WIFI with mobile issue

[#1]

I've been with Plusnet just over a month and I am extremely happy with the speed I'm getting, but I have a slight issue when using it with my iphone or ipad as somethings it would randomly stop working and not loading anything. Does anyone know what the cause of this? I've contacted the customer service and told me to do a reset on the router to update the firmware but it doesn't seem to work.

[#2]

No idea what causes it but i get the same thing with my phone on wifi while the other devices remain unaffected. It'll work for a few minutes and then i get no dns resolution.

My partner had similar previously while my phone worked, then it started working again. We've also had times where both fail to work. It isn't just the plusnet hubone affected as the previous router (also a plusnet one) was doing the same thing.

I have a hunch that something in the firmware screws up when plusnet / BT decide to push new firmware to the device. They refuse to acknowledge doing this but i've noticed new pages in the admin panel recently and other behavioural changes such as broken features start to work ete - despite previous cold boots making no difference.

It grinds my gears when they decide to push an update and screw everything up. Its great when they fix things but a pain otherwise. I just wish they would let us manually upgrade and give us a list of fixes etc.

[#3]

It it's with the Hub 1, then separating the 2.4 and 5Ghz channels, and adding a 5 to the SSID of the 5Ghz SSID will help the iPhone know what service its connected to. Older Apple devices seem to struggle when the same SSID is used for the different  services.

[#4]

how do I do it?

[#5 · Accepted solution]

Login to the admin panel on the router at:

http://192.168.254 (this seems to be the default for plusnet routers). You will be able to see default statistical info without logging in so click on advanced settings and it will ask for a password.

You should have a card or piece of plastic that came with it with the password.

If its the hub one.. Click on:

Wireless -> 5GHz wireless -> "Sync with 2.4 GHz:" -> No.

The page will then refresh and you can change the SSID of the 5GHz channel.

Then hit apply. Job done.

Incidentally having only just looked in there myself to write this, i noticed that my phone showed up on the home network page on the 5GHz channel too - i never realised it had a 5GHz wifi on it so i've just done the same thing and will keep you updated. I added "-5GHz" on to the SSID of ours.

EDIT I've now turned off the 5GHz completely. Normal wifi is 54mbps, the plusnet connection won't match that,  the servers on t'interweb won't match it either so not really much point using 5GHz in reality.

[#6]

Thanks, I'ii try that and see if it makes any difference.

[#7]

Thanks it works perfectly now, strange the Plusnet Customer Service Rep I spoke ti didn't know anything about this when I asked them but instead told me to contact apple about the issue  

[#8]

Yeah ours has been fine since too. I get connected quicker and get an IP via dhcp a lot quicker. In fact its not far from instant - a second or two at most from turning on wifi on my phone. It used to take 10 - 20 seconds sometimes.

Good to hear you're sorted now too! Thanks for coming back and letting us all know!

[#9]

I know this is a really old thread, put I suffered with internet connection issues with my Ipad and Iphone even tough they were connected to wifi. Separating 2.4 and 5GHz didn't fix it for me, it was driving mad 🙂

The fix for me (without restarting the router) was manually changing the DNS setting on the Apple device. Initially the DHCP DNS was the router IP address, I manually set it to the actual DNS IP address, this fixed it for me!

You could use the Plusnet Primary DNS IP shown under "Broadband > Internet" on the router or just a public DNS such as 8.8.8.8.

I also set the router to always use same IP "Home Network > Devices > *select device*" for the apple devices.

[#10]

It's just a hunch and nothing confirmed (not fired up wireshark to test this) but i have a feeling that when DHCP leases are renewed on the plusnet router, it's not resending the DNS server IP in it's reply but only sending it once in the initial lease offering. I could be barking up the wrong tree but any client that re-requests a lease and temporarily dumps the dns server IP would then be depending on it being resent - and if it isn't then it's got nowhere to send DNS lookups.