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WiFi is TERRIBLE

Exchange your phone. My wifi seems to work fine now, knock on wood. (Though now there's probably some other defect hiding in my phone since they all seem to have at least one, heh.)
 
JHannaman82 said:
Ok guys have some new information for you.

Today I tested 2 captivates (new unmodified) out of the box at work.

They would connect to the wide open Cisco APs (no security), but would only rarely trasmit data to any application.

On my 2WIRE ATT wifi away from work (WPA2 security), both connect fine and have no issues.

The DHCP server saw both devices fine, the firewall did not block them, but it showed once an IP was leased, the device ceased communication, almost like the wifi radio stack got hung up after getting an address). The phones had IP/DNS/etc set fine automatically. It def seems more specific to Cisco APs then to encryption, considering this network is wide open/broadcasting/etc.

I'm starting to wonder if Cisco's CCX protocol (is that right?) could be the culprit here. Hang on to your hats folks, were gonna get this issue knocked out.
Click to expand...

I have an At&T wifi and have the same issue however i can be right next to my wifi router with a full signal and it will not connect. Not sure what happened or how to fix it.

Barry
 
just bumping this, b/c the problem is driving me nuts. perhaps i should go back in a few days and ask for a captivate from a different shipment??

i could live with the problem for a few weeks if there's a likelihood the froyo switch will magically fix it.

i like the cute little aria i have been forced into using after two failed captivates, but would much prefer a 4" super amoled and 1 ghz processor.

any thoughts?
 
I fixed my wifi problem rather easy. What i did was load the Samsung Kies and back everything up then i did a master reset and once the phone rebooted it picked up the wifi again. I have had no problems since and no explanation why it quit working in the first place.
 
I dont think finding the wifi is the problem its the connection to wifi thats rather spotty at best. dropping wifi bars while being in same room as router is problematic
 
I just wanted to confirm these issues on my captivate. I have 3G/wifi on mine, and wifi will work for short bursts (usually after a restart), and then stop.

I just turned on airplane mode, did a hard reset, and turned on the wifi (with airplane mode still on, so no 3G or cell signal). It worked for a bit, but still crapped out after a while (the wifi icon up top still says it's connected, but no apps are able to make successful connections).

Wifi has worked 100% fine at home, on my secure linksys AP (tomato). This experimentation was for the Cisco routers on my school campus (unprotected cisco APs). I cannot get wifi to work reliably for my campus APs.

tl;dr This software needs a fix, and good. Can't wait for one of the custom ROMs to try out (c'mon Cyanogen!)...
 
jasko said:
I just wanted to confirm these issues on my captivate. I have 3G/wifi on mine, and wifi will work for short bursts (usually after a restart), and then stop.

I just turned on airplane mode, did a hard reset, and turned on the wifi (with airplane mode still on, so no 3G or cell signal). It worked for a bit, but still crapped out after a while (the wifi icon up top still says it's connected, but no apps are able to make successful connections).

Wifi has worked 100% fine at home, on my secure linksys AP (tomato). This experimentation was for the Cisco routers on my school campus (unprotected cisco APs). I cannot get wifi to work reliably for my campus APs.

tl;dr This software needs a fix, and good. Can't wait for one of the custom ROMs to try out (c'mon Cyanogen!)...
Click to expand...

Same issue here. Wifi works everywhere except on Cisco Enterprise routers (wide open network). Ive tried everything. Think its a driver issue. This is a dealbreaker, as cell connection does not work in our data center building (for obvious reasons)
 
mongstradamus said:
I dont think finding the wifi is the problem its the connection to wifi thats rather spotty at best. dropping wifi bars while being in same room as router is problematic
Click to expand...


This is happening to me as well and driving me nuts. I mean... why is it dropping wifi and then reconnecting so much? This happens to stock Rom and flashed JH2 rom. Oh... this is my 2nd Captivate as well and it's happen on the first one as well.

My other phone (Iphone 4) doesn't do this as at all and it's on the same wifi network.
 
