WiFi connection unstable/lost on three Radios

[Locutus1967]

The use of port forwarding to solve the SB Radio problem did not make any sense to me, but I am not wireless or networking expert. If you read through this thread the interference can be caused by a neighbor using Wifi6 standard. I am reasonably confident from my testing and others observations, the problem is related to Wifi6. The location of the radio can be a factor. Two of my Radios would drop within a day, but a third in the kitchen did not have a problem. However, when my wife relocated the Instapot coooker that was near Radio, the kitchen radio now occasionally drops from the network. Now I might be a believer in the faraday cage type attempts to reduce the strength of interfering signals.

Have you tried installing Wlanpoke? For me, it did not entirely resolve the problem dropping off the network, but reduce it to once a week. The best solution is to bypass the internal wifi with an Ethernet to Wifi bridge.

It did not make any sense to me either, but after I removed those port forwards the Radio seemed stable for way longer than usual (days instead of hours), I guess there was no causal link. What is wlanpoke and where does it get installed? I might end up using an ethernet to wifi bridge, are there any of those that work on battery power? One of my SB Radio use cases is to have tunes outside on battery power while entertaining in the Summer (one of my main use cases).

Thanks!

Replying to my own post...I found the thread on WLANPoke, will give it a shot.

[P Nelson]

It did not make any sense to me either, but after I removed those port forwards the Radio seemed stable for way longer than usual (days instead of hours), I guess there was no causal link. What is wlanpoke and where does it get installed? I might end up using an ethernet to wifi bridge, are there any of those that work on battery power? One of my SB Radio use cases is to have tunes outside on battery power while entertaining in the Summer (one of my main use cases).

Thanks!

Replying to my own post...I found the thread on WLANPoke, will give it a shot.

Glad you found the simple instructions for installing Wlanpoke. It was created by POMDev.

Here is the link for my solution to make the Radio portable [when] using an external ethernet to Wifi Bridge (sometimes called client mode).

https://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?97791-Squeezebox-Radio-keeps-losing-wireless-connection-and-won-t-reconnect-any-ideas&p=1037602&highlight=#post1037602

[noiseboy]

I haven't read most of this thread but came across it when I was searching for wi-fi locking and GUI freezing / lagging. I'm not sure if it's relevant but thought I'd share.

My Squeezebox Radio and Touch sit on there own fairly old Zyxel VMG8924-B10 wireless router which in turn is connected to the rest of the LAN. The GUI the radio became unresponsive and would not reconnect to the wi-fi it did work when wired and when wireless thru a Ruckus WAP. The problem for me was down to multicast traffic. I had about 3mbps on the LAN - not a lot but seems to be enough traffic to upset the Squeezebox Radio. Enabling IGMP across the network sorted the problem for me but also just enabling 'Enhanced Multicast Forwarding' on the Zyxel fixed it.

I hope someone finds this useful.

[MarkKriegsman]

Ethernet solution working for two weeks now: shut down wlan entirely

Hi all-
After trying many of the things suggested elsewhere in this thread, I think that I've come to a 'solution' here that's been working reliably for two weeks now on three Squeezebox Radios. I figured I'd share it in case it helps anyone else, or advances our collective understanding of the underlying problems. The short version is this: disable the wlan (wifi) network interface completely, and then only use the wired ethernet port. This is working reliably for me, both with direct/wired ethernet network connections to the Radios, and also with an IOGEAR WiFi/ethernet adapter (model GWU637, about $40) plugged into the wired ethernet port on the Radio.

This approach is slightly, but importantly, different from 'just' plugging in an ethernet cable. If I 'just' plug in an ethernet cable and switch to using it, the wlan (wifi) interface is still active at some level, and something about that seems to eventually make the Squeezebox lose the network connection -- even if the network connection that it's "using" is the wired ethernet. However, if I plug a network cable into the ethernet port, and completely disable the wlan (wifi) network interface, then the network connection seems stable. It's been stable for two weeks for me now, on three Squeezebox Radios. It's not elegant, but at this point I'll take "functional and reliable" over elegant.

