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Wi-fi appears to timeout after idle period

S

StNick

Newbie
I'm having a strange problem with my HTC Hero. I am connected to Wi-fi both at home and at the office. Ever since I changed my "Wi-fi sleep mode" to NEVER (so that it remains on Wi-fi, even when I'm not using it), I've noticed that at HOME only, the phone seems to lose connectivity. What is strange though, is that I am still "connected" to the router. The Wi-fi icon remains, and I can see the signal strength fluctuating as I move about the house. I simply cannot get any activity, and I cannot ping the handset. If I disable and then re-enable Wireless, I'm back online, but only for about 5 minutes or so.

Trawling through the forums here, the only result I found where a user had a similar experience was one where he managed to get around it by changing the channel #. This did not work for me (See here: Issue 1698 - android - Wi-fi loses connection with router frequency and doesn't reestablish automatically - Project Hosting on Google Code).

I am using WPA PSK encryption. My next test will be to remove encryption altogether, but I figured I'd pick some brains here first. This is frustrating for me because as I do not have an unlimited data plan, and I'd really prefer to make use of the existing Wi-fi connectivity. And since the phone seems to think it is still "connected" to the network, it doesn't switch over to the mobile network and my online services stop working (eg. latitude, Gtalk etc.).

My router is a Netgear WGU624. Any advice / suggestions appreciated.
 
Hey there,

I'm having the exact same problem, however I'm using a Billion 7404VGOM and WEP encryption - I noticed I leave wifi on at home, then when I go to download something through the market after an unknown amount of time, they just stick on "downloading" until I turn off and back on the wifi.

Anyone else?
 
Yes, exactly the same on a D-Link. Have to disconnect then reconnect to get Market apps to download. Funny thing is, I am using Sipdroid to make VoIP calls using the Wi-Fi connection and it always connects first time.
 
An update on this...

After posting my message last night, I changed to WPA2 PSK, and more importantly (I think), I set the "Key Update" setting from the default 0 to 60 seconds.

So far, my wireless has been solid. I hope this helps those that were experiencing similar problems.
 
Hey... There's not much more to tell unfortunately.

The "Key Update" interval is a setting on my Netgear router, on the same Security tab where I changed the encryption to WPA2 PSK.

I simply changed that from 0 to 60 seconds. I made no other changes on the handset itself.
 
It is possible that it was the switch to WPA2 over WPA that did the trick for me, rather than this update setting. Have you tried using WPA2 ?
 
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