Odd wifi problem with Galaxy S8+ and play store (amongst others)

[ewokuk]

AC86U, latest Merlin, and S8+ with latest firmware (but this has been a problem for quite some time). I have a very odd problem on my phone where trying to download anything from the play store is very slow and stops and starts a lot. I also have an issue with 1 or 2 other apps that seem to simply fail to work when I am connected to my wifi but runs perfectly ok as soon as i switch to 4g. This happens regardless of being on 2ghz or 5ghz.

The wifi itself is perfect, my pc is connected constantly to it and has no issues what so ever on ANY site or app I have tried. On my phone, MOST things work perfectly fine and speed tests show I am getting the full 50mb from it consistently.

It seems to be something to do with the Asus router because I do not see the issue when connected to various other wifi's. So i has to be something to do with my phone and the router combined which only affects very specific things. I believe I had a very similar issue previously when I had an old S5 and an AC68u.

Googling issues with the play store it seems its quite common to have problems on wifi with it but too many people have no clue what they are doing for any reliable explanations or solutions, one page indicated turning off WMM sorted it but I have tried this and it made zero difference, the rest of the "solutions" are all simply clearing cash and data, which as expected makes no difference.. There are very few settings on the phone that I can try changing as far as I know, maybe it's something on the router. I use a vpn on the router but it makes no difference whether I route the phone through that or leave it to my usual ISP connection.

I am just baffled because the connection for the vast majority of things is perfectly fine, but the play store as the best example is terrible, I can browse everything just fine but as soon as i try to update an app or download a new one, the second it gets to that 'downloading' stage is where it grinds to a halt. It does eventually get there but its very slow, taking ages to start and stopping completely during it quite often. And it only does this on my home router. It's driving me mad.

Maybe someone here knows what the hell is going on, I cannot be the only one with an asus router and a Samsung phone having these issues but googling it, gets me nowhere. Why it would only affect very specific things like the play store downloads I have no idea. I had the same issue after installing bitwarden yesterday where I could not get the initial bitwarden login to work, it simply wouldnt respond, turned off the wifi and it worked fine and has done ever since.

 

[ColinTaylor]

Any ad-blocking on the router, or other types of DNS interference?

 

[ewokuk]

Any ad-blocking on the router, or other types of DNS interference?

Nope just plain old Merlin, no ad blocking, no aiprotection, no QoS. DNS specifically set to my ISP's servers rather than automatic. The issue still happens when routing the phone via the vpn which uses the vpn providers dns set to exclusive, and I have tried manually setting it to a different DNS in the wifi settings on the phone, so I don't think it can be dns related

 

[jsbeddow]

Very odd that clearing the cache (in boot recovery) didn't help you: it made a huge improvement for me using my old Samsung S5 Active on my home Rt-AC86U wifi...I was having wierd slow DNS resolution intermittently, and that completly solved it in my case.
Might be worth another try?

Edit: this also solved the occasional failures to update (location, time, weather) in some apps like WeatherUnderground.

 

[ewokuk]

Very odd that clearing the cache (in boot recovery) didn't help you: it made a huge improvement for me using my old Samsung S5 Active on my home Rt-AC86U wifi...I was having wierd slow DNS resolution intermittently, and that completly solved it in my case.
Might be worth another try?

Edit: this also solved the occasional failures to update (location, time, weather) in some apps like WeatherUnderground.

I will try that tonight, I didn't do it from recovery before though, just in the app propertties under storage.

 

[ewokuk]

I will try that tonight, I didn't do it from recovery before though, just in the app propertties under storage.

Nope made no difference. went to play store to update a 6mb app, it sat on "downloading" for 30 seconds or so, then got as far as 6.80 out of 6.82 and stopped dead, took over a minute to get to 6.81 and another to finish. Same pattern with every update. This download should take 1 second with my connection. The second I turn off wifi and go to 4g its instant. I can even do these updates on london underground wifi and even that is fine so again, its not ALL wifi, seemingly just mine (or just asus).

 

[L&LD]

Nope just plain old Merlin, no ad blocking, no aiprotection, no QoS. DNS specifically set to my ISP's servers rather than automatic. The issue still happens when routing the phone via the vpn which uses the vpn providers dns set to exclusive, and I have tried manually setting it to a different DNS in the wifi settings on the phone, so I don't think it can be dns related

Does leaving the DNS settings to Automatic not pick up your ISP's servers? Did you try this as a test, at least? Can't see how it is related, but worth testing.

Does a reboot of your router have any effect on this issue? If not, does unplugging the modem/ONT and the router and leaving them off for at least 20 minutes, then powering up in the modem/ONT, waiting for 5 minutes and then powering on the router not fix the issue?

