Database Develop

WIFI? 3G?

I'm in the UK, and using a Touch Diamond.....on Vodafone 3G. When I'm connected to WIFI, I obviously want to use that for data, rather than use up my precious data allowance.
When I'm connected to a WIFI connection, how do I know Opera/IE/Email are using WIFI - and not my 3G connection? There are times when I'm in my house, and I know it's using my phone data connection, as it's just so slow (very limited reception 3G in my house)....whereas the WIFI should be pretty fast.

i COULD be wrong here.... but the way i know is if the WIFI icon at the top shows connected. If you rphone cant find the WIFI, it'll always divert to a data connection. Play with your phone around the house, see where you get connectivity and how strong to your wifi.

luigi_sa said:
i COULD be wrong here.... but the way i know is if the WIFI icon at the top shows connected. If you rphone cant find the WIFI, it'll always divert to a data connection. Play with your phone around the house, see where you get connectivity and how strong to your wifi.
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Yes I know when I'm connected to WIFI and how strong it is....what I want to know is how I know whether my phone is using 3G/GPRS - when I am connected to WIFI and want it to use WIFI and not my phone network. There seems to be no indication to show you are actually 'using' the WIFI network over the phone network....

Settings > Communication Settings.
Turn data connection off, turn wifi on.
Do that before you use internet and your sorted.

On both my Diamond and Touch Pro, the Wi-Fi icon appears on the task bar when Wi-Fi is available. Same goes for 3G.
Also note that some programs call for a certain connection method automatically. For example, you will note that some programs initiate 3G instead of using your Wi-Fi connection. Hopefully, there is a configuration option for such apps.
Cheers.

i don't know if you notice it, but if you are connecting through E or H or G or 3G.. the reception bar instead of the antenna you will get the corresponding letter if you are currently connected to one of them
As long as your WiFi is on and none of those letters are showing up.. you will be fine

[Q] Slow to latch to wifi? Connect to 3g briefly before wifi.

I have a pretty stock HTC One, and I'm on a particularly sub par data plan, where each 'data session' is rounded up.
I have wifi both at home and at work, good wifi signal and am v close to router etc. I find that if I put the phone into standby and then use it again 5-10 minutes later, it is still connected to wifi, all good. If I leave it for 20-30 minutes, when I wake it, it latches onto the 3g network for a few seconds and then realises there is wifi and connects to that.
I have things like Google+, FB messenger and push mail which I presumed required a constant connection.
Any thoughts on why the wifi appears to be being turned off as it entertains deep sleep?
I can just switch data off when at home or work but I don't want to have to rely on that sort of thing, and the apps that do that for you based on GPS etc aren't that appealing either.

Look in adavanced settings under wifi. Should be able to set it to keep wifi on during sleep
Sent from my HTCONE using xda app-developers app

Thanks for the reply. Yup I have that set to always. Seems to happen both on my home and work wifi, despite great signal strength. Sometimes it seems it does happen even if the phone is unused for 5-10 minutes.
I assume this is actually pretty common and most if not all phones do this, you probably wouldn't notice unless you were tracking each connected data session.
I was thinking the phone must do something like, wake, spend x time looking for wifi while simultaneously connecting to 3g, then when wifi is found it is connected to and the 3g connection is dropped. I guess I'd be looking to delay/postpone that connecting to the 3g network for 5 seconds or so to give the wifi time to establish.
Probably nothing I can do really.

I haven't noticed any problem staying connecetd to wifi while sleeping and Ive looked at the notification bar many time before ever unlocking the phone, just to make sure wifi stayed connected as its suppose to and it does. Only see 3g when Ive set it keep wifi on during sleep to only when plugged in and I dont have it plugged in. I also have best wifi performance checked. Dont think that makes much difference though. Im also stock at the moment
Sent from my HTCONE using xda app-developers app

