Is there any hope to getting Playbook wifi to actually work more than 5 seconds?

[Red Squirrel]

The Playbook wifi has always sucked. At first it will work, load a few more pages, especially youtube or other intensive stuff, then suddenly it just dies out. This is noticeable as the load bar will go 1/3 then just stop.

I've read stuff about changing wifi channels and other stuff like that. Should not have to do that especially when everything else works. Tried it to no avail.

So I bought some commercial APs thinking it might be better. They have a range of 400ft so I just installed just one as a stand alone. It is a Unifi. Tested with my laptop and it works fine. I'm sitting literally next to it with the playbook, loaded 3 pages then it conked out again.

Before I make a youtube video of me smashing it, is there anything else I can try? Is there perhaps a way to just hook it up to ethernet? The reason I bought this was to have a way to control my furnace, I even wrote a full blown web based app for it, but it can't even do that simple task. Been using the computer for it.

 

[3chordcharlie]

assuming OS is up to date?

Never really had trouble with mine that way, but try deleting all of your wifi network profiles. And don't be bridged to a phone while you try this.

 

[shortylickens]

My playbook is just fine. Stays connected all night & has news and weather updates in the morning.

I think its just yours.

 

[3chordcharlie]

My playbook is just fine. Stays connected all night & has news and weather updates in the morning.

I think its just yours.

I see a few complaints around the web. Any that were actually resolved were either an OS update or clearing out the saved wifi profiles and starting from scratch.

A few were unresolved, or at least the poster never replied whether that worked.

Can't see enough info to be sure if only profiles imported over bridge cause trouble.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Reloaded the OS many times, I always go to the most up to date one when I do this. I only have one profile in there now and it's the Unifi AP which I just installed. Thing is, the wifi actually stays connected, but the traffic stops flowing. It's like if it's signal is so weak it can't handle lot of data at once then just conks out. Youtube tends to kill it, or if I refresh a page too often.

 

[3chordcharlie]

Anything interesting in router log or status when it is/isn't working?

 

[Red Squirrel]

Nothing that catches my eye. I can see traffic go through, but it seems after a while it's only receiving and never sending. But that's from the firewall's point of view, so for all I know those packets never make it to the Playbook. It seems to have the most trouble with intensive sites like youtube. Even facebook or google image search it has trouble with. It just starts to grind to a halt. I eventually get an error that the network is unavailable. After many tries it sometimes starts working.

I just installed a Unifi access point, it's good for like 400 feet and I'm within 10 feet of it, it still craps out. I have an old laptop I use to test and it's fine. I ran a speed test and got the same I would on my LAN.

Actually one thing I did notice is a lot of these:

Nov 7 03:05:42 kernel: fxp0: promiscuous mode disabled
Nov 7 03:05:27 kernel: fxp0: promiscuous mode enabled
Nov 7 03:05:23 kernel: fxp0: promiscuous mode disabled
Nov 7 03:05:17 kernel: fxp0: promiscuous mode enabled
Nov 7 03:05:16 kernel: fxp0: promiscuous mode disabled
Nov 7 03:05:07 kernel: fxp0: promiscuous mode enabled
Nov 7 03:05:05 kernel: fxp0: promiscuous mode disabled
Nov 7 03:05:04 kernel: fxp0: promiscuous mode enabled
Nov 7 03:04:41 kernel: fxp0: promiscuous mode disabled
Nov 7 03:04:28 kernel: fxp0: promiscuous mode enabled

fxp0 is the wifi interface.

 

[3chordcharlie]

What happens if you shut down/disconnect everything else from the router?

And does it do this on other networks?

The log does seem a little odd. Does not specify which local machine is requesting promiscuous mode?

 

[Red Squirrel]

It pretty much is the only machine on that network at most times. I have a few active jacks around the house but I rarely have something plugged in. It's an isolated network so all my stuff is on another network.

It seems to work better now, in pfsense I had lower the state table optimization setting from Aggressive to Conservative. Not sure why I'd have to change a global setting for one device to work, but it seems to have done the trick without affecting anything else. Still early to tell though, but yesterday I watched 3 full youtube videos and it was still staying connected. It still gets hung up a bit in the middle of loading though but it eventually goes through. Before it would just sit forever.

 

[3chordcharlie]

It pretty much is the only machine on that network at most times. I have a few active jacks around the house but I rarely have something plugged in. It's an isolated network so all my stuff is on another network.

It seems to work better now, in pfsense I had lower the state table optimization setting from Aggressive to Conservative. Not sure why I'd have to change a global setting for one device to work, but it seems to have done the trick without affecting anything else. Still early to tell though, but yesterday I watched 3 full youtube videos and it was still staying connected. It still gets hung up a bit in the middle of loading though but it eventually goes through. Before it would just sit forever.

weird.

a friend of mine had his playbook at a hotel last week and it couldn't connect to the wifi (but his cell phone could). but that seems like a different issue (fail to connect at all).

obviously no access to router settings or anything to see what was up.