1. himmelspacha's Avatar
    I was able to connect my BB 8220 to the wifi connection at my house. it was using an WAP2 personal security. Now i have come to my college and im trying to connect to my router. i have modified my network to have no security and to hide the SSID. i thought the security was affecting the connection. Now my phone connects to the wifi network and functions correctly, well sorta. The phone will stay connected to wifi for around 2 to 3 minutes then the phone loses the connection. Anyone know what may be happening with this?
    03-09-09 05:52 PM
  2. reebok's Avatar
    I've had nothing but problems when I tried hiding my ssid. I would reenable it and see if it fixes it. if it does, switch to another security measure. besides wep, you could also use mac address filtering and limit the amount of ip addresses the router hands out. so if you usually have two devices connected (i.e. laptop and phone) I would set up mac address filtering to deny any addresses other than for the laptop and phone, and then I would limit the connections to 2.
    03-09-09 06:03 PM
  3. himmelspacha's Avatar
    the only problem with that is that in my dorm i share it with my roommate. we have 2 laptops and one still uses the ethernet connection as well as the wifi. and we have a xbox 360. would setting up mac address filtering still allow that?
    03-09-09 06:11 PM
  4. reebok's Avatar
    it will allow anything you tell it to allow. all networkable devices have mac addresses. also, mac address filtering applies only to wireless devices.
    03-09-09 06:19 PM
  5. himmelspacha's Avatar
    well ill look into that but it appears to be working now. even having the ssid hidden. when i come back to my dorm it finds the wifi and it will connect to it now in about 5 mins. so far its remained hidden also so im going to keep it as is now unless i have more trouble. Thanks a lot reebok
    03-09-09 09:12 PM
  6. frankhull's Avatar
    Suggest you use QOS so you can better. service.

    I flashed my linksys to dd-wrt and it does this quite nicely now
    03-09-09 09:16 PM
  7. himmelspacha's Avatar
    im fairly good with computers but im not that good with networking... i dont follow that... could you be more specific?
    03-09-09 11:27 PM
  8. zwood's Avatar
    Frankhull downloaded and installed a 3rd party firmware to his router. FYI a hidden SSID can be found quickly and with no security your bandwidth can get sucked up quickly.
    03-10-09 12:50 AM
  9. hexwulf's Avatar
    I have no issues using a hidden SSID, though I also use WPA as well. I have in past used MAC filtering with no issues, but currently don't bother. MY current config is a hidden SSID at work, and a displayed SSID at home. The flip has no issues connecting and staying connected to either.

    You mention it works perfectly fine on your home connection?
    Possible location issue @ your dorm?
    Best method to test, is if you can, go home, temporarirly hide your SSID, see if issue is reproduced at alternate location that was working fine prior to a change.
    03-10-09 06:10 AM
  10. himmelspacha's Avatar
    i did have it working at my house just fine without hiding my ssid and we were suing a WPA 2 personal security. when i came back to my college i also had an WPA 2 personal security and at first it worked fine. it lasted for about 20 mins then it wouldn't stay connected. I have a linksys WRT110 router. it has 3 laptops running wireless 1 laptop hard wired an x box 360 and my phone running on it. i have also read the having several wifi hotspots could be confusing the phone. when i search i find around 10 to 15 so i changed the channel on my router from the standard one.

    After disableing my security and everything i was able to stay connected for around 30 mins yesterday but then having the phone set to wifi perfered i couldn't accept calls. so im still kinda lost.

    do you think it would be best to re-enable security? and if so what security should i use? WEP or WPA?
    03-10-09 12:14 PM
  11. hexwulf's Avatar
    The phone should be able to handle WPA as youve already tested, and WPA is a much stronger standard the WEP. Yes, re enable your security.

    Do you have many preferred networks setup in your phone? Is it cycling through them trying to make a connection? I literally only use 2-3 spots, and delete any public spots I may use.

    Im assuming, that when your phone is having issues; no other devices are having issues?

    Signal strength is ok?

    Now, as for that 'Wifi Preferred' , to my knowledge, that only affects the Cellular activity. If you have UMA, you can make / receive calls / SMS via WIFI rather then cell towers. Preferred will mean your phone will attempt to use the WIFI rather then any towers for your calls / sms.

    When you say it drops, / wont stay connected; is it like clockwork? Could you describe what happens to lead you to believe you have dropped?
    03-10-09 01:04 PM
  12. himmelspacha's Avatar
    when the wifi drops its only on the phone and i know signal strength is not the problem because the router is only about 10 feet away at any point in the room. its not prefered connections that i pick up but when i search for networks. the phone will pick up around 10. as for prefered networks i only have 2 my house and my dorm.

    when the wifi drops it just cuts out. ill be on the internet using the blackberry browser or opera mini and when going to a new page ill get an error saying that the internet was lost. ill do the wifi diagnostic on the network and ill get an error of w004 or w006.

