Android tablet loses connection to Wi-Fi

[TheLyppardMan]

I set up camera stream monitoring on both my wall-mounted Android tablet and my Windows 11 laptop this morning to see if one of them stopped streaming. Unexpectedly, the Android device has worked all day, but the laptop monitoring using Microsoft Edge froze at around 1.35 this afternoon (not exactly sure of the time as I restarted the stream before noting down the exact time). If the recent pattern continues, the Android tablet will probably freeze sometime this evening.

 

[aex.perez]

One still occasionally still stops, but when it does I noticed on the tablet that it switched from 5 to 2.4. Other than a reboot of the router not sure what the reason was for the change, both on the router and tablet but for only one of the tablets.
When the WiFi 6 tablets arrive, they should use both frequencies as my laptop does. Used said laptop in both tablet locations (integrated Intel Killer nic) and never dropped or switched frequencies…. I’ve got developer mode enabled on the existing tablets, going to check if there’s a way to modify the roaming / signal strength to keep it fixed at 5Ghz ‍

 

[TheLyppardMan]

I don't think my issue is a Wi-Fi problem after all. The reason I say that is I have never noticed my 5 GHz ax-enabled laptop to ever drop Wi-Fi and yet the stream from the camera froze around lunchtime (but not on the Android tablet, which was the opposite way around from what I was expecting). Also, I haven't been able to find anything in the system logs so far that definitely confirms what is happening. I'll continue to monitor the situation using by my laptop and the tablet at the same time to see if I can come up with any more information. It's not a massive deal, but it's just a bit of an annoyance that I have to keep restarting streaming on the tablet.

 

[drinkingbird]

I don't think my issue is a Wi-Fi problem after all. The reason I say that is I have never noticed my 5 GHz ax-enabled laptop to ever drop Wi-Fi and yet the stream from the camera froze around lunchtime (but not on the Android tablet, which was the opposite way around from what I was expecting). Also, I haven't been able to find anything in the system logs so far that definitely confirms what is happening. I'll continue to monitor the situation using by my laptop and the tablet at the same time to see if I can come up with any more information. It's not a massive deal, but it's just a bit of an annoyance that I have to keep restarting streaming on the tablet.

Have you tried setting up an SSID that will allow you to fix the tablet to one specific AP and wifi band?

But as you say, could not be wifi related at all, could be the camera itself, maybe a firmware update would help, or maybe the camera is losing wifi? Maybe the tablet did freeze but recovered but for some reason the laptop didn't in this case.

 

[aex.perez]

Well, Got the new Tablets, 2.4Ghz+5Ghz+Wifi6. The bad news, after 5 hours of developer mode, enabling WiFi debugging, disabling 2.4Ghz on my AX88. The vendor informed my that the engineers informed him that the tablets don't support 5Ghz as the product description claims. Though at 2.4Ghz it's using 40Mhz bandwidth so there's somewhat of a silver lining.

The good news, during those 5 hours of debugging and researching, I stumbled upon a an issue related to the Android version (8) on the old tablets, that did support (using 5Ghz and 2.4Ghz to find networks - not 802.11ax) related to selecting the best AP signal and RSSI and how to test/modify that selection algorithm (working on that over the weekend).

But also discovered that there is a throttle for WiFi scanning in developer mode on the new Android 12 Tablets that I enabled (side benefit supposedly increases WiFi performance). I also disabled the Automatic Turn on WiFi which looks for higher quality signals and tries to connect (breaking the connection to my network) with both those settings and the single frequency. The new Tablets have stayed connected and the feed has not paused once over the last 18 hours at the highest quality of the camera feed.

Which what I was trying to achieve with WiFi 6 (802.11ax) and the dual frequencies confirming my approach/guess (even a blind squirrel finds a nut) but haven't dug into the OS and API to completely validate the assumptions correlate to the results.

Now I can use one of the older Tablets to stabilize the dual frequencies and scanning to try and keep at 5Ghz (802.11ac), and help optimize the Smart Connect rule to see if the same approach works.

Some of this was influenced by the hours I spent on Android Open Source Project within the WiFi section as well as the hours yet to be spent...

But as long as the Wife and Nurses are good with the quality and stability of the video feed, not going to mess with it too much as that was the sole purpose of this endeavor...

