Fritz!Box Proximity Issues

Tri Oidhcheannan Eile

Hi, folks,

Environment: We live in a second-floor one-bed apartment. Essentially, the living room/kitchen and bedroom are adjacent and the bathroom and hall are "behind" these two rooms. The phone point (with the Fritz!Box) is in the living room, centrally-located within the entire apartment.

Devices: Alcatel One, iPhone X and Samsung Galaxy Tablet.

Neither phone has a problem maintaining a connection with the router. The tablet, however, is a whole other nightmare: if it is within eyeline of the router (and that seems to be the important bit) it'll either consistently drop connection, connect with no internet, connect but won't authenticate or connect but won't be assigned an IP.

In order of level of horrendousness trying to rectify this:

o Disconnecting/reconnecting wifi on the tablet.
o Forcing tablet to forget network.
o Enabling developer mode and disabling various settings.
o Renaming network on the router.
o Factory-resetting tablet.

None of which helped. (Note: neither phone is reverting to mobile data at any point, disguising a router issue.)

The only solution seems to be to use the tablet as far away from the router as possible; indeed I get the best connectivity Mbps-wise in the lobby on the ground floor.

As a less-than-ideal temporary solution, I've stashed the router in the back of a press in the kitchen, out of eyeline.

Any help muchly appreciated

MBSnr

Tri Oidhcheannan Eile wrote: »

Hi, folks,

Environment: We live in a second-floor one-bed apartment. Essentially, the living room/kitchen and bedroom are adjacent and the bathroom and hall are "behind" these two rooms. The phone point (with the Fritz!Box) is in the living room, centrally-located within the entire apartment.

Devices: Alcatel One, iPhone X and Samsung Galaxy Tablet.

Neither phone has a problem maintaining a connection with the router. The tablet, however, is a whole other nightmare: if it is within eyeline of the router (and that seems to be the important bit) it'll either consistently drop connection, connect with no internet, connect but won't authenticate or connect but won't be assigned an IP.

In order of level of horrendousness trying to rectify this:

o Disconnecting/reconnecting wifi on the tablet.
o Forcing tablet to forget network.
o Enabling developer mode and disabling various settings.
o Renaming network on the router.
o Factory-resetting tablet.

None of which helped. (Note: neither phone is reverting to mobile data at any point, disguising a router issue.)

The only solution seems to be to use the tablet as far away from the router as possible; indeed I get the best connectivity Mbps-wise in the lobby on the ground floor.

As a less-than-ideal temporary solution, I've stashed the router in the back of a press in the kitchen, out of eyeline.

Any help muchly appreciated

Is it connecting on 5GHz or 2.4GHz? Do you have access to the config webpage on the Fritxbox? You can drop the transmit power from 100% to 50%. That may help if the tablet has to be further away to work. But sounds like the tablet is dodgy.

You could try turning off 5GHz to see if makes any odds or manually assign a channel for either 2.4 or 5 GHz just to narrow down the problem if the transmit power option doesn't work.

alan4cult

I had this problem with a Chromebook and couldn't solve it. Instead I use a 2.4ghz with separate SSID.

What happens is the Fritzbox uses band steering to switch between 5ghz and 2.4ghz. It does this without informing the client device and it hence the client drops the connection. Some devices can handover seemlessly and some cannot.

I've emailled AVM to ask them to allow per device band steering but haven't heard anything.

Tri Oidhcheannan Eile

Thank you, folks.

I knew I'd left some pertinent info out. It's a Fritz!Box 7430, so only capable of transmitting at 2.4Ghz.

I've just rechecked the dbm (in the living room, circa ten feet from the press the router's in) and it's reporting in and around -52dbm. From what I've read on the intertubes, this seems quite high (or low). Certainly the five other networks I can pick up are in the -90 to -80dbm range.

Regarding reducing the transmit power, I researched that (based off the dbm above), and AFAIK it's not a configurable option on the 7430. I'll recheck the admin console after I post this.

(Oh, and the tablet has no issues with any other network I've tried )

Thanks again.

Tri Oidhcheannan Eile

Tri Oidhcheannan Eile wrote: »

I'll recheck the admin console after I post this.

Yup, no (obvious) means of configuring the transmit power.

(Going through the various tabs on the admin console reminded me that I also tried - independently and in unison - fixing the transmit channel and assigning a static IP, none of which helped.)

Whilst stashing the router in with the bucket, the dustpan and a copious amount of cleaning products does work, I've spent so much time trying to figure out why, I'm unwilling to let it go just yet!

Tri Oidhcheannan Eile

I feel like such a fool And I was sooo close with the "fixing the channel" task.

There are two radio buttons on the "Wi-Fi > Wi-Fi Channel" tab. The second one - "Adjust Wi-Fi channel settings" - displays an "Additional settings" link which allows the transmit power to be changed: now at 25% and getting a -65dbm.

Fingers crossed and thank you once again.