Did you try 'forgetting' the home SSID's on your phone and then rebooting the phone and then re-associating them? Have you tried new SSID's? Does your SSID's have any special characters, spaces or smiley faces? Does your password?

If 'forgetting' the SSID's doesn't work, above, maybe a full 'network reset' on your phone is in order? Even if it is only your network that seems affected?

 

[ewokuk]

Does leaving the DNS settings to Automatic not pick up your ISP's servers? Did you try this as a test, at least? Can't see how it is related, but worth testing.

Does a reboot of your router have any effect on this issue? If not, does unplugging the modem/ONT and the router and leaving them off for at least 20 minutes, then powering up in the modem/ONT, waiting for 5 minutes and then powering on the router not fix the issue?

Did you try 'forgetting' the home SSID's on your phone and then rebooting the phone and then re-associating them? Have you tried new SSID's? Does your SSID's have any special characters, spaces or smiley faces? Does your password?

If 'forgetting' the SSID's doesn't work, above, maybe a full 'network reset' on your phone is in order? Even if it is only your network that seems affected?

nah none of that makes any diff. its not ssid related. I have no clue. seems like I am stuck with it until I get a new phone (although I am pretty sue my old s5 did the same thing on my old AC68U).

 

[L&LD]

nah none of that makes any diff. its not ssid related. I have no clue. seems like I am stuck with it until I get a new phone (although I am pretty sue my old s5 did the same thing on my old AC68U).

Is that your opinion, or verified through testing? If the S5 also did the same and on a different router, it sure seems like something is unique to your network.

 

[jsbeddow]

I agree with L&LD that it is worth trying the forget network /change SSID test one more time. I have also played with manually setting the phone's wifi to a static IP (outside the DHCP range that the router hands out), and forcing it to use the router IP as the only DNS source (obviously only for that one wifi SSID connection that you have control over). This helped in my case, but not as much as clearing the Android cache from recovery boot.
Good luck.

 

[ewokuk]

Is that your opinion, or verified through testing? If the S5 also did the same and on a different router, it sure seems like something is unique to your network.

tested. its definitely not dns, the router has been rebooted multiple times as this has been going on as long as i can remember. ssid is plain text, it happens on 2ghz and 5ghz which have different ssid's and forgetting it made no diff. android cache wiped.

Just did a full network reset on the phone, put the wifi back on, still the same! run a speed test, 9ms ping and 50mb download as ususal. try a play store app update, sits on "downloading" for quite a while, eventually moves, gets right near the end then seems to slow to a complete crawl until it finishes. its baffling. I have customised virtually nothing on the router other than installing merlin, I have customised nothing on the phone and its not rooted. I give up.

 

[L&LD]

tested. its definitely not dns, the router has been rebooted multiple times as this has been going on as long as i can remember. ssid is plain text, it happens on 2ghz and 5ghz which have different ssid's and forgetting it made no diff. android cache wiped.

Just did a full network reset on the phone, put the wifi back on, still the same! run a speed test, 9ms ping and 50mb download as ususal. try a play store app update, sits on "downloading" for quite a while, eventually moves, gets right near the end then seems to slow to a complete crawl until it finishes. its baffling. I have customised virtually nothing on the router other than installing merlin, I have customised nothing on the phone and its not rooted. I give up.

Thank you. Must be frustrating when nothing you try works. Hope it is resolved soon.

 

[faria]

@ewokuk this is not gonna help you but i can confirm that i seen this behaviour in 2 Samsung devices before with 2 asus routers.
One was my wife now retired samsung S5 the other was a Samsung tablet. ( there is currently 11 Samsung devices in the Household including : samsung S8+ ,Note8, A8 and S9).
@ the time i assumed it was a device issue rather than a router issue.

 

[orutra]

I recently had the same problem with a BQ Aquaris E5 (Spanish brand), impossible to connect Google servers (Play Store, account, web google.com, etc).
My scenario is: RT-AC3200 Merlin 384.9, Skynet & Diversion (I will probably update to 384.10-2 in next days) and BQ phone with LineageOS 14.1 (android 7.1).

I tried everything in the phone (factory reset, clear cache for Google Services, forget WiFi, reinstall ROM, etc, etc), nothing worked. Connecting to other WiFi's (friends and family) resulted in everything working properly, as expected.

Now my phone is not having issues with my Asus RT-AC3200 and Google. What I did was:

1- Add No filtering to DNS filter settings in the router for the phone:

2- Set WiFi connection in the phone with Static IP (not DHCP), selecting google DNS Servers (my ISP DNS's also work)

3- Reboot Router (through Web UI), this was the step that made everything work ok in my phone.

