Why does my phone hate the WiFi here?
December 10, 2020 6:39 AM Subscribe
My Android phone hates the WiFi at my brother's house. It's not the WiFi, which works fine on a wide, wide assortment of other devices. So what's the problem?
I've recently moved to my brother's house for the duration of the pandemic, or at least the duration of winter, and I'm finding that everything I brought with me works fine with his WiFi except my Android phone (a Galaxy Note 10+). It will take two or three minutes to load a page, even on sites like Metafilter that are plain text. It just sits there waiting and waiting and then finally loads all at once. This is true even in the early morning hours when no one else is up and using the WiFi, so it isn't a saturation issue. I have Software Update running, and the OS is up to date.
I've recently moved to my brother's house for the duration of the pandemic, or at least the duration of winter, and I'm finding that everything I brought with me works fine with his WiFi except my Android phone (a Galaxy Note 10+). It will take two or three minutes to load a page, even on sites like Metafilter that are plain text. It just sits there waiting and waiting and then finally loads all at once. This is true even in the early morning hours when no one else is up and using the WiFi, so it isn't a saturation issue. I have Software Update running, and the OS is up to date.
How close are you to the Wifi physically when this happens? And, how is your brother's signal? And how long have you had your phone?
I ask because I had a similar problem with the Wifi in my apartment, and my laptop. My work computer can connect fine, and so can both my phones (the Samsung of my own and the iPhone for work). But my personal laptop often had a lot of trouble connecting.
My roommate helped me investigate - he has an app on his phone that detects WiFi signal strength. We noticed that I was having this problem most commonly in my room, which is furthest from the WiFi router - and he checked the signal and noticed that it was REALLY weak. Also, my laptop is a couple years old; older than the other three devices. So our hunch was that even though the signal was weak in my room, the other three newer devices could still pick it up - but my own laptop was just too old to consistently catch it.
We also checked with my Internet carrier - we have Spectrum, but we discovered that they still had me on the original Time Warner system that I'd originally been on when Spectrum bought them out, and if I paid another five bucks each month they could roll me over to the Spectrum package. We did that, and the signal got noticeably better. I can much more reliably connect in my room; the most that happens now is an occasional warning during Zoom calls that "your internet connection is unstable", which resolves itself in a few seconds.
So I'd check how strong the signal is where you're trying to connect, consider the age of your brother's internet account itself, and consider how old your phone is.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:16 AM on December 10, 2020
I ask because I had a similar problem with the Wifi in my apartment, and my laptop. My work computer can connect fine, and so can both my phones (the Samsung of my own and the iPhone for work). But my personal laptop often had a lot of trouble connecting.
My roommate helped me investigate - he has an app on his phone that detects WiFi signal strength. We noticed that I was having this problem most commonly in my room, which is furthest from the WiFi router - and he checked the signal and noticed that it was REALLY weak. Also, my laptop is a couple years old; older than the other three devices. So our hunch was that even though the signal was weak in my room, the other three newer devices could still pick it up - but my own laptop was just too old to consistently catch it.
We also checked with my Internet carrier - we have Spectrum, but we discovered that they still had me on the original Time Warner system that I'd originally been on when Spectrum bought them out, and if I paid another five bucks each month they could roll me over to the Spectrum package. We did that, and the signal got noticeably better. I can much more reliably connect in my room; the most that happens now is an occasional warning during Zoom calls that "your internet connection is unstable", which resolves itself in a few seconds.
So I'd check how strong the signal is where you're trying to connect, consider the age of your brother's internet account itself, and consider how old your phone is.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:16 AM on December 10, 2020
"It just sits there waiting and waiting and then finally loads all at once."
That suggests to me that signal strength and bandwidth are fine, but maybe there's just some broken configuration somewhere....
Like your preferred DNS server is unreachable, and it takes it a minute for your phone to give up on it and fall back on one that works. Or it seems to me I've seen this sort of thing on networks where one of ipv4 or ipv6 was working but the other was broken.
If it were me I'd probably run wireshark and watch the traffic and try to see what's failing.
I realize that's probably not a whole lot of help....
posted by bfields at 8:13 AM on December 10, 2020 [4 favorites]
That suggests to me that signal strength and bandwidth are fine, but maybe there's just some broken configuration somewhere....
Like your preferred DNS server is unreachable, and it takes it a minute for your phone to give up on it and fall back on one that works. Or it seems to me I've seen this sort of thing on networks where one of ipv4 or ipv6 was working but the other was broken.
If it were me I'd probably run wireshark and watch the traffic and try to see what's failing.
I realize that's probably not a whole lot of help....
posted by bfields at 8:13 AM on December 10, 2020 [4 favorites]
I agree with bfields. It sounds like a DNS problem. You could try switching your DNS configuration to something like NextDNS.io to see if that helps.
posted by Poldo at 9:36 AM on December 10, 2020
posted by Poldo at 9:36 AM on December 10, 2020
Is your brother with Comcast? If so, is he using Comcast’s gateway for his wifi? If so, you might actually be connecting through the free hotspot those things broadcast by default. I’ve found it to be pretty awful in terms of performance.
posted by Thorzdad at 2:37 PM on December 10, 2020
posted by Thorzdad at 2:37 PM on December 10, 2020
Response by poster: Changing the DNS hasn't worked, unfortunately.
Not on Comcast - we are in Canada and he has Shaw but runs his own router.
I installed the Ping Tools app, and what it is showing most often is that I have a connection to the router but no connection to the internet from the Router. And then after a variable length of time, that goes away and the connection shows up. But I know other things have internet connections through the same router at the same time because I am constantly actively using them.
posted by jacquilynne at 6:02 PM on December 10, 2020
Not on Comcast - we are in Canada and he has Shaw but runs his own router.
I installed the Ping Tools app, and what it is showing most often is that I have a connection to the router but no connection to the internet from the Router. And then after a variable length of time, that goes away and the connection shows up. But I know other things have internet connections through the same router at the same time because I am constantly actively using them.
posted by jacquilynne at 6:02 PM on December 10, 2020
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You don't mention which band (2.4 Ghz or 5) you are using and your proximity to the router. If you are on the 5, forget that network and try only connecting the the 2.4. 5GHz spectrum is fast, but only in close proximity to the router and with no walls/obstructions in the way. My wife recently had a similar issue and kept asking me to reboot the router. She was connecting to the 5 in a back room behind the chimney stack. After she connected to the 2.4 everything improved. But you need to forget the 5 or your phone may auto join it when it is closer to router and then not switch to the other network.
HTH
posted by terrapin at 6:48 AM on December 10, 2020 [1 favorite]