How do I troubleshoot/analyze this wifi problem?

October 28, 2022 10:50 AM

My wifi is intermittent, getting worse. My geek intuition is that it's a problem with my service (Optimum, Brooklyn NY) but I'd like to figure out a way to actually know whether it's my router or my service.

Router is a 6 year old NETGEAR AC1750. The behavior these days is intermittent drops, for a few minutes at a time, a handful of times a day. When it goes both my laptop and phone keep the wifi signal but lose internet connection. I have an ethernet setup I can get together somewhat quickly to run cable from either the router or the modem, which would help narrow this down, but often by the time I've got it plugged in the wifi is back and working.

Ideally I'd have some kind of device or app (on the router?) that can track whether it has internet access throughout the day. If it was plugged into the modem it would tell me if the modem/service is going; if it was plugged into the router it could tell me if it was the router.

Any ideas? Open to any/all analysis suggestions of what is going on; my ability to reason about this is hobbled somewhat by my lack of knowledge on for instance wifi interference, wifi failure states etc. I am in a somewhat dense neighborhood so maybe interference is a factor?

posted by wemayfreeze to Technology (9 answers total)

It could be your router. I had an old Netgear router that I had to reset every 3-4 months because it just plain froze or forgot its own settings. I've taken to installing a remote on/off switch so I can reboot it more easily. Eventually I replaced it altogether, but that's a different story.
posted by kschang at 10:56 AM on October 28, 2022

Can you hook up your laptop directly to the router for a longer period and test ethernet speed? If a wired connection reports good consistent speeds vs wifi, then it's the wifi and not your service. But I'd say a 6-year-old router is due for replacement.

[edit]: changed thoughts on routers
posted by AzraelBrown at 11:17 AM on October 28, 2022 [1 favorite]

A first step (but not the last) would be to get a wifi analyzer program (I've used Wifiman (Android) and Wifi Explorer Lite (Mac) but there are many others) and check how bad the wifi reception is at the place where you use your devices.

Your wifi network should be at the top of the list (good reception). If it is near the bottom (bad reception / lots of other networks), it is more likely to have interference with all the other wifi networks using the same channel, and you need to switch channels, move your access point, get a repeater, switch to a mesh network, or switch to the 5Ghz network. If it is at the top, it's less likely to be wifi-related (but it's still possible your access point has intermittent problems, but unrelated to other people's networks).
posted by meowzilla at 11:34 AM on October 28, 2022 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Heya great thoughts all, thank you!

- I'll try resetting!
- Wifi Explorer shows my networks are plenty strong. I'll open it up again next time my connection drops and see if that changes
- I can hook lappy direct to ethernet (modem or router) for longer. Is there an app I can use that would track internet connectivity over time? I'd be happy to leave the laptop plugged in if it meant I would end up with a chart that I could point at and be like, "here internet bad, ISP fault". I'm on MacOS though comfortable enough on the command line to use if there's a cli tool for this
posted by wemayfreeze at 12:05 PM on October 28, 2022

It might be interference, but also sometimes those smaller electronics just cook themselves. Like, does it have a lot of good air circulation, or is it dusty and tucked away where the heat builds up? Especially because it works for a while then doesn't, then does, then doesn't in a cycle -- that feels like heating up to a failure point. Routers are not that expensive these days: fifty bucks will get you something that works dandy, and should last you another five years. That's like 80 cents a month, which is a good deal even to a cheapskate like me.

Whether you live in a building or a neighborhood, it might be the physical plant (cabling) or it might be a device in that path, too. Do you have neighbors you can ask whether they are also having trouble?
posted by wenestvedt at 1:08 PM on October 28, 2022 [1 favorite]

- thing to test connectivity: it's hard to do a really good job, but just running 'ping 8.8.8.8' on the command line will often do a remarkably good job of showing a bad or flaky connection. You can hit control-C to stop the ping and see what your stats have been.
- concur with wenestvedt . I've run in to a lot of cases where wifi routers just wear out over time. I suspect it may be the wall wart (power supply) going, or it may be the wifi chipset.
posted by wotsac at 6:05 PM on October 28, 2022 [3 favorites]

I can't help with analyzing the problem, but I can add that I was having a similar problem with Optimum here in Fairfield Cty, CT, and it was fixed by a $50 router.
posted by SemiSalt at 6:26 AM on October 29, 2022 [1 favorite]

Page 138 of your Netgear AC1750's user manual shows you how to check the router log. It would be worth having a read through that on a day when your service has been spotty and look for internet connection and disconnection events; if you find a lot of those and their timing makes sense to you, then you need to be working with your ISP to resolve that rather than trying increasingly expensive shots in the dark on the LAN side.
posted by flabdablet at 8:17 AM on October 29, 2022 [2 favorites]

just running 'ping 8.8.8.8' on the command line will often do a remarkably good job of showing a bad or flaky connection. You can hit control-C to stop the ping and see what your stats have been.

Simultaneously running 'ping 192.168.1.1' (or whatever IP address your router gives itself on the LAN) in a second Terminal window will let you compare LAN packet loss rates over time against those you're getting for 8.8.8.8, which is indeed a should-be-reliable WAN ping target.

If the WAN packet loss rate is notably worse than the LAN packet loss rate over a period of ten minutes or so, it's time to raise an eyebrow in your ISP's direction. If they're about the same, you're probably looking at a LAN issue. A decent wifi LAN should yield packet loss rates well under 1%; gigabit Ethernet should lose maybe one ping response per month.

Ping packet loss rates over about 3% will cause massive slowdowns for any application running over TCP connections, which includes almost all web traffic.
posted by flabdablet at 10:07 AM on October 29, 2022 [1 favorite]