Smart Hub Pro client roaming

[ben_flugel]

Good morning,

I moved over to EE's 1.6gbps service on 21st Jan. I have a Smart Hub Pro and 3 Smart WiFi Pro extenders. Two of those extenders are wired in with one wireless. We live in a large property with thick walls, so signal is always a struggle.

Coverage with the 4 units is excellent, I have no issue with the coverage or with the speed of the service whilst connected to any of the nodes.

My problem is with our mobile phones - two Pixel 8 Pros and one Pixel 8. When moving around the house, the drop off they WiFi and onto the 4G. The message on the phones' WiFi says "Connected/No internet access". We have turned off the Adaptive Connectivity options on the phones.

We had 4 x Eero 6 Pros before this setup and had no such issue with client roaming.

A quick dive into the phone WiFi to flick WiFi off and back on again, and the phone connects immediately.

It appears that the Smart WiFi systems struggles to move the phones between the APs as we move around the house.

We've tried with WiFi Enhancer on and off and with advanced security on and off. These don't appear to affect the roaming - the problem happens whether these are on or off.

Any suggestions or help is welcome.

[JimM11]

@ben_flugel Have you tried the simple one, but not a google pixel user, with Samsung turn Mobile data off, and see if it remains locked on wi-fi.

[humeka]

On SAMSUNG I turn off VoLTE calls (in Mobile Neworks) this stops my mobile reverting o 4G if it sees a signal when using WIFI calling. Maybe also something to try .

[JimM11]

@ben_flugel If you are able to on a laptop/pc have a look with the web manager http://192.168.1.254 and advanced / wireless / the extenders will give you idea, have a look at 2 things, FW has updated on the extenders to match the router, they are showing as ethernet connected wired devices. Latest FW is i think as below, not a EE Pro user.

r2.64.3-R-1213091-PROD-1 you will also see this in the Status screen for the router.

[ben_flugel]

Thanks @JimM11 

I spent a lot of time on the weekend testing with various devices. The problem was apparently on our two Pixel 8 Pros and two of our cheap Nokia T10 tablets. Apple devices and my daughter's Pixel 8 was fine. I took the drastic approach to reset the Pixel 8 Pros. Viola - problem resolved. Obviously something wrong in those phones after several months of various updates. It only happened whilst connected on the 6ghz band. Either way, I've resolved the problem. 

I don't care too much about the tablets, we don't us them at home, more for media consumption when travelling.

I notice firmware on all EE nodes has jumped to r2.64.5-R-1298597-PROD-1

[JimM11]

@ben_flugel As you say it's all about what it takes to get them going, bit off head scratching, and the EE not the best at giving any help, but glad you sorted it all out, the routers are not that bad as everyone moans and complains, but they are ISP and free so something has to give, new FW hot off coals, just hope that it fixes more than it breaks...👍

[ben_flugel]

It seems be pretty stable now. Though there was yet anther update last night and we've now moved to 2.64.7

I do find I need to manually restart all the noses after a firmware update. Our Google screens don't connect properly until a restart. 

But it's good to see EE providing regular updates. Some release notes would be nice though. 

[JimM11]

@ben_flugel Certainly would be nice, but doubt it's going to happen any time ever, as long as it keeps working that's the good thing, and it may just be the idea to restart, FW update will do it as part off the install process. If there is anything strange happening, more than likely on the Forum sometimes just a little hard to pin down the exactness.👍🤞