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Wifi Tethering Connection Issues

A

Astonem

Lurker
Hi, I currently own a Samsung Galaxy Nexus on Verizon Wireless and have the grandfathered unlimited data plan. Due to this, and my inability to get a decent internet connection where I live, I have been using my phone with Foxfi to provide myself with internet whenever I'm at my house. It has worked perfectly with 4G at home and I feel incredibly lucky that I am able to do so, otherwise I wouldn't be able to even have internet access.

However, I have recently moved into a dorm at my university and the internet connection here is pretty bad when trying to play certain games, and it is incapable of streaming twitch.tv at all. So I've been trying to use my phone as my source of internet as I do at home, by placing my phone on the windowsill (that's the only area that I get 4G), and turning on Foxfi just as I would do at home. Then I connect to the wifi signal with either my laptop or my Nexus 7, and the connection works!... At first anyways. Here's where my issue comes in: after about 5 minutes or so after connecting, whichever device I'm using that is connected, randomly drops its connection and either tries to reconnect over and over again to no avail, or connects to the university connection. I have absolutely NO idea what is causing this problem, since everything works perfectly at home. If I stop foxfi and then restart it, I can connect again for about five minutes (but that obviously gets annoying and I would like to fix it).

If anyone has ever experienced this issue, or has any suggestions on how to fix it, please let me know because I'm willing to try anything to fix this. I have tried renaming the connection several times, changing the password, not using a password (which I would prefer not to do), and moving the device around (where there is still 4G signal). My Galaxy Nexus is running android 4.2.2. I also recently visited my uncle, and tried to use the wifi hotspot function there, and it worked just as it did at home, without disconnecting and going into the re-connection loop.
If anyone thinks I should post this to any of the android forums, please let me know which ones because I wasn't really sure where to ask other than reddit.

Any help or input is appreciated greatly and I can answer any other questions about my devices/location/whatever if need be!
 
I guess that's a possibility, but it's just weird that if I restart the wifi tether, everything works fine again. I'm quite sure that if I were to just use my phone with it's 4G connection, there would be no interruption in signal. If what you're saying is true though, then there's no way to really fix it then.
 
If tower congestion is the issue, you are correct in that there isn't much that can be done. The only other possibility is the foxfi app. Since you are using that, I'm assuming you're not using unlimited tethering plan that Verizon offers. Have you tried signing up for that plan and seeing if you have the same issue? If you only use it for like a day or so, they will prorate so it comes out to roughly a dollar a day. If that works, then it's foxfi.
 
Hmm thanks, I could try that especially if it would only work out to be about $1. I was wondering if maybe the problem was within the actual wifi signal itself. Now I don't know much about wifi signal frequencies and whatnot, but could there be some sort of conflicting signal here that is messing with my signal? I have tried other apps instead of foxfi, and they have all done the same thing. I also wondered if maybe rooting my phone and using one of the root only apps would help? I just can't understand why it works so perfectly at home, and worked fine at my uncle's house, yet it won't work here.

There were maybe two times in the past two weeks that it has actually worked for over an hour or so. I don't know exactly how long because it worked all the way up until I fell asleep from when I started using it on my tablet in bed. So around an hour at least I'd say. I'm pretty dumbfounded here, so thanks for your input!
 
Foxfi went to a paid version and they kick free users off after 10 minutes. This happened to me a month ago.

I'm rooting for you to find a new way. -:)
 
Yeah I own the paid version and that's what I've been using ever since they released it. It's well worth the $7 or however much it was.

And thanks, I really hope I can find a solution!
 
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