We have a Windows box with a wifi dongle and we're having an issue when a customer with a GS4 running Android 4.3 connects to it. The connection and DHCP negotiation work correctly. Once that happens we begin pinging the phone twice per second*. The phone answers the pings for about 3 seconds, and then never answers a ping again. The phone screen is not turned off. The user hasn't left the mobile app, hasn't killed any tasks or anything like that. Does anyone have information on why the GS4 would stop responding to ping?
I've read that there are issues with this phone/OS *originating* ping - that is NOT the case here. The 'ping' command is never used on the phone. The phone is receiving pings.
Pings are not entirely blocked since it responds correctly for the first few seconds (though not quickly - usually well over 40ms).
This feels - wild guess, could be way off base - more like the GS4 has determined that these pings are some kind of attack and therefore decided to stop responding. Is there anything like that in there? I don't know who would know the internals.
We have not seen the issue with GS3 4.3. We don't currently have any other devices running 4.3, though there is one Galaxy Nexus which could be upgraded.
* Why? Two reasons.
1. The Realtek function which we can call on our computer to determine whether there are any wifi clients connected quite frequently returns false data, and Realtek won't help us. Thus ping is now our method of detecting when the user has walked away.
2. Some older phones (not GS4) are quite sluggish in the ensuing file transfers from our mobile app unless 'prodded' in this manner. We haven't figured out why. It's like they need to be kept awake at a sub-second level.
Some cases were nothing complicated - the phone was deciding that the quality of the wi-fi connection stank so it was switching back to 3g. Turning off Auto Network Switch in the phone's Wi-Fi / Advanced settings fixed that. Other cases continue to show the problem even with that switch disabled.
Related
Ok so my Hero is rooted, running Fresh currently. I'm not sure if this is a ROM issue or a phone issue, but I do know it's not a computer issue as it happens on 3 computers in the house.
When I'm tethered, after an unspecified amount of time (anywhere from 30 seconds to hours) the connection 'locks up'. I'm not sure what is actually happening, but I stop getting any data on the computer (Or laptop or netbook) and the data indicator on the phone gets the up arrow (The left one) stuck "on" and the other arrow stuck "off". The only thing that fixes it is to reboot the phone or disable/re-enable mobile network, after which the cycle repeats itself.
It does this whether I am tethered via USB (I use PDAnet) or wifi tether (Wireles Tether for Root users).
It's driving me crazy, because our cable internet shorted out or something and the techs can't come repair the line until next week (This happened last week) so my Hero is my only internet access point.
Anyone know what's going on or how to fix it?
Edit: It seems to happen more when I'm downloading large files...hours of casual browsing of text-based sites don't trigger it as often, but YouTube or downloading podcasts for my classes seem to make it happen more often. This seems relevant, though I'm not sure how.
Scooley01 said:
Ok so my Hero is rooted, running Fresh currently. I'm not sure if this is a ROM issue or a phone issue, but I do know it's not a computer issue as it happens on 3 computers in the house.
When I'm tethered, after an unspecified amount of time (anywhere from 30 seconds to hours) the connection 'locks up'. I'm not sure what is actually happening, but I stop getting any data on the computer (Or laptop or netbook) and the data indicator on the phone gets the up arrow (The left one) stuck "on" and the other arrow stuck "off". The only thing that fixes it is to reboot the phone or disable/re-enable mobile network, after which the cycle repeats itself.
It does this whether I am tethered via USB (I use PDAnet) or wifi tether (Wireles Tether for Root users).
It's driving me crazy, because our cable internet shorted out or something and the techs can't come repair the line until next week (This happened last week) so my Hero is my only internet access point.
Anyone know what's going on or how to fix it?
Edit: It seems to happen more when I'm downloading large files...hours of casual browsing of text-based sites don't trigger it as often, but YouTube or downloading podcasts for my classes seem to make it happen more often. This seems relevant, though I'm not sure how.
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Click to collapse
hey buddy.
i cant answer definitivly, but i have had the same issue with PDANET and EasyTether (not wireless, but i dont use it much) so i hope my crazy theory can help...
this is probably far fetchd, but i hope you can appreciate it all the same. as we know, tmobile stripped down all the tethering apps from the market (not really sure how pdanet or easytether or barnicles survived this) and it started a big war with consumers versus providers, even resulted in a petition app being distributed through the market.
my wild theory is this: even though we're paying for unlimited data, i have a feeling sprint still watches this and throws a cap on at some point. i have no doubt in my mind that they watch these forums and know EXACTLY what we do, and take every precaution to ensure we dont take advantage of it. i think at this point, this late in the game, their easily able to tell when we're surfing phones versus tethering and using "mass amounts of data" (when compared to surfing the phone) and therefor put a quick stopper on their leaky bottle.
any other suggestions? ive just never seen it answered before, and was forced to reach my own conclusion, but hey! maybe some people live off their phones internet and have never had any issues (but how much data have you REALLY used in one session?) so this might just be as crazy as it sounds.