Quick google search brings up this link:

Issue 1386 - android - Feature req: support WPA2-Enterprise with EAP extensions - Project Hosting on Google Code

And I noticed this solution:

Comment 261 by seta2350, Aug 01, 2010
"Hey, I just got my Xperia X10 to work in our university wifi. WPA-EAP PEAP with MSCHAPV2. I used the app Wifi-Config Editor Pro from the market. You don't even need to root your phone. I hope this works on everyone else also. I was so thankful with the developer. This app sved my phone.

Comment 263 by alvaronuss, Aug 04, 2010
The solution provided by seta2350 on Aug 01 works for me, too. The app is free. Wifi Config Editor. You must CREATE the wifi connection with the default method (not scan), and then fine tune it with the Wifi Config Editor.

Thanks, seta2350.
Comment 264 by oddrai...@gmail.com, Aug 04, 2010
Hello all,

As seta2350 mentioned, I have released an application on the Android Market (Wifi Config Editor) that allows you to edit the WiFi settings as are stored in the internal WPA_Supplicant WITHOUT the need to Root the device.

A number of people have found this to solve their WiFi networking issues.

Let me know if you have any issues with it.

--OddRain"

Try out that program and let us know if it works.
 
richierich said:
I don't have any wifi issues at home (2Wire AT&T U-Verse modem) but I'll see today at work.
Click to expand...

I have uverse at home as well but i am not getting strong wifi signal with captivate, as compared to my old iphone or laptop. Lose full wifi signal when I am in same room as the router , and I have tried on two different captivates
 
weird because even if I'm getting closer to my 2WIRE uverse router no bars drop. And I wouldn't compare bar strength between your laptop, iphone and captivate as they all use different methods of analyzing signal strength. Sounds like interference issues??
 
i have wifi issues at home with both the captivate and the aria. At a local bar I get blazing speeds. There is something with the router or isp setting that have to be a problem...or maybe some people are correct inthe issue about this thing picking up poor signal. At home I get two bars ten feet from the router. At the bar I dont even know where it is and i get full bars.
 
I think a lot of this may have to do with the router, the configurations, and the make up of the building you are in... and maybe the phone too.

I have yet to experience sub-par wifi on this thing, I would say it is better than my old iP 3g.

Buildings with a lot of steal or concrete in them kill signal. If your router is near other wireless stuff, like phones, wireless keyboards/mice, blue tooth devices, and things like that can realy weaken your signal a lot.

Try to move your router away from other wireless stuff. You can also change the channel your router broadcasts on. Interference from other stuff is probably the biggest signal killer.

Like the guy who said in his home, he starts loosing signal only 10 feet away, but at the bar he gets a full strong signal. It might be likely his router is in his office or den next to a wireless phone, with a wireless KB and mouse on the desk, and a blue tooth printer, etc. AT the bar, they probably have a large aftermarket antenna somewhere in the seating area. I would probably guess they dont have a lot of other competing wireless signals bouncing around the bar. In a case like that, is is most likely something to do with your set up at home, if it performs well on a different setup elsewere.

I guess it could be an issue that affects some of the phones, but in my professional opinion, I would probably suspect interference of some kind. Try moving the router, changing its channel, or you can purchase higher powered antennas for $20 or so from a place like Fry's

There is a free app in the app store i think called something like "wifi analyzer" that is good for scanning your local area for other signals that may interfere with your wifi and suggests settings that seem to be more clear. That may help you find the optimal channel to set your wifi router to for better performance.
 
This is the one problem that's really annoying me since I got my phone on Wed. My personal wireless works great (WPA).

On the other hand, at work (PEAP-MSCHAPv2 and Cisco APs) my phone says connected but there doesn't appear to be any data transfer. It says it's a solid connection, but nothing ever works.

I've tried setting a static IP and using Wifi Config Editor Pro. Neither worked. At least Android Market lets you return stuff for a refund.

Any other ideas out there?
 
To make my wifi go at work, I had to set up a static lease on the DHCP server and set a static IP on the phone. Even with an AP (a Linksys we had laying around) set up under my desk, I get a shaky two bars on the wifi icon. The rest of our gear is Extreme Networks. The phone just doesn't seem to like multiple APs in the environment.