The command that I'm using to shut down the wlan interface is this:

/etc/init.d/wlan stop

I ssh'd in to the Radio, created an /etc/init.d/rcS.local file as shown below, and rebooted the Radio.

/usr/etc/logger -s "Stopping wlan; disabling wifi" 
/etc/init.d/wlan stop

That makes it so that every time the Radio boots up, it immediately shuts down the wlan network interface. With the wifi interface entirely shut down, the ethernet network connection seems stable. Two of my Radios have wired ethernet connections, and one of them is using an IOGEAR ethernet/wifi adapter. All three have had completely stable network connections for two weeks now.

After two weeks of stable operation like this, I tried removing the "wlan stop" command from the rcS.local file and rebooting -- but still using just the ethernet port for network connectivity. Within a couple of hours, the wired ethernet connection had dropped, and I had to reboot to reconnect. So given the two weeks of stability with the wlan interface stopped, plus the quick failure once I let the wlan interface come back up again, I decided that this might be useful data to share.

I'm curious to hear what other people find if the try this. Maybe it's just something unique to my setup, but maybe it will work for some other people as well.

-Mark

[Apesbrain]

Wait, now we're having problems with the Radio wired connection? That's new, isn't it?

[MarkKriegsman]

Wait, now we're having problems with the Radio wired connection? That's new, isn't it?

I'm pretty sure that I saw some notes in this thread saying something to the effect of "My wifi started dropping, so I tried switching to wired ethernet (possibly through a wifi/ethernet adapter), but the connection still keeps dropping." I think I saw it sometimes as "Just switch to ethernet and use a wifi/ethernet adapter" ... "Yeah, I tried that, but it still drops." Anyway, that was definitely the case for me.

I moved from the sparse suburbs into a dense urban neighborhood with lots of wifi networks and lots of wifi traffic, and my Squeezebox Radios' wifi started dropping quite often. 'Just' switching to ethernet definitely did not stop the network drops. Switching to ethernet and disabling the wlan interface has stopped the drops as far as I can tell at this point.

My hypothesis is that as long as the wlan/wifi interface is up and running -- even if it is not "in use" as the main network connection -- something about the wlan interface and driver code being active in a high-wifi-traffic environment eventually clogs the entire networking stack on the Radio, including both wired and wireless interfaces, necessitating a reboot to reconnect. Disabling the wlan interface at startup seems to have made a big difference in reliability of network access in general? It's hard for me to definitely ascribe cause-and-effect here; I know what things I tried, and what the result was in each case, but not why each result came out the way it did, and that's where I'm left just hypothesizing and sharing my data.

So to answer your question, yes, once I moved to the new neighborhood, I not only had wifi drops, but also drops of the wired ethernet connection -- until I shut down the wlan interface.

[Redrum]

Wait, now we're having problems with the Radio wired connection? That's new, isn't it?

So to answer your question, yes, once I moved to the new neighborhood, I not only had wifi drops, but also drops of the wired ethernet connection -- until I shut down the wlan interface.

I read this and thought the same as AB...Mark, not questioning your findings, but are you 100% sure that you "switched" to ethernet, rather than having ethernet plugged in and assume that the radio switched?

Again, I mean no disrespect, but I do remember that the switch is explicitly through a menu pick, or coming out of a reset (from memory, I don't have a radio handy). It will not just switch on plug in like alot of other things do.

Jim

[MarkKriegsman]

I do remember that the switch is explicitly through a menu pick

You know, I am fallible, and this does all seem a bit odd -- even to me. I'll re-check this again, but I'm pretty sure I clicked through Settings>Advanced>Networking>Choose Network> and then picked Ethernet explicitly, and got the blue spinner with "Connecting to... Ethernet". But maybe I slipped up, or backtracked accidentally.

So: I'll do another trial right now: re-enabling the wlan stack and reboot. Then double-check to see that I'm using the wired ethernet networking, and then ... I'll wait. I'll see if I lose connectivity (again?), even though I'm using the wired jack. Previously it took 2-6 hours in general to drop, and it always dropped overnight.

I'll keep some timestamped notes and report back here. I appreciate having people check over my work; as I said, this does seem odd -- even to me.