hope i helped!
tether
I tether my phone at the office daily it powers my office network with a speed little under dsl. best way to decribe the speed im getting is that of Dual ISDN. Your problem is definitely a power draw problem, after installing the rom that i wanted and i started tethering, i noticed that my phone will freeze up and the 3g speed will slow down to a crawl, at the time i was powering 6 computers on my tether with internet. to overcome this problem i needed to use the AC adapter that came with the phone to power it and i used a cpu management program (i forgot the name lol) to keep the mhz at 528 when the phone goes into standby that way your phone can handle the packets that are coming in and handle the dispersement of those packets to the computers on the tether while it goes into standby.
after that i never had a problem, like the guy said above, sprint will cap that ass if they see any shanagins goings on. I usually get away with about 4 hours of continious net time before sprint kills my data and i gotta restart the phone or go into airplane mode and come out of it. The data involved amounted to about 2 gigs of data before they booted me.
Scooley01 said:
When I'm tethered, after an unspecified amount of time (anywhere from 30 seconds to hours) the connection 'locks up'. I'm not sure what is actually happening, but I stop getting any data on the computer (Or laptop or netbook) and the data indicator on the phone gets the up arrow (The left one) stuck "on" and the other arrow stuck "off". The only thing that fixes it is to reboot the phone or disable/re-enable mobile network, after which the cycle repeats itself.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The exact same thing happens on the Samsung Moment. The workaround we figured out was to use SetCPU to force the CPU down to 266 when tethering. It sounds strange but it worked!
Perhaps this will work on the Hero??
I've noticed that my [rooted] Vibrant frequently has trouble connecting, or staying connected, to WiFi networks.
At first I thought it was specific to my Verizon Actiontec WiFi router, however I've also noticed this at my office, where we use Motorola routers, as well as a few other locations that I frequent.
It's still possible that its a site-specific problem, but, less likely as I'm seeing this in a few locations.
Symptoms:
I configure my phone to connect to X network.
It successfully connects and all it fine.
I get out of range, it no longer sees network X and disconnects.
Some time later I return to my previous location and expect that in N seconds/minutes the phone will automatically reconnect.
A considerable amount of time passes and I notice it's still not connected.
I check the wifi settings and it days connection unsuccessful.
I tap the network, click connect and it works.
I've also noticed this after connecting to a network and the phone goes to 'sleep' or into an idle state. When a wake it up, it doesn't always automatically reconnect.
Anyone else seen this?
Any suggestions?
Many thanks.
i've had that problem. i am not sure what it was because I was rooted and Ryaned. I got sick of all the stupid lil bugs and had to wipe format and unroot. Now that I am back to the original condition, theres this sense of comfort knowing if something buggy happens, it's not "my" fault.
Thanks for the reply.
I noticed this prior to rooting and 'Ryan'ing'.
The capacitive buttons don't work all that well from time to time - specifically the Home button so maybe I should just exchange it. I'll call TMO tomorrow to see what they say.
I live in Venezuela. We have an alright cell infrastructure but I've noticed that the data services are far from 99% uptime. There are areas and times of the day when you lose your data connection completely. It seems though that Windows Mobile can't handle this environment properly. After losing a connection a couple of times, it just fails to get it back again even under working conditions. I noticed this because a reboot or sometimes just switching to airplane mode for a few seconds and back brings you back online (Which should've happened automatically without intervention)
Venezuela is also one of the largest Blackberry markets in the world. Everyone has a blackberry here and I've had plenty of chances to observe their behaviour under what I'm guessing are the same conditions. Blackberry phones are not at all hindered by the intermittency of services. They seem to take it in stride and keep on going.
Now, I wan't to get to the bottom of this and there are a few issues that need clarification first:
1. Is RIM compensating through the use of Push services or some kind of server retention where data is held until the phone comes online? That seems like a good way to mitigate the effects of intermittent connections and I want to know if they're doing just that since I know a lot of their software routes data through their servers. (It also baffles me that Palringo or IM+ don't do this to the same degree)
2. Why does WinMO fail so miserably at reattaining connection? Even if RIM is compensating through server-side retention, it STILL performs better at reconnecting reliably and repeatedly. Is there anything I can do to fix this? What is happening that is making windows seemingly give up after a few failed attempts?
3. I've heard that RIM requires the carriers to have dedicated "RIM" servers to guarantee the quality of service for their phones alone. Is this true?
4. How does Android perform under these conditions? I haven't had a chance to really try out these phones and most users are not keen enough to technical matters to notice the flaws. We also don't have much Android adoption yet.
Bonus question:
I'd like to study this matter a little more scientifically. Is there any easy way I can make a batch file or some other script to regularly ping a server and log the results? I do know how to program but I'm not well versed on the WinMO platform so I'd like to avoid that rampup with a simple script instead of a full program.