High battery drain on *some* WiFi networks

I'm having a strange issue with my Exhibit . I'm running CyanogenMod 11 20140714-UNOFFICIAL although I think I saw this earlier too. When I'm home on my WiFi, battery use it great. Under 2%/hour. When I'm at work on the WiFiit is pretty bad, around 6-7% per hour. If I turn off WiFi, it gets much better (maybe 3% per hour). Same thing if I forget the WiFi network at work. Sometimes in my battery use graph I can see it get flat for and hour and then get bad again -- I think this is losing the WiFi connection for a bit and then reconnecting.
Work recently moved and the results didn't change enough though my data service strength changed a lot. So I'm pretty sure it has to do with the WiFi network. Other people at work don't notice a drain when using WiFi, so I'm guessing it is a combination of the work WiFi and the phone.
The work WiFi is running tomato 1.27, which I administer. I sniffed the WiFi traffic with my laptop and saw a lot of ARP requests for 'who has address' for address not on the WiFibut on our unsecured network. So I separated that with a VLAN and that helped a bit but not a ton, and the ARP requests are much lower (maybe a ~1 / minute). Signal strength is as good or better at work than at home and at home there is way more congestion of neighbor's WiFi.
I know it isn't my phone usage as I would reboot my phone and not touch it for 3 hours and look at the battery drain at both work and at home and see these differences.
Any ideas on what makes the WiFi at work with a tomato router (vs some netgear wifi router) worse on battery than my home network. Work has maybe 7 clients connected at a time, vs probably just the phone at home. Any ideas on how to troubleshoot / debug. Packet sniffing on the WiFi didn't show anything that stood out.
Thanks!

exhibit679 said:
I'm having a strange issue with my Exhibit . I'm running CyanogenMod 11 20140714-UNOFFICIAL although I think I saw this earlier too. When I'm home on my WiFi, battery use it great. Under 2%/hour. When I'm at work on the WiFiit is pretty bad, around 6-7% per hour. If I turn off WiFi, it gets much better (maybe 3% per hour). Same thing if I forget the WiFi network at work. Sometimes in my battery use graph I can see it get flat for and hour and then get bad again -- I think this is losing the WiFi connection for a bit and then reconnecting.
Work recently moved and the results didn't change enough though my data service strength changed a lot. So I'm pretty sure it has to do with the WiFi network. Other people at work don't notice a drain when using WiFi, so I'm guessing it is a combination of the work WiFi and the phone.
The work WiFi is running tomato 1.27, which I administer. I sniffed the WiFi traffic with my laptop and saw a lot of ARP requests for 'who has address' for address not on the WiFibut on our unsecured network. So I separated that with a VLAN and that helped a bit but not a ton, and the ARP requests are much lower (maybe a ~1 / minute). Signal strength is as good or better at work than at home and at home there is way more congestion of neighbor's WiFi.
I know it isn't my phone usage as I would reboot my phone and not touch it for 3 hours and look at the battery drain at both work and at home and see these differences.
Any ideas on what makes the WiFi at work with a tomato router (vs some netgear wifi router) worse on battery than my home network. Work has maybe 7 clients connected at a time, vs probably just the phone at home. Any ideas on how to troubleshoot / debug. Packet sniffing on the WiFi didn't show anything that stood out.
Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
try adjusting some of the settings in the wireless advance settings also make sure your wifi is using the least crowed possible channel and 1,6,and 11 can overlap without interference. easy way to find the best channels is to use an app on a laptop or smartphone with wifi.
Android Wifi Analyzer Free in app store
windows insidder 3 free
Linux LinSSID free
*NOTE too much interfernce may cause network delays which in turn force rechecking connection due to lost packets. also it after trying the above the second thing it could be is possible routers wifi is slowly going out. I've had a linksys router do that. new ping was awesome for e.g playing league of legends 81 when wifi notice her wifi connection kept droping. rebooted router and it worked fine for a a while then did it again and slowly became more frequent ping also increased to 106. replaced router with a new one and ping dropped to 73 and 0 wifi drops or slow downs. hope this helps

I'm pretty sure it isn't interference. At home there are 15 strong WiFi stations across all channels. At work, there are only 2 other WiFi stations and mine is at a channel far from them, so the X-talk from WiFi is way better at work. Also when work moved, I saw no change (although WiFi wasn't crowded at only location either) so I think it has to do with the WiFi network and not the environment.

did you test to make sure wifi isnt dropping packets either as well as check routers wifi intervals

did you test to make sure wifi isnt dropping packets either as well as check routers wifi intervals
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How would you test if wifi is dropping packets? Just a ping on my phone? I can ping wireless consistently from my desktop, but that is over ethernet.
What do you mean by "wifi intervals"? Is that a setting I should see on my tomato firmware? "Beacon Interval" is set to 100, but I don't claim to understand that. "DTIM Interval" is set to 1.
Thanks,

exhibit679 said:
How would you test if wifi is dropping packets? Just a ping on my phone? I can ping wireless consistently from my desktop, but that is over ethernet.
What do you mean by "wifi intervals"? Is that a setting I should see on my tomato firmware? "Beacon Interval" is set to 100, but I don't claim to understand that. "DTIM Interval" is set to 1.
Thanks,
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Click to collapse
yes that is correct for wifi intervals in the tomato firmware. look at This for better info for what each setting is for. the 3 main ones i would be adjusting as needed is Beacon Interval , Fragmentation Threshold and Interference Mitigation.To test pack loss anything thats on wifi and can ping router. So yeah your phone will work. just make sure you ping the routers ip address e.g for linksys 192.168.1.1

