When devices no longer connect to a WIFI router

[NYJimbo]

I've researched this all over the net and of course found answers ranging from the logical to the stupid but nothing has fully resolved this issue.

Sometimes a wifi capable device will stop connecting to an access point (router, hotspot, whatever) where before it connected flawlessly. Other devices will connect perfectly and nothing you try with the "bad" devices can get them to work. Every time the only solution for me was to reset/power cycle the router.

I have had this happen with laptops, cell phones, printers, you name it.

Good example this past week. I was visiting friends on the east end of Long Island and brought all my crap, including a ROKU 3 which my friends are interested in getting. The first 3 days every device was connecting fine. On the fourth day three of them could not connect.

Devices were:

1) dell laptop with windows 10 - dell wifi card
2) asus netbook with windows 10 - external usb wifi antennae and internal atheros wifi card
3) Kindle Fire 7 HDX - fire os 4.5.5.1
4) Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime- android 5.1.1
5) Roku 3 with latest o/s build

On wednesday devices 1,2 and 4 could not connect. No matter what I did, and I
mean every possible reset, reconfig (every possible config option in device manager for laptops wifis), forget, update, etc did not help. Also on the laptops I swapped out the wifi card on #1 with a different brand AND tried two different USB wifi devices with different chipsets/mac addresses.

NOTHING worked until I reset the router and then everything worked fine again.

So, without typing every detail, it appears as if the ROUTER does something arbitrarily and makes certain devices unable to connect until the router is reset. BUT I can reboot, reload, reset, update, etc other devices and they will still connect flawlessly to that "bad" router. Some people think it might be the router is locking IP addresses to a mac address, but replacing wifi devices (in laptops) should provide new mac addresses and even attempting to force low number static ip's on the laaptps didnt help.

Does anyone know what is going on when a scenario like this happens ? Is there a way to get the router to re-accept the device without having to reboot the router ? I just dont think this is device related since they all go out at the same time and only a router reboot clears it.

 

[fencepost]

It's going to depend a lot on the router, but for most of them a reboot is the only way.

What's happening is that internally most consumer (and business?) routers are running some version of Linux or another *nix (e.g. FreeBSD) with specific software loaded and a browser-based UI on top of that. For example, I believe a lot of Netgear home routers are based on Netgear's fork of an old version of OpenWRT, but they're not using LuCI, they have their own home-built web UI.

If one of the pieces of software such as the firewall or routing gets into an incorrect state, there's no way through the interface to actually correct it or reset/reload just that piece. If you have a shell login you may be able to force that component to reload, but that's about the extent of it.

I used to have problems with Linksys RV042 VPNs dropping between a couple of sites - the way to reset it there was to have two VPNs defined but one of them disabled. When that VPN dropped but I didn't want to reboot the main office router, I'd disable one VPN then enable the other, which effectively flushed the (in)appropriate information. Fortunately we only have a couple of very small sites still using those at this point.

 

[Diggs]

Router details please?

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

I notice it quite often with lower end gear (typically residential grade routers 'n wireless gear)...and I figure it's due to lower resources on the cheaper hardware. More humble CPU, smaller amounts of RAM...thus smaller state tables they can maintain. Don't notice it nearly as much on biz grade network hardware.

I really used to hate the 2Wire gateways from years ago, that SBC/Yahoo used. Ugh..those were horrible. And sometimes they're just stop letting some other device connect....period. No matter what you did.

 

[Larry Sabo]

I feel your pain, and frustration. My TP-Link router goes stupid ever couple days and needs to be powered off/on to fix things. Ethernet connections always work fine but wireless devices (laptop, cell phone) can usually see the SSID but not connect. Sometimes, the wireless just stops broadcasting altogether. I'm trying a few suggestions offered by TP-Link but if the problem continues, it's time for a new modem/router. Just another of life's mysteries.

 

[NYJimbo]

Router details please?

No specific router. It has happened with Verizon supplied routers as well as Optimum routers, diff brands. I have seen this quite a few times so its probably something about a handshake or some kind of router QOS downgrade or something.

 

[NYJimbo]

If one of the pieces of software such as the firewall or routing gets into an incorrect state, there's no way through the interface to actually correct it or reset/reload just that piece..

Make sense, but it bugs me that SOME of the devices seem to be happy to keep connecting. So what went wrong where only some devices can connect ? I could understand if it was older devices, but something like an android phone running pretty much the latest o/s you would think it would connect.

I wish I could find a USB wifi device that was impervious to whatever goes wrong here so I could use that to connect a laptop, but I dont know what I am chasing right now.