Your compare is a little vague in scope. BB is a dedicated "always connected" device, where the data-link is active and the server pushes through that to the waiting client on the device. This demands that a connection must be active all time, so the device will probably just re-connect automatically. As a side-effect you can browse anytime you have an (automatic established) connection. Also do all services on that connection always go through RIM servers - you never connect directly form the device to any external resource! Blackberry is VERY special in that regard!
Windows Mobile is highly configurable by the OEMs that make the devices. There is no own strategy how to link the connectivity and the services on top of it. This is a matter of the OEM for the device or the vendor of a service/application the you have bought. Without telling more about your device and checking on the GPRS/Data auto-connect and auto-disconnect it is hard to give advice. For sure there is no permanent connection establishment automatism (as you do not need that because there are no default push services).
Usually (as all most other devices as well), the connection is done when a service on the device request one, not any earlier. This connection establishment takes time (some seconds) and then you can use the connection, until it either breaks, you disconnect or the device disconnects after a period of inactivity.
Fair enough, but I have several apps that are constantly seeking information. IM and social networks. They seem to reconnect automatically, yes. But the thing is that at some point in time, that auto-reconnect process seems to crash and no longer works. The apps keep requesting it but it just never comes.
Is there a hard limit? Is there a glitch? Where are the settings for this?
(I've observed this on the HTC Touch, HTC Imagio and HTC Touch HD)
Establishing connections is handled in the RADIO part of the build just on request of the OS layer. The radio stack is an own partition on the device (distinct form the OS). They interface via the RIL (Radio Interface Layer).
So if there are problems in that part, they are probably due to the radio stack on the devices or the RIL parameter settings. Both are under responsibility of the OEM (in this case HTC). Complain to them (and your network operator) and ask for a resolution of your problem - this is no Windows Mobile related generic problem.
I had faced similar problems with an old device of mine where only the first time a GPRS connection could be established, and then no more until the radio was disabled/enabled again. I had solved this by picking the a radio part that was explicitly tested and released for my country and operator. Though all things are "standardized" by 3gpp sometimes dedicated device<->network alignment may be needed.
I'm running the official BTU 4.3 release on my I9505
I've noticed two issues with 4.3
a) Wifi
From time to time, perhaps daily, my phone loses connection to my home wifi. I get a notification which says something about being disconnected -- don't remember the full text. When I click on it I get taken to the list of wifi networks and underneath my local wifi network it will say "Sign-in is required".
It may be working as designed - checking my newish BT HomeHub 5 I can see the PPP session recycled twice overnight. Oddly this was initiated by upstream admin according to the logs, not a vdsl failure.... since the hub will intercept pages when ppp is down it's possible this caused the confusion
b) Security policy
I sometimes see a notification that an app required access to system, but didn't have permission - yet when I click on the notification I get taken to a full list of apps -- how do I find out which one was trying to be naughty?
The WiFi problem can be quite annoying.
I think this is not an improvement over the previous functionality.
The idea seems to be that as soon you have to manually log in to a WiFi network Android switches to the cellular connection to make sure you are always connected.
The thing is that at my work place this means every time I get somewhat out of range of WiFi (elevator, toilet, staircase) and walk into range my WiFi stays disconnected until I remember to reconnect it.
I only have to actually sign in once a day, but as Android thinks it is a network you have to sign in to it will not automatically reconnect to that network.
Meanwhile the phone is using up my data allowance....
I haven't been able to get anywhere with this issue I've been having for a few weeks, so I figured I'd fire up my old xda account and see if anyone on here can help since this is a more techy crowd. I've searched and searched but I haven't found anything similar unfortunately.
Tl;dr I have to log in to my work's guest wifi every day, but I didn't before. Nobody else does. Auto connect is set to on, but it doesn't work like it used to/is supposed to.
Longer: I connect to a guest network at work every day that's meant for employee personal devices. (I use a homebrew VPN for this.) Before the issue started, I'd periodically (maybe once/month if that) have a notification when I arrived to sign in, and you click agree in a captive portal and you're on your way. Other than that it auto connects just like at home. A few weeks (?) ago however, I've started having to do this every day. If I'm disconnected for over roughly an hour (say if I leave and come back during the day) I have to do it again, and if I reboot my device I also have to sign in again. If I just toggle wifi on and off quickly then it automatically connects just fine.
Ordinarily this wouldn't be a huge deal, but where I work I basically get no cell coverage. I also have a couple tasker profiles that I've been using for years to do stuff (vibrate mode, silence media, etc) when I arrive to work, and these don't/won't trigger until I have a minute to log in. Ideally these would trigger as soon as I'm within range of the building, as I've been doing for years now.
None of my coworkers have this issue, everyone that I've asked all say their devices automatically connect just fine, as mine used to.
I'm assuming this is something related to my device. Because it happens if I reboot, but not if I quickly disconnect and reconnect, I'm imagining maybe something isn't being cached correctly?
If anyone can help me fix this I'd be very grateful!
Solved: dev setting for non-persistent Mac address randomization was on.