I haven't changed any of the wireless settings yet, but I do have more data. My phone sometimes is on the wifi and has normal (low) battery usage. Today from 9:30 - 12:30 it was great, but after 12:30 there was a discontinuity in the battery vs time graph as the slope decreased by over a factor of 3. Not sure what changed -- I don't see different devices on the wireless or higher wireless utilization. I'm thinking something in the wifi trips a setting or something on the wifi isn't completing on the phone and is draining the battery.

Wi-Fi issue

So I will turn on wifi on my phone but for some reason it still shows the 3G bar and I get not signal at my house so when i try to load up webpages its clearly trying to use my non existent data signal rather than the wifi to load thing. why is it doing this? it's supposed to override the data but its not.

shadowswithin said:
So I will turn on wifi on my phone but for some reason it still shows the 3G bar and I get not signal at my house so when i try to load up webpages its clearly trying to use my non existent data signal rather than the wifi to load thing. why is it doing this? it's supposed to override the data but its not.
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I would troubleshoot your network. The signal bars for cellular do not go away when connected to WiFi, so I would not suspect that is a symptom.

well i am aware of my router being complete crap but im not saying the cellular bars im saying even though wifi is enabled it still trying to use data instead of wifi.

shadowswithin said:
well i am aware of my router being complete crap but im not saying the cellular bars im saying even though wifi is enabled it still trying to use data instead of wifi.
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How are you measuring that?
Check your IP address and see if you can verify from that.

All I know is that I've had wireless issues since day one with my turbo, in fact so bad that I just never use anymore (yea sucks)
I am at my inlaws, using my laptop to work all day on the wifi and connection is great. on my Turbo - the wifi keeps stopping, hiccupping, etc. I have to keep turning on/off, etc. to get stuff to work. I just gave up.
There are other threads on the Motorola Forum with similar issues.
Wish we could figure out what magic settings are necessary to make wifi stable.

adaptive wifi

I have it enabled and it says it auto turns off WiFi and back on when near used wifi locations but it doesn't do that at all. Does it simplyeave WiFi on but low energy?

Screenshot l

Yeah it works.
How do you know it doesn't do it? Cellular phones hand off betwixt cellular and wifi all the time.
When and how often it does is based on some under the hood shenanigans that we dont know about.

marctronixx said:
How do you know it doesn't do it? Cellular phones hand off betwixt cellular and wifi all the time.
When and how often it does is based on some under the hood shenanigans that we dont know about.
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Click to collapse
I drive away from my house. WiFi stays on but not connected. Screenshot says wifi will turn on when near known connections but it never turns off ?

masri1987 said:
I drive away from my house. WiFi stays on but not connected. Screenshot says wifi will turn on when near known connections but it never turns off ?
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I don't think it's supposed to turn off. What that phrase means is that it will connect to WiFi when it's near a saved access point and will use mobile data when none are nearby, but WiFi will still remain on.
What adaptive WiFi does is it will use mobile data even if it's connected to a WiFi access point if the WiFi signal is bad.

I'm not sure what adaptive wifi supposed to do, I have it off and it switches between wifi and cell as it should. Is it switching in the middle of data transfer or something? Because right now I probably drop connection if move outside wifi range and will be on cell tower on the next redial. But to tell truth I never tested it.

So basically it's a gimmick, because Wifi as it is, will auto-connect to previously connected networks as long as you had wifi on. If i'm interpreting the screenshot properly the feature "turns on" wifi, therefore, it must be able to turn it off? I've even manually turned it off to see if it will turn itself back on when i get back home and nothing either.
No documentation on Samsung's site as far as i can find

masri1987 said:
So basically it's a gimmick, because Wifi as it is, will auto-connect to previously connected networks as long as you had wifi on. If i'm interpreting the screenshot properly the feature "turns on" wifi, therefore, it must be able to turn it off? I've even manually turned it off to see if it will turn itself back on when i get back home and nothing either.
No documentation on Samsung's site as far as i can find
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Basically if you're connected to WiFi but have crappy signal like .2 kbps, it will start using your mobile data even if you're still connected to that WiFi. With adaptive WiFi turned off, it will keep using the crappy WiFi connection until you manually turn WiFi off or manually disconnect from the crappy network. Pretty much the reverse of WiFi calling (use WiFi if phone signal is crappy). Note the exceptions sentence at the bottom, it will not use mobile data even if the WiFi has a crappy signal if the crappy WiFi is exempted.
The "turn on" statement is correct, it will automatically turn on and connect to WiFi when it's in range of "trusted" access points (similar to "trusted devices" and "trusted places") but there is no automatic "turn off", at least, it hasn't done that while I've been using it.