I hope you can solve your problem

 

[ewokuk]

I recently had the same problem with a BQ Aquaris E5 (Spanish brand), impossible to connect Google servers (Play Store, account, web google.com, etc).
My scenario is: RT-AC3200 Merlin 384.9, Skynet & Diversion (I will probably update to 384.10-2 in next days) and BQ phone with LineageOS 14.1 (android 7.1).

I tried everything in the phone (factory reset, clear cache for Google Services, forget WiFi, reinstall ROM, etc, etc), nothing worked. Connecting to other WiFi's (friends and family) resulted in everything working properly, as expected.

Now my phone is not having issues with my Asus RT-AC3200 and Google. What I did was:

1- Add No filtering to DNS filter settings in the router for the phone:
View attachment 17098

2- Set WiFi connection in the phone with Static IP (not DHCP), selecting google DNS Servers (my ISP DNS's also work)

3- Reboot Router (through Web UI), this was the step that made everything work ok in my phone.

I hope you can solve your problem

Seems to be a different problem, I CAN connect to google servers. Tried it anyway but it made no difference

 

[Sinner]

AC86U, latest Merlin, and S8+ with latest firmware (but this has been a problem for quite some time). I have a very odd problem on my phone where trying to download anything from the play store is very slow and stops and starts a lot. I also have an issue with 1 or 2 other apps that seem to simply fail to work when I am connected to my wifi but runs perfectly ok as soon as i switch to 4g. This happens regardless of being on 2ghz or 5ghz.

The wifi itself is perfect, my pc is connected constantly to it and has no issues what so ever on ANY site or app I have tried. On my phone, MOST things work perfectly fine and speed tests show I am getting the full 50mb from it consistently.

It seems to be something to do with the Asus router because I do not see the issue when connected to various other wifi's. So i has to be something to do with my phone and the router combined which only affects very specific things. I believe I had a very similar issue previously when I had an old S5 and an AC68u.

Googling issues with the play store it seems its quite common to have problems on wifi with it but too many people have no clue what they are doing for any reliable explanations or solutions, one page indicated turning off WMM sorted it but I have tried this and it made zero difference, the rest of the "solutions" are all simply clearing cash and data, which as expected makes no difference.. There are very few settings on the phone that I can try changing as far as I know, maybe it's something on the router. I use a vpn on the router but it makes no difference whether I route the phone through that or leave it to my usual ISP connection.

I am just baffled because the connection for the vast majority of things is perfectly fine, but the play store as the best example is terrible, I can browse everything just fine but as soon as i try to update an app or download a new one, the second it gets to that 'downloading' stage is where it grinds to a halt. It does eventually get there but its very slow, taking ages to start and stopping completely during it quite often. And it only does this on my home router. It's driving me mad.

Maybe someone here knows what the hell is going on, I cannot be the only one with an asus router and a Samsung phone having these issues but googling it, gets me nowhere. Why it would only affect very specific things like the play store downloads I have no idea. I had the same issue after installing bitwarden yesterday where I could not get the initial bitwarden login to work, it simply wouldnt respond, turned off the wifi and it worked fine and has done ever since.

The issue may be simpler than you think. Ive encountered devices that don't play well with higher channel widths. Some devices are single band as in 20mghz only and although they are supposed to be compatible, they don't LIKE being on a 40/80 etc mghz network. It may be worth taking a look at your settings and if on auto change to 20mghz and see if the problem goes away.

 

[ewokuk]

The issue may be simpler than you think. Ive encountered devices that don't play well with higher channel widths. Some devices are single band as in 20mghz only and although they are supposed to be compatible, they don't LIKE being on a 40/80 etc mghz network. It may be worth taking a look at your settings and if on auto change to 20mghz and see if the problem goes away.

No its not that, my 2ghz is set to 20mhz anyway and it still does it.

Just noticed as well that when first turning the phone on, if I am on wifi, skype will not connect. If i disable wifi, it connects straight away, and if i re-enable wifi, it will then seemingly stay connected just fine. After doing this, even force closing skype and opening it again results in it being connected already as the green dot is already on when it loads (or its connecting so fast I can't see it). But after turning the phone off, same thing again, if on my home wifi when i first open skype, it will not connect.

I did just discover an old certificate authority installed from Adguard which I had a long long time ago, I have removed this but it still does it. But I am now wondering if some old adblocker like adguard that I no longer have might have left behind or configured something that even the network reset has not corrected. Any ideas of hidden settings or files that those things may have left behind which would only affect a wifi connection? It still seems unlikely given the fact it only does it on my home wifi and not any others but I can think of nothing else.