 

[Defender]

"NOTHING worked until I reset the router and then everything worked fine again."
Did you try updating the router firmware? Is it possible that you have a 2.4GHz device that is interfering with the router broadcast?

 

[Markverhyden]

Usually when I run into a situation like this the router is old and on the way out. It's happened a couple of time to me over the years. The only thing I did was put in a new router and problems went away. But I will say that I've had absolutely no problems with wifi since I've put in a Ubiquity AP.

 

[Moltuae]

Back when I used to do residential work, I had issues like this frequently, with various makes and models of home routers.

One 'solution' I found was to use Belkin routers, not because they were good routers but because the had a built-in work-around for their buggyness. Belkin listed it as a router "Health" feature. It was in fact simply a reboot scheduler that allowed the router to be restarted every night.

It's almost as if they knew they were releasing buggy routers but figured it was simpler to add this feature than attempt to fix the bugs:

 

[Larry Sabo]

It was in fact simply a reboot scheduler that allowed the router to be restarted every night.

Ha, a marketing plus! I tried my own--a lamp timer that turned the power bar into which I plug my router/modem off/on in the middle of the night. Unfortunately, it didn't help.

 

[trevm999]

I've seen it where the AP wouldn't let the device connect to a certain IP on the network until the AP was power cycled. I've only seen the problem with consumer equipment.

I used to have my AP at home on an outlet timer so it would restart every night. Now I'm using a Meraki AP

 

[Digital Micro]

I feel your pain, and frustration. My TP-Link router goes stupid ever couple days and needs to be powered off/on to fix things. Ethernet connections always work fine but wireless devices (laptop, cell phone) can usually see the SSID but not connect. Sometimes, the wireless just stops broadcasting altogether. I'm trying a few suggestions offered by TP-Link but if the problem continues, it's time for a new modem/router. Just another of life's mysteries.

I use to resell TP-Link because they were very stable. Then shortly after the AC routers came out everyone I installed did that. It was across three different models, and not the low end ones. I've switched to Linksys for when I don't use a Sonicwall.

 

[Digital Micro]

No specific router. It has happened with Verizon supplied routers as well as Optimum routers, diff brands. I have seen this quite a few times so its probably something about a handshake or some kind of router QOS downgrade or something.

At my house I use a Linksys LRT214 router and Linksys LAPN600 access point. Everything work fine with no problems. If my nephew comes over and connects his Samsung tablet I have to always reboot within 30 minutes. After that no problems. That's the only time it does that.

 

[Larry Sabo]

@DM Micro, thanks for that. I won't be buying a TP-Link again, if I can avoid it. Weird how little choice there is in residential DSL modems though--just TP-Link, D-Link and Netgear usually around here and the latter two don't inspire much confidence either.

 

[fencepost]

I have one a little more entertaining - my home router is running OpenWRT and I may at some point have tweaked the WiFi settings. In any case, when I was trying out a Windows Phone on T-Mobile, if the WiFi Calling feature was enabled on the phone it would lock up hard until it was disconnected from WiFi (by distance or by changing the SSID temporarily). Rebooting didn't help, because as soon as the WiFi came up... boom.

I actually do use that phone still, but with no SIM card - it's a handy device for streaming audio, listening to podcasts and checking the news because I don't really care if I run the battery down in it.

 

[Digital Micro]

Usually when I run into a situation like this the router is old and on the way out. It's happened a couple of time to me over the years. The only thing I did was put in a new router and problems went away. But I will say that I've had absolutely no problems with wifi since I've put in a Ubiquity AP.

Every time I have run across a Ubiquity AP it has problems. Just this week I got called to look at one. The business moved from DSL to Cable and the new manager wasn't happy because on the 5GHz she only got 50 down with her phone. In my mind I am think is this really a concern for you? So I checked the firmware and reconfigured. Same thing, 3 up and 50 down. I connected a Linksys LAPN600 and got 11 up and 100 down. So Friday I am replacing the Ubiquity just for her phone.

 

[fencepost]

Was the Ubiquiti AP 100MBit instead of Gigabit? Because I could see that accounting for numbers like that....

Also, was it one of the "Long Range" models? Those may have some tweaks to increase range at a cost in speed.

 

[Digital Micro]

Was the Ubiquiti AP 100MBit instead of Gigabit? Because I could see that accounting for numbers like that....

Also, was it one of the "Long Range" models? Those may have some tweaks to increase range at a cost in speed.

I don't remember which version it was. I do know it has the newer logo on the front.

 

[TAPtech]

Jimbo,

Are you saying that you've tried adding a different NIC, such as a USB wifi dongle or something, and the device still will not connect until the router is rebooted?