I am kinda wondering if the signal indicator is really much of an indicator at all. Wifi Analyzer reports about -80 to -70dBm sitting about ten feet from my router - which is decent. Not stellar, but decent. Even this being the case, the signal indicator on the phone shows one bar under these conditions. I just don't know. Maybe they're allowed to broadcast wifi signals at higher power in Korea and the signal indicator is calibrated accordingly.
 
I read somewhere that Cisco routers don't like Android phones, so those of you with a Cisco router is probably out of luck.

I use a netgear router at home. No problem so far. I have noticed the low bar connection too, but my phone works fine even at 1 bar.
 
FYI there is a known problem with the captivate wifi software not working with DD-WRT prior to a certain build, check your logs you might see "deauthenicated due to local deauth" because the captivate software doesn't properly send the wpa/wpa2 keys, it is a problem in the OS actually that might be fixed in Froyo but the wpa supplicant send the key twice with two different id's so the access point deauth the connection.
 
I agree that the Captivate does have a WiFi problem. It works just great at my house with 1 Linksys/Tomato router (WPA2-AES). At work with 3 HP Procurve 420 APs all set with (WPA2, AES, pure-g) the captivate will connect just fine to the first AP won't roam to any others. When I walk across the building it doesn't properly switch to the closer AP. All of our laptops and iPhones will do this just fine. The solution for me is to turn off wifi, then turn it back on when I move locations. Its a pain, but not a deal breaker for me. FYI all of our HP Procruve APs are set on different radio channels, same SSID, same security (WPA2, AES, pure-g mode).
 
Yes the known issues with the captivate wireless implementation so far are:

1) does not roam properly to new AP. It will not roam until the old signal is completely unavailable. In a ap mesh network this never happens because they are designed to overlap. No known solution, workaround is to disable and re-enable wifi.

2) wpa/wpa2 supplicant broken and when renewing keys sends the auth incorrectly with two different id's causing any ap with strict adherence (dd-wrt, cisco, probably some others) to deauth the client, the phone will show wifi connected but there is no data transmission - this will happen at the key refresh interval. known solution is android 2.2 supposedly, workaround is new firmware for your AP (for instance newest dd-wrt has coding to deal with this issue and be less strict about key renewal error) another workaround is recompile new wpa module into android rom (some roms have fixed module already).

3) known problem with unable to associate to 802.1x eap/tls mainly affects enterprise implementation. no known solution, workaround is to not use 802.1x eap/tls (yeah good luck with that in your enterprise lol), another workaround is set a static IP on the phone

4) signal strength bounces around wildly even when close to AP. no known solution or workaround.

5) hardware defect on some phones - cannot associate to any wireless or drops connection randomly. solution - exchange phone

if you know another known issue we can add it to the list
 
Great info here, thanks to everyone. I was able to get a connection (partially) on my corporate wifi. Like gybryant, I had to set it up as a static IP. When using the corp. wifi, my work email works fine through the email application, but it says can't connection to server for my gmail and yahoo accounts. Browsing works fine, but I can't download any apps through the market. Switch to 3G allows everything to work fine. It must be some sort of authentication issue. To be honest, a lot of the issues I was having was user error. I didn't realize that when it asked for your username, you needed to say "Domain\username" and not just "username". Ooops.
 
I have seen one other issue, wifi just stops working altogether. When you enable wifi it scans for networks and doesn't find any, then the wifi goes back to disabled. This can be fixed by doing a hard reset on the phone.

I'm still having issues with the enterprise network at my work. It sounds like the wpa/wpa2 supplicant broken issue since it still shows wifi as connected by no traffic is going anywhere. I guess I'll be waiting until we get Froyo or there is a decent ROM out there to try instead.
 
Well, my phone easily connects to my router at home and gives fantastic speeds, but after the phone idles for a while the connection sort of drops. It'll still be connected to the wifi and show a strong signal, yet no date will transmit. I have to turn off wifi and then turn it back on to browse the web, use youtube, etc. Again, it'll only do it when the phone idles (or sleeps) as I can listen to pandora nonstop on wifi without it cutting off. Of course, I've had no luck with changing the settings in my router config nor with the 'Wi-Fi Keep Alive' app. I don't know what to think... it still works and turning it on and off a few times a day isn't terribly inconvenient. Still, I work at home so it would be great if anyone had the same problem and found a solution.
 
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