[P Nelson]

Hi all-

This approach is slightly, but importantly, different from 'just' plugging in an ethernet cable. If I 'just' plug in an ethernet cable and switch to using it, the wlan (wifi) interface is still active at some level, and something about that seems to eventually make the Squeezebox lose the network connection -- even if the network connection that it's "using" is the wired ethernet. However, if I plug a network cable into the ethernet port, and completely disable the wlan (wifi) network interface, then the network connection seems stable. It's been stable for two weeks for me now, on three Squeezebox Radios. It's not elegant, but at this point I'll take "functional and reliable" over elegant.

I suffer from the Wifi6 interference problem and I have not observed this behavior. However, my case is slightly different. I am using a TP-link nano router plugged into the ethernet port. I have not disabled the internal wifi in the SB Radio as you describe. The connection has been very stable.

As Redrum noted the Radio does not automatically switch to ethernet when a cable is plugged into the port. I see you noted that and were going to double check this issue.

If the Wifi6 is from a neighbor, it could be hours or several days before Radio gets hung up. It drove me crazy figuring out the problem and solutions because when I thought I had something that worked, a few days later red wireless icon appeared, and reboot. For me Wlanpoke helps a lot, but occasionally I still have to reboot.

It will be interesting what you report with your double check of the connections.

Paul

[Tony T]

I have all but one SB Radio using an ethernet dongle. That one I use as a portable, and usually it would stay connected for most of the day, but recently it disconnects within an hour or two. I've decided instead for portability to use the BlueTooth available in PiCorePlayer and stream LMS to a BT Radio. So far, thats woking great.

[Chz]

Wait, now we're having problems with the Radio wired connection? That's new, isn't it?

I had a similar issue with a wired connection not really curing the problem. Been using a Chromecast Audio plugged into the AUX jack mostly since then so I haven't really bothered keeping up on the issue. I've only checked back in because there was a firmware update and I was curious if it was something related to the problems. I'll give this solution a try and report back later.

[tsrwright]

Problem with new WiFi Booster

I have just installed a (Telstra) 'Smart WiFi Booster' to replace an old device that wasn't reliably serving one end of the house.

Seemingly at this point all three of my Squeezeboxes started to drop out after the same period of about 5 minutes working fine. Rebooting the SB restarts the connections ok - for five minutes.

I have read some of this and other threads on the subject and understand there is probably a network interference problem that looks to be far too technical for me to deal with.

To keep my Squeezeboxes in service is there a relatively simple solution that a 'lay person' could follow maybe with a little help from his service provider (Telstra Australia)?

Many thanks,

Terry

[Nomen Nescio]

I have just installed a (Telstra) 'Smart WiFi Booster' to replace an old device that wasn't reliably serving one end of the house.

Seemingly at this point all three of my Squeezeboxes started to drop out after the same period of about 5 minutes working fine. Rebooting the SB restarts the connections ok - for five minutes.

I have read some of this and other threads on the subject and understand there is probably a network interference problem that looks to be far too technical for me to deal with.

To keep my Squeezeboxes in service is there a relatively simple solution that a 'lay person' could follow maybe with a little help from his service provider (Telstra Australia)?

Many thanks,

Terry

Same problem overhere in the Netherlands with smartwifi pods. Chanel optimazition seems to be the culprit.

Verstuurd vanaf mijn Mi A3 met Tapatalk

[tsrwright]

It's definitely the new extension that is causing the problem. Any suggestions for extending a simple home network without this trouble?

[Paul Webster]

WiFi connection unstable/lost on three Radios

Pair of “powerline” adapters. Connect one via Ethernet to your router and the other (with WiFi access point built in … not all do) in a weak WiFi area. Set this new WAP to same SSID, Auth type and passphrase as your main one and you should find that things connect to it seamlessly.

Sometimes it does not work well when you walk between the areas with WiFi connected because the device tries to keep connected to the AP it was on before …. but if that happens then WiFi on/off on the device usually resolves it.

If you have Ethernet access newer the WiFi dead zone then a standalone WiFi access point can work but then you have to remember to turn off DHCP on it.