 

[ewokuk]

Ok I have solved it. sort of. I have package disabler pro to disable a bunch of crap and bloatware. I decided to try and re-enable everything and see if that made any difference. At first it seemed to make no difference but I was wondering what effect leaving everything on would have on my batery so i decided to just leave it all enabled for a while. An hour later i went to check for app updates, not expecting to be able to download anything with decent speed, and suddenly its connecting and downloading with no issues! Tried a couple of other things which also usually dont work when on my home wifi, and suddenly they work as well!

I then re-disabled the same packages as before, and again it stopped working. So I decided to enable everything again and try the play store again just to make sure it really worked, and it wasnt working again! I left the pone for a while, came back to it, tried again, suddenly its working again!

• Whatever is causing it must be related to one of the packages I had disabled
• For some reason once i enable the packages (or reboot the phone with them enabled), it takes some time (I dont know exactly how long but it is some minutes) before play downloads will work normally, until that point I get exactly the same issue.

Still VERY odd, still no idea which package could cause this and no idea why it takes a good while after enabling the packages before these things will work properly and no idea why it ONLY affects my home wifi and nothing else!!

I have attached my disabled packages xml (renamed to txt) in case anyone can see from this list what might cause it. I only really disabled anything related to Edge, anything related to bixby and a couple of other seemingly useless things that shouldnt have anything to do with it.

 

[L&LD]

Ok I have solved it. sort of. I have package disabler pro to disable a bunch of crap and bloatware. I decided to try and re-enable everything and see if that made any difference. At first it seemed to make no difference but I was wondering what effect leaving everything on would have on my batery so i decided to just leave it all enabled for a while. An hour later i went to check for app updates, not expecting to be able to download anything with decent speed, and suddenly its connecting and downloading with no issues! Tried a couple of other things which also usually dont work when on my home wifi, and suddenly they work as well!

I then re-disabled the same packages as before, and again it stopped working. So I decided to enable everything again and try the play store again just to make sure it really worked, and it wasnt working again! I left the pone for a while, came back to it, tried again, suddenly its working again!

• Whatever is causing it must be related to one of the packages I had disabled
• For some reason once i enable the packages (or reboot the phone with them enabled), it takes some time (I dont know exactly how long but it is some minutes) before play downloads will work normally, until that point I get exactly the same issue.

Still VERY odd, still no idea which package could cause this and no idea why it takes a good while after enabling the packages before these things will work properly and no idea why it ONLY affects my home wifi and nothing else!!

I have attached my disabled packages xml (renamed to txt) in case anyone can see from this list what might cause it. I only really disabled anything related to Edge, anything related to bixby and a couple of other seemingly useless things that shouldnt have anything to do with it.

I used to tweak and mangle my devices and os's endlessly too. Soon learned that was just my little brain trying to outsmart about a thousand others with how a specific device 'should' work. I usually 'lost' those wars even when it seemed I would win a battle or two.

The idea of a full reset to factory defaults doesn't just apply to the router.

Not saying to not do these experiments.

But excellent note taking (long term, not for 'just the moment') and documenting changes from defaults makes it much easier to guess what may have broken something else, down the line.

I don't know what effect each of those disabled packages will have on your issue(s) here.

But I do know that what is logical and what 'should work', doesn't necessarily happen all the time.

Manufacturers are free to use all installed packages and routines, in what they would consider a 'base install' for their devices, for other uses, other than what they were originally designed for.

Constantly changing these defaults will be a never-ending battle with trying to keep up with these rarely documented changes, and which may change at any time at the whim or wisdom of the programmer currently in charge of such bits of code.

Like I said, experimenting and changing how your devices runs are your choices to make.

But I'll now know better questions to ask in the future too when trying to troubleshoot quickly for others.

 

[Catalinus]

I am just leaving this here since might add some other type of details for problems that could be the same or from a different branch - I do have somehow repeatable issues with Google Play Store in a context where it appears as if Play Store is trying to "validate" a secure connection back to their servers in more complex ways - I have the issues in the context of OpenVPN client on the phone(s) and when it is happening Play Store is staying forever in the first stages of "Downloading" or "Download pending" (but anything else on the phone connects just fine with the max speed that OpenVPN is able to provide, about 200+ Mbps for my AX88U). The second that I disable always-on VPN in Android things instantly start working in Google Play Store. However there are numerous instances where Google Play Store just works perfectly fine with always-on VPN, so to me it looks like Google Play Store is trying to get some security validation and once it gets it things are fine for a rather long time but if it can't - it gets stuck forever.