WRT400N and Blackberries?

[avhays]

Just replaced a Netgear WGR614 with Linksys WRT400N based on reviews on this site.

All of my wireless devices work perfectly except my Blackberry Curve 8320 (t-Mobile). My Netgear was configured to not broadcast SSID so I configured the Linksys this way also. Curve won't see it at all (even though it worked perfectly with the Netgear). If I change Linksys to broadcast SSID Curve will see it and connect, but UMA mode is flakey and off lot of the time. Found some posts on net about this- seems Linksys and Blackberry may have issues?

Also, the WRT400N's internal web server has crashed twice on me after I clicked the "Continue" button after saving settings. All I get is a constantly refreshing screen with error: "Index page HTTP/1.0 404 Not Found Server: httpd Date: Thu, 10 Sep 2009 16:21:51 GMT Content-Type: text/html Connection: close." Power cycle fixes this, but this isn't very encouraging.

 

[claykin]

Does your Blackberry have the latest software installed?

UMA can be quirky at best, especially with the 83xx series. That series of phones is pretty much first gen UMA technology.

Also, I've read that the WRT400 is not the best with QOS. QOS is important for VOIP and if the QOS isn't good there's a good chance that UMA won't work.

As far as the SSID broadcast is concerned, have you tried to manually setup access to the WRT400 then disable SSID broadcast on the WRT400?

In my case, my Dlink DIR-825 works OK with my Blackberry 8900 UMA (occasionally it won't connect and I have to cycle the UMA off/on on the phone). I also have a Netopia 3347 DSL router and this works even better with the 8900. Rarely a problem with the Netopia.

 

[avhays]

Thanks for your reply!

Blackberry is up to date.

I tried various permutations with turning on/off SSID and connecting. Bottom line is with the Netgear not broadcasting SSID the Curve would connect within a few minutes. It never connects if the WRT400N is not broadcasting SSID. However my computers connect to the Linksys just fine with SSID not broadcasting, so this must be a Linksys/Blackberry issue.

As I've watched the Blackberry I see that UMA indicator will at various times be capitals to lowercase to not there. I've also seen it disconnect from WiFi and reconnect. It's basically not stable. Never once saw this with the Netgear. QOS sounds like a good reason for the UMA flakiness.

I am going to try a D-Link next.

 

[avhays]

Some more info:

1.) With SSID broadcast off, if I set the Linksys 2.4GHz radio to either B only or G only then the Blackberry will connect. It just won't connect if the Linksys is set to 'Mixed'.

2.) Adding the Blackberry as a voice device MAC on the QOS settings screen and then giving it High priority seems to make UMA work a lot better.

With regard to 1.) above I would naively think this is more Blackberry's problem than Linksys. Other wireless devices I have connect fine without SSID broadcast when the Linksys is in 'Mixed' mode.