    I beleive that answers all your questions that you have asked and i hope that i can get this figured out
    thanks
    03-10-09 03:16 PM
  13. reebok's Avatar
    zwood: where did you get that about 3rd party? I've used qos on my router for years with standard firmware. it's a linksys but I'm pretty sure qos is standard across the board.
    03-10-09 05:19 PM
  14. himmelspacha's Avatar
    I have re-enabled security on my router and i am using a WPA 2 personal with an open firewall and i cant get service with my wifi again. when i do the diagnostic i get an error w004 ISP error. DNS server cannot be reached. i really have no idea what this means. Any help?
    03-10-09 08:27 PM
  15. hexwulf's Avatar
    I have re-enabled security on my router and i am using a WPA 2 personal with an open firewall and i cant get service with my wifi again. when i do the diagnostic i get an error w004 ISP error. DNS server cannot be reached. i really have no idea what this means. Any help?
    Do you get the same issue on your BB if you use WPA(1) /w TKIP?
    03-11-09 06:40 AM
  16. himmelspacha's Avatar
    actually i think i may have found the problem i found some help tips on the blackberry website. Mainly error codes. I guess when it seperates from my router it has trouble reacquiring the complete signal and shows an error. resetting the phone and my router fixed this and i had it working for around 4 hours last night (a new record). im going to try this more and see if it gets any better.

    By the way i didnt have this problem when i had the security not enabled and i have disabled the firewall on my network. I also limited the router to only accept 7 mac addresses.
    03-11-09 10:08 AM
  17. zwood's Avatar
    zwood: where did you get that about 3rd party? I've used qos on my router for years with standard firmware. it's a linksys but I'm pretty sure qos is standard across the board.

    Yes most routers offer QOS with the stock firmware. I was explaining what Frankhull meant in his post by "flashed" and DD-wrt (3rd party firmware).

    I have my router setup with WPA-TKIP and set to show SSID for my phone and game consoles, have had no dropped WI-FI with this setup. If you have multiple WI-FI profiles then move the one you use at collage to the top of the WI-FI profiles list. After you make changes to your phones WI-FI setup do a battery pull. you should also check that you have up to date linksys firmware.
    03-11-09 10:09 AM
  18. himmelspacha's Avatar
    I have checked the firmware and im still using version 1 the origional that came with it. I was on linksys yesterday looking for more up to date firmware and i cant find any so im assuming that i have the most up to date.
    03-11-09 10:49 AM
  19. zwood's Avatar
    I just noticed you have the linksys WRT110 router, I purchased one last December and had problems with DNS resolution. Screwed with technical support for days and never could keep it running. So it may not be the phone that is causing the problem. Search the linksys forums to see if that is your problem. I purchased a different model and never had anymore problems.
    03-11-09 11:37 AM
  20. himmelspacha's Avatar
    well i actually have it working fairly good now. i mean its working and doesnt cut as much anymore. It is also detecting the connection when i come back to my dorm and switches back to wifi. The only unfortunate thing is that it still does kick off after around 5 to 10 mins
    03-11-09 11:59 AM
  21. zwood's Avatar
    When everything is working right you should change connection type automatically when you leave and come back and never drop connection. Have you looked to see what your IP address is on the phone when you can't connect? If it is something like 192.168.??.?? Then you are still connected to the router. I think you should google the router model and see if this is a router issue.
    03-11-09 12:30 PM
  22. himmelspacha's Avatar
    i know when i cuts out im connected to the router. when i run a diagnostic it tells me that i have UMA Wi-Fi available but i dont have connections. i get an error that says ISP DNS error not found or somthing....

    Ill take you advice and look it up on linksys and see if they can help me.
    Thanks
    03-11-09 03:33 PM
  23. himmelspacha's Avatar
    zwood to get back to you a little i was talking to linksys for around an hour today and they basically said their router is functioning correctly. they are saying that i need to assign a static ip address on the phone. Do you know how to do that?
    03-11-09 11:43 PM
  24. zwood's Avatar
    To assign an IP go to your wi-fi profiles, pick the connection and select edit. Remove the check by automatically assign IP now you can enter your IP and DNS.

    Did you look to see if your phone had a valid IP when wifi dropped? Do you have problems with the wifi connected laptop?
    03-12-09 07:15 AM
  25. himmelspacha's Avatar
    no problems with the laptop and i had an assigned IP address. the problem im getting is with the DNS. sometimes the phone works and other times it doesnt. when it doesnt i need to reset the phone and the router and it works again.
    03-12-09 08:23 AM
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