Samsung smart phone killing broadband speed?

Irish Steve

Have a Samsung smartphone that's WiFi enabled, but in recent times, it's killing the broadband speeds, but it doesn't seem to be transferring massive quantities of data as such, just generating a lot of network activity, which is stressing the (wireless broadband) link device.

I'm thinking that I will have to put Wireshark or similar on to a spare PC and try to work out what the smartphone is actually doing.

Anyone got any thoughts on what the smartphone is doing that would be generating a lot of low volume activity, to save some possibly tedious analysing.

Thanks

Steve

Spear

When you saying killing the broadband speed, is this something visible to other clients? Are those other clients wired or wireless?

Irish Steve

There's a XP based laptop also using the network that's wired (100 Mb) sharing the broadband, and if the Samsung is in full flow, the ping times on the laptop can get as bad as 3 seconds, turn off the Samsung WiFi, and the activity on the wireless router (not the broadband connect device, there's several devices on the net) drops dramatically, and the ping times come back over the next few seconds to a more respectable 30 to 50 Ms.

The network has a Wimax broadband wireless router, which deals with DHCP, and has a single Ethernet connection and local WiFi, the Ethernet goes to an 8 port wired hub in the upstairs office that serves the network printer and then feeds on to a second wired router with WiFi downstairs (DHCP disabled) to provide a better signal strength for wireless operation, and the laptop is wired (100 Mb) to the hub in the upstairs office.

The network has been fine until recent days, the smartphone has been in use for over 6 months, with no significant issues. but in recent days there's been a number of updates on the smartphone, and I am suspecting that one of the updates has changed the way it uses networking, which is now causing problems, but there are quite a few apps on the Smartphone that could be implicated, so reverting to factory settings is going to be a serious pain to do, and even unwinding recent updates won't be easy, as there's no log of recent changes as such, they just happen.

I have spare PC's that could be easily and quickly connected to the hub upstairs in promiscuous mode, so that should see all the packets, and Wireshark or similar should then be capable of capturing the packets from the Samsung, which would mean a way to see which app is talking to the network so heavily, but that's time consuming, and I would be the first to admit to a lack of in depth knowledge of Samsung and Android, so getting to the bottom of the issue could be more complex than if it were an XP or Windows box that was loading the network.

Hope that makes sense

Thanks

Steve

ZENER

My first suggestion would be to change the hub to a switch and reduce the collision domains. Do you get the same problem if the phone is paired to the WiMax wifi instead of the extra AP you have connected to the hub ? Or maybe you're using the term "hub" in the generic sense and actually have a proper switch ?

Does the phones presence on the network effect file transfers between computers on your LAN or just transfers from the internet ?

Ken

Agueroooo

Do you check the I.P's of all connected devices and router(s)

Irish Steve

Grrrrr.........

I can park this for a while, the phone updated at least 4 apps overnight, and while the activity on the wireless router is still the same sorts of levels, the ping time to the net has now reverted to 55 ms, which is what I normally see, so I am guessing that one of those apps has been updated to fix whatever they broke in the last update, normal service has been restored for now.

I am going to be making some changes to the network in the next few weeks, there's a Gigabyte switch due to go in to the mix in the office to support some extra (not present at the moment) hardware, so I will do some investigating when that happens, and I will report back, as I suspect this may be an issue for other users, but I can't afford the time right now to sort this out.

Thanks for the suggestions, they are noted, and will figure in the eventual reconfiguration.

Scartbeg

Keep us updated.

I have almost exactly the same network setup as yourself, just hooked up to a meshed Wifi network rather than WiMax for broadband access. Currently have a Samsung SII and Galaxy Ace using the network. Can't say we have experienced any interference due to these devices yet.

As mentioned above, if it is actually a hub that you have then your phone could have been causing a broadcast storm on the local network. Definitely upgrade to a switch in any case.

Haven't used Wireshark, can recommend Ethereal as a network packet logger.

Irish Steve

Scartbeg wrote: »

Keep us updated.

I have almost exactly the same network setup as yourself, just hooked up to a meshed Wifi network rather than WiMax for broadband access. Currently have a Samsung SII and Galaxy Ace using the network. Can't say we have experienced any interference due to these devices yet.

As mentioned above, if it is actually a hub that you have then your phone could have been causing a broadcast storm on the local network. Definitely upgrade to a switch in any case.

Haven't used Wireshark, can recommend Ethereal as a network packet logger.

Will do, it will be interesting to see where this goes.

AFAIK, Wireshark is effectively the same as Ethereal, just a later version of the same product in all the areas that matter.

steve

Spear

To echo scartbeg somewhat, I don't believe the app updates would be enough to cause an issue. They just wouldn't be that big, or require many connection, most likely just a single HTTP download by TCP.

Irish Steve

i don't think it was the update that was killing the performance, my guess is that a recent update of an app had an unforseen bug that was only affecting it when it was using WiFi, and another update overnight has fixed it, and it is no longer hammering the network in the same way.The router that the WiFi is using is right by the seat I'm using, so I can see the activity from the LED's, and they're nothing like as active as they were, the only change is the update of apps, I've not changed anything else on the smartphone.

It still does connect and there is packet activity, but nothing like the sort of levels that were happening last evening, so on the basis of right now it is no longer broken, I'm not about to try and fix something that appears to have gone away, I could spend a lot of time looking for something that's not happening any more, so unless it goes down again, this issue is parked.

Cheers

Steve