DROID, what setting / group of settings is not being nice.

This is not something that you can hope to achieve in 5 minutes, or even 5 hours - so, don't think that you can take shortcuts - you need a good solid day's worth of benchmarks to see if it is really having issues or not - it may be (partially) related to the type of connection your have, in that your DROID will work OK during nighttime hours but choke when the Internet has a lot of traffic (i.e. daytime).

Once you have established that the DROID is working with the settings you have piked, then your next step is to add ONE more device, clear logs and stats, and test again for 24 hours. Then you'll go back and check logs and stats again for discrepancies.

Oh, and you have to realize another thing as well - just giving up and going out and buying a new router is not necessarily going to fix your problem. It would be wise to troubleshoot this issue yourself fully to make sure that it is not a setting / group of settings - because if it is, and you go out and buy a new router later on, and it has the same settings enabled, you'll be in trouble all over again.

 

[cdodge]

Want a good piece of advice? Go find a router that supports custom firmware like DD-WRT or tomato and stop the cycle of users blaming their devices instead of blaming the router.

I had 2 routers that supported DD-WRT and one bricked as a result from flashing their firmware and i gave up on them and bought the WNDR3700 as it has a faster proc than the linksys models i was using. the netgear also has DLNA support which i liked.

I have the latest firmware to.

I would blame the router but since the droid crashes 2 different routers i connect to its hard to blame the routers.

On a good note mine does not crash the router all that often and after i rooted it and put on sholes rom i cant recall it happening lately.

 

[johnlgalt]

I can't count the number of issues I had with my D-Link DGL-4500 - too numerous to list, but they were certainly router related.

Since getting the DROID, I has some issues with it (after an in warranty replacement of my 4500) but after I saw the thread about the 4500 and Wireless G and N versus G only, I made the switch, and now both devices are happily screaming along.

 

[MicroNix]

... but my Ipod Touch has never had any problems like this, and I really want to like Android!

I must say that my Droid has been near perfect on always nailing my wifi whereas my iPod Touch 50% of the time required me to actually go into the wifi settings and tap the name of my wifi network which was just sitting there ready to go! Funny how technology works, huh? Using a DLink DI-634M router.

 

[SteveRyan]

For that much money he could go by a better router that has a bit more memory and probably able to handle a higher demand.

All that for $40? Good luck. Maybe a refurbished one from E-bay....

Im not suggesting that he spend money on the technical support anyway.... Im just letting him know what might happen during the phone call.

Sale him a software upgrade for a router? Do you even know what you are talking about? They provide the latest firmware available for free and the OP has already installed it.

The software upgrade is the firmware upgrade. What they try to do is sell you their 6 month unlimited technical support plan, but they tell you that they are selling you a software upgrade that comes with 6 months of unlimited technical support.

Besides, the OP's issue isnt something thats gonna be solved with a firmware update. Its the same kind of stuff that everyone else is going through who has WiFi issues with their Droid.

Internal Droid issue? Really explain to me what could be internally wrong with is Droid that is causing his router to choke up? His router is still keeping the connection to all the devices in the house - it's just failing to provide any sort of data to them.

I dont know if you are aware of this, but there are numerous well known Droid issues regarding WiFi that have nothing to do with the router. If you disagree, maybe you should go over to the Motorola support forum and solve their 64 page thread with over 950 replies that the admin is ignoring.

Go ahead...chime in.

https://supportforums.motorola.com/thread/16191?tstart=60

In many cases, the router is to blame. In others, the Droid is causing the problems.

Regardless, if I was having the problem that the OP is going through, the very first thing I would do is call Linksys. When he bought the router, it came with free technical support. If the free support had expired, then I would end the call and try another route.