Tinfoil hats at the ready... I have an orange livebox router which gives decent speed when connected to any number of laptops and tablets.
Often, my phone (Android and iPhone both do it) fails to load webpages, videos,voip etc and I have to switch to 4G thus consuming the data plan. Tablet would still be working fine. Happens even with nothing else connected. Phone works fine on other WiFi networks.
Is this a thing? ASFAIK Orange can remotely access the router for fw updates and diagnostics, surely it’s not beyond their ken to force me into buying a data top up?
Something I have noticed with phone wifi recently is that as I move around the house there are some rooms where pages won't load even though the reception is still good.
If I force it to reconnect (by turning Airplane mode on, wait a second or two, then off again) then it works fine.
The router is dual frequency, as most are these days, with a standard 2.4GHz signal and the faster but less penetrating 5GHz signal.
My unproven hypothesis is that the phone is not automatically hopping onto the 2.4GHz signal promptly when it struggles to get response on the 5GHz. Reconnecting forces it to do so.
Could well be something like that ^^^
What tablet is it, 2.4Ghz only?
Most likely explanation is that your Orange router is just shit tbh.
That sounds like exactly it tbh. Was hoping for a conspiracy!
No doubt the orange router is shit, with WFH on the horizon again (teacher so 5 hours of zoom classes a day) maybe worth reading one of the many Nest WiFi threads...
Can my router be programmed to hamper phone WiFi?
If there was a router that could hamper phone wifi and also block phone 4G data as well, i'd buy it.
It'd make managing difficult teenagers much easier
Exactly that. My nephew came to stay for the weekend a few years ago (we did an adventure race together) and I was advised that he would try and watch videos all night on his phone. He asked for the WiFi key and I made sure his MAC was QoS'd to 64k. Then I felt bad and upped it to 128k, because I'm not a monster and he should not have to cope with dial-up. ISDN is fine though.
I'd probably check your line speed before going out and buying anything else. You'll need something on one of the ethernet ports to do it right, perhaps a laptop. Disbale wifi on same.
See if the management page gives you a 'sync speed' or similar, note that, and then get everyone to stop using the internet for 5 mins. Then from the laptop, run a speed test from speedtest.net
[i]If there was a router that could hamper phone wifi and also block phone 4G data as well, i’d buy it.[/i]
This Orange router does not transmit 4G or wifi - yours for £99.99 plus postage
I’d probably check your line speed before going out and buying anything else. You’ll need something on one of the ethernet ports to do it right, perhaps a laptop. Disbale wifi on same
90 down, laptop via ethernet
7-and-a-bit down, mobile via wifi (next to router)
10 down, laptop via wifi
New router time?
I run my phone on the 5ghz frequency in the house as the 2.4 is crap.
For routers that have both a 2.4ghz and 5 ghz wifi frequency it is worth turning off the feature that broadcasts both on the same SSID and supposedly steers your devices to the fastest frequency automatically, it rarely works well, and you end up with glitches as described above.
Far better to have the router broadcasting two seperate wifi SSIDs , name one xxxxxxx2.4ghz and the other xxxxxx5ghx, then you can choose which is best .
Most routers support splitting the WIFI networks in this way in the settings.
Anything Bluetooth kicking about.
I have a cheap Bluetooth adaptor I bought to get my speakers hooked up to the stereo in the garage.
If that's on- I can be connected to the WiFi with my phone but nothing will load
it's one of those things where, because the ISP always sends you a free WiFi router, you struggle on with it even though (to save them money) they're invariably shit and for a modest outlay you can get something 100 times better! As homes get more and more WiFi devices though and more people are WFH and need better/more reliable networks it might be worth thinking about upgrading to a proper setup.For routers that have both a 2.4ghz and 5 ghz wifi frequency it is worth turning off the feature that broadcasts both on the same SSID and supposedly steers your devices to the fastest frequency automatically, it rarely works well, and you end up with glitches as described above.
If you haven't got one try installing a WIFI Analyser on your phone. This will give you some idea about signal strengths in the various rooms and, probably more important, Wi-Fi channel overlaps.
Fun story - my home office is on the side of the house by our boundary with the neighbours (my 1 year working from home anniversary is coming up soon!), just before Xmas we had someone new move in and then my Wi-Fi connection became slow and flaky soon afterwards. Running the analyser showed that their 5Ghz Wi-Fi was sitting on the same channel as mine and as I was now closer to their router then my own... A quick reconfigure of the router moved my Wi-Fi to an unused channel and it's been fine ever since.
the ISP always sends you a free WiFi router, you struggle on with it
To be fair I'm with Zen and the router they supply is an AVM Fritz!box and it's actually pretty good.
After pratting around with various things (wifi repeaters, different router settings, moving things around etc) I ended up spending £100 on a TP-Link Deco mesh setup and it's been almost faultless since. See the MESH thread for so much discussion around this. I wish I had done it months and months ago!
Thanks all. So it wasn't the man screwing me for more dough... drat.
I'll order a decent router, don't need repeaters as my flat is 60m2
