iPhones keep losing WiFi connection

[winter3]

Hi everyone,

In the past few months I've been experiencing problems with the TalkTalk Wi-Fi Hub router, specifically with mine and my partner's iPhones.

Every few minutes, probably dozen or so, the WiFi connection will drop (phone is still connected to the WiFi, but there's no internet) and I need to either disconnect and reconnect manually or leave it as it until it fixes itself 10-15 minutes later. As you can imagine, this is rather frustrating, especially considering that none of my other devices (laptop, PC, TV) that are connected to the router, whether via cable or wifi, experience the same issue.

My router's version is SG4K100174, all devices are connected to the 5 GHz band, the router is in the same room as me (and the devices), not using any extenders or anything else.

Additionally, might be related or not, the router's admin panel seems to break when trying to enable/disable the different wifi bands; a few weeks ago, I disabled the 2 GHz band but when I tried to re-enable it later, it would not work, no matter what I tried or what browser and device I used, so I had to factory reset the entire router in order to be able to get it back.

[Karl-TalkTalk]

Hi

OK, I'll feed this back to our teams.

Karl.

[winter3]

Hi @Karl-TalkTalk ,

Thanks for getting back to me! IP address does not work either and upon checking the router UI, the iPhone does not appear in the listed WiFi devices at all, even if the phone itself claims it is connected to the WiFi.

[Karl-TalkTalk]

Hi 

Our devices Team - after speaking with sagemcom have asked if you can test the following.

When the connection fails, can you try accessing a website via IP address for example 142.251.36.46   (google.com)

This will bypass DNS.

Thanks  

Karl. 

[Karl-TalkTalk]

Hi

Nothing back from Sagemcom as yet, but the Team are still pressing them for an update.

Thanks  

Karl. 

[winter3]

Hi @Michelle-TalkTalk @Debbie-TalkTalk ,

Sorry for mentioning you on this again, but I was wondering if there has been any updates? This is still happening consistently.

[Michelle-TalkTalk]

Morning, 

I'm sorry for the delay with updates. Our Devices Team are still looking into this with Sagemcom.

Michelle

[Debbie-TalkTalk]

Hi @winter3 

I've asked our Devices Team for an update and I will post back here as soon as they come back to me with additional information.

Thanks

Debbie

[Debbie-TalkTalk]

Hi winter3

Our Devices Team have advised that they are still investigating this issue. As soon as they provide further updates then I will post back on this thread.

Thanks

[Debbie-TalkTalk]

Thanks @winter3 for the additional information.

I should hopefully have further updates from our Devices Team later today.

Debbie

[winter3]

Hi @Debbie-TalkTalk ,

Just wanted to update you on this; unfortunately, disabling the "Private Wi-Fi Address" and "Limit IP Address Tracking" options for the wifi connection had no effect whatsoever and the connection still dropped at:

Monday: 15:10, 15:50
Tuesday: 10:30, 15:50
Wednesday: 12:05, 14:20

[Debbie-TalkTalk]

Hi @winter3 

Thank you. I will continue to feed back any examples or information to our Devices Team whilst they are investigating.

Debbie

[winter3]

Will do, for next few days, I will disable the "Private Wi-Fi Address" and "Limit IP Address Tracking" for this connection on my iPhone and see if that has any knock-on effect.

[Debbie-TalkTalk]

Hi @winter3 

Thank you for confirming 🙂

I have passed over all your examples to our Devices Team and I will post back here as soon as I have further information.

If you could keep noting example dates and times of when this fault occurs that would be appreciated.

Thanks again.

Debbie

[winter3]

I did, yes, roughly around the time you requested me to do so.

[Debbie-TalkTalk]

Hi @winter3 

Thanks for your reply.

Did you reboot the router on Friday?

[winter3]

Hey @Debbie-TalkTalk ,

Not great unfortunately. I've recorded the approximate time of when each drop occurred, "drop" being measured by the phone appearing to be connected, but no actual internet connection being established - web applications displaying "Connecting" and web browsers failing to reach any website.

Friday: 14:40, 16:28

Saturday: 8:40, 13:01, 13:10, 15:30, 17:15, 19:23, 19:45

Sunday: 11:45, 19:35, 22:00

Monday: at around 9:00, the router itself lost connection to the internet and all my devices went offline; 9:40.

This is what I see on my phone when I try to reach google.com and I know for a fact that the connection isn't there, even if the wifi icon is on:

iPhone no wifi

This is what I see on the router's UI when the phone is in such a state:

iphone router status dc'd

And it changes to this once I stop and restart the wifi and the connection is alive again:

iphone router status alive

[Debbie-TalkTalk]

Hi @winter3 

How was the connection over the weekend?

[Debbie-TalkTalk]

Hi @winter3 

Ok, thank you.

I am looking at another case of this happening at the moment but it's not the same model of iphone. We are looking at example dates and times provided to try and pin point the issue.

[winter3]

@Debbie-TalkTalk 

No, not yet. I want to see if it's a configuration error of a sort, I'm sure that will also be helpful in the long run for your team too, in case other customers report the same issue. I can also play around with my iPhone's connection settings and see if that might have been causing it, let's give it some time to test things out and narrow down the problem. If nothing works, we can look into replacing the router.

Thanks!

[Debbie-TalkTalk]

Hi @winter3 

Thanks for your reply.

Would you like me to send a replacement router too so we can rule this out?