OK i see what you are saying
wifi does not PHYSICALLY TURN OFF. wifi is still connected--the phone will auto switch to the stronger of the two. it won't turn the on screen "switch" off if that is what you are looking for.
its not a gimmick. it works if you are in an area with robust wifi and/or cellular. its supposed to work "in the background" so you don't know its going on.
google fi kinda does this. since google fi uses tmobile and sprint, the phone auto switches between the two carriers depending on which is stronger at the time. i've seen this happen by monitoring an app.

masri1987 said:
So basically it's a gimmick, because Wifi as it is, will auto-connect to previously connected networks as long as you had wifi on. If i'm interpreting the screenshot properly the feature "turns on" wifi, therefore, it must be able to turn it off? I've even manually turned it off to see if it will turn itself back on when i get back home and nothing either.
No documentation on Samsung's site as far as i can find
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Click to collapse
Not a gimmick at all. I work at a hospital that has wireless routers throughout that all piggy back the same access point. I see Adaptive wifi in action all day. Keeps me from losing my connectivity from my work portal.

don't think I want to have this on: I have limit on my cell data, let's say I start downloading something large, let's say 5- 10 GB movie from Amazon on wifi, then I go to my upstairs bedroom, wifi gets weaker, so it switches itself to stronger cell tower and eats my whole month data allotment in one evening, before I even notice? And all I had to do is keep the phone downstairs, next to the router to avoid it. Or am I missing something?

harveydent said:
Basically if you're connected to WiFi but have crappy signal like .2 kbps, it will start using your mobile data even if you're still connected to that WiFi. With adaptive WiFi turned off, it will keep using the crappy WiFi connection until you manually turn WiFi off or manually disconnect from the crappy network. Pretty much the reverse of WiFi calling (use WiFi if phone signal is crappy). Note the exceptions sentence at the bottom, it will not use mobile data even if the WiFi has a crappy signal if the crappy WiFi is exempted.
The "turn on" statement is correct, it will automatically turn on and connect to WiFi when it's in range of "trusted" access points (similar to "trusted devices" and "trusted places") but there is no automatic "turn off", at least, it hasn't done that while I've been using it.
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Exactly what happens to me when I leave home. My phone (old Note 7) will stay connected to my home network but won't be able to pull down any data from the net. It has to be manually turned off.
Sent from my SM-N950U using XDA-Developers Legacy app

thanks for the education!!
Any 3rd party apps you can recommend that would do what i am looking for?

so an update. It work exactly how it says it would. I had to drive 7 miles out, but wifi automatically turned off, even with scanning off, once i got home it turned back on.

I like it. It works great for me.

masri1987 said:
so an update. It work exactly how it says it would. I had to drive 7 miles out, but wifi automatically turned off, even with scanning off, once i got home it turned back on.
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Ah, that's the thing. I noticed my WiFi would automatically turn off sometimes and sometimes not, and I couldn't reproduce it reliably. It's most likely either distance or time you have to be away from the "trusted" access point.
Congrats, now you can forget about toggling WiFi forever!

I think this setting has been screwing with my wifi related Tasker profiles. Suspect it really does turn wifi off.

I used to switch my wifi off manually when leaving the house.
All this #[email protected]\%! public wifi, blocking my internet because asking to log in....
Any shop or restaurant where you walk in does it.
And you do not know it, till you search the web and see that there is no internet at all till you switch your wifi off or log in to the shops fishing routers.
Adaptive wifi is a must have and a great improvement.
E.g. walk in a MacDonald's with adaptive switched on or off, you will see it is mother's little helper.
You need to have enough data from your provider of course.
Huib

masri1987 said:
thanks for the education!!
Any 3rd party apps you can recommend that would do what i am looking for?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ifttt on Google play store

marctronixx said:
How do you know it doesn't do it? Cellular phones hand off betwixt cellular and wifi all the time.
When and how often it does is based on some under the hood shenanigans that we dont know about.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Now that is some sweet use of the English language!