 

[drinkingbird]

Well, Got the new Tablets, 2.4Ghz+5Ghz+Wifi6. The bad news, after 5 hours of developer mode, enabling WiFi debugging, disabling 2.4Ghz on my AX88. The vendor informed my that the engineers informed him that the tablets don't support 5Ghz as the product description claims. Though at 2.4Ghz it's using 40Mhz bandwidth so there's somewhat of a silver lining.

The good news, during those 5 hours of debugging and researching, I stumbled upon a an issue related to the Android version (8) on the old tablets, that did support (using 5Ghz and 2.4Ghz to find networks - not 802.11ax) related to selecting the best AP signal and RSSI and how to test/modify that selection algorithm (working on that over the weekend).

But also discovered that there is a throttle for WiFi scanning in developer mode on the new Android 12 Tablets that I enabled (side benefit supposedly increases WiFi performance). I also disabled the Automatic Turn on WiFi which looks for higher quality signals and tries to connect (breaking the connection to my network) with both those settings and the single frequency. The new Tablets have stayed connected and the feed has not paused once over the last 18 hours at the highest quality of the camera feed.

Which what I was trying to achieve with WiFi 6 (802.11ax) and the dual frequencies confirming my approach/guess (even a blind squirrel finds a nut) but haven't dug into the OS and API to completely validate the assumptions correlate to the results.

Now I can use one of the older Tablets to stabilize the dual frequencies and scanning to try and keep at 5Ghz (802.11ac), and help optimize the Smart Connect rule to see if the same approach works.

Some of this was influenced by the hours I spent on Android Open Source Project within the WiFi section as well as the hours yet to be spent...

But as long as the Wife and Nurses are good with the quality and stability of the video feed, not going to mess with it too much as that was the sole purpose of this endeavor...

My old Android 8 phone which I still keep around for various tinkering did support several tweaks in developer options related to roaming, band steering, etc. My main phone on Android 13 seems to have removed nearly all of it, but it roams well and prefers 5Ghz (even swapping back to it eventually after being on 2.4) so I guess they just made the more sensitive settings the default.

Not sure how a WIFI6 tablet can not support 5Ghz?

 

[aex.perez]

I was waiting for someone to mention that. Been taking up CPU cycles since the vendor surprised me with it.

My guesses,
1) since the tablet is using WPA3 ‍ or
2) since the Amazon product description was off on the support of 5Ghz, probably off on WiFi 6 too.

As far as the steering and roaming for the most part it’s been hidden and instead Google set a standard approach in the OS, that a vendor can tweak at their own risk (and continue doing so for each upgrade and relevant maintenance release/patch).

In the developer’s docs everything is their if you want to tackle it yourself.

 

[TheLyppardMan]

I think I may have found the answer to the problems with my Android Tablet, but I'll confirm this in a day or so. What I did yesterday was change the authentication method from WPA2/WPA3-Personal to WPA2-Personal. The tablet has been running for over 24 hours now without dropping the Wi-Fi or losing connection to the security camera stream.

 

[drinkingbird]

I think I may have found the answer to the problems with my Android Tablet, but I'll confirm this in a day or so. What I did yesterday was change the authentication method from WPA2/WPA3-Personal to WPA2-Personal. The tablet has been running for over 24 hours now without dropping the Wi-Fi or losing connection to the security camera stream.

There are definitely issues with "transition mode" WPA3, and WPA3 in general. Still very new.

If you wanted to use it, you'd need to make sure your router also had transition mode enabled (WPA2/WPA3 and Protected Management Frames supported but not required).

If everything you have supports WPA3 then you can set it to that mode strictly with PMF enabled and that may be more stable. But in reality, no need to have WPA3 in the home environment right now.

 

[TheLyppardMan]

There are definitely issues with "transition mode" WPA3, and WPA3 in general. Still very new.

If you wanted to use it, you'd need to make sure your router also had transition mode enabled (WPA2/WPA3 and Protected Management Frames supported but not required).

If everything you have supports WPA3 then you can set it to that mode strictly with PMF enabled and that may be more stable. But in reality, no need to have WPA3 in the home environment right now.

Thanks for that. The tablet has been working continuously for 48 hours without issues, so it looks like I've found the cause (fingers crossed and all that).