New 1520-wifi problem

[scdkad]

Got my 1520 yesterday and in setting up wifi noticed that even though it says connected it is not. Found IP it says it's connected is 169.254.243.1-obviously not connected to my router. Should be198.168.0.xx. so appears to be statically set. This is supposedly a new phone as I did an upgrade but the box shows some suspicious wear on it-as if it may a refurbished and they left that static IP in there from testing or something.
I'm pretty sure WP doesn't have the ability to set IPs unless its hidden somewhere-I can't find anything in settings. I know some devices you can punch in an code to access some diagnostics.
Any help or ideas appreciated. Most likely I'll will be doing an exchange..

Steve

 

[Morpheus Phreak]

Got my 1520 yesterday and in setting up wifi noticed that even though it says connected it is not. Found IP it says it's connected is 169.254.243.1-obviously not connected to my router. Should be198.168.0.xx. so appears to be statically set. This is supposedly a new phone as I did an upgrade but the box shows some suspicious wear on it-as if it may a refurbished and they left that static IP in there from testing or something.
I'm pretty sure WP doesn't have the ability to set IPs unless its hidden somewhere-I can't find anything in settings. I know some devices you can punch in an code to access some diagnostics.
Any help or ideas appreciated. Most likely I'll will be doing an exchange..

Steve

That address is a 'special' address that is basically a null address that let's you know that you're not actually being assigned an IP.

Some questions to help troubleshoot all the stuff you've listed follow:

Where did you buy the phone?

What type of network are you connecting to? (As in Wireless G, N, or AC? 2.4 or 5GHz? What router model? Do you have a Hidden SSID? That type of stuff)

All this data will help.

 

[scdkad]

Phone is a new upgrade from ATT.

Router is an Actiontec Q1000 with B-G-N modes enabled and have never had a problem connecting half a dozen other devices in the house or my 2 previous WPs. SSID not hidden and that shouldn't be problem anyway. Not using MAC filtering. Sercurity is on WPA-WPA2 personal.

 

[Morpheus Phreak]

Phone is a new upgrade from ATT.

Router is an Actiontec Q1000 with B-G-N modes enabled and have never had a problem connecting half a dozen other devices in the house or my 2 previous WPs. SSID not hidden and that shouldn't be problem anyway. Not using MAC filtering. Sercurity is on WPA-WPA2 personal.

That's the same model of modem/router I have via Centurylink.

To be honest their hardware is pretty terrible...to be point where after 5 different modems from them (various Q1000, C1000A, etc) I gave up and have the modem only acting as a 'dumb' device feeding my Linksys router...which is even handling the actual PPPoE protocol handshakes and such.

Yeah their modems are such a nightmare sometimes.

That said...I'm not saying it's that device in this case. Have you tried taking it to AT&T and seeing if it connects to their WiFi network at all?

 

[AV2RY]

Maybe this cases have no relation at all, but I have problems connecting to my college's WiFi (in 2 spot/classes), 4/5 times it doesnt work. my phone,928, shows as it is connected, with full bars but I don't have access to internet, so I have to use data connection. BUT my friends iPhone, and I'm sure all other ppl phones, doesn't have any problem with the same WiFi.. What I'm trying to say is maybe you router and your phone both have the problems communicating. That's what I think I have)

 

[scdkad]

Forgot to mention I was able to connect to my work wifi no problem. Did all of the updates there.

Yea I've heard these modems are crap and its Centurylink formally Qwest. But haven't had any problems connecting any other devices with it in the year I've had it. 2 Kindles, 2 laptops, 2 Android phones, various visitors with their devices etc. Been wanting to buy my own just haven't gotten around to it..

 

[Morpheus Phreak]

Forgot to mention I was able to connect to my work wifi no problem. Did all of the updates there.

Yea I've heard these modems are crap and its Centurylink formally Qwest. But haven't had any problems connecting any other devices with it in the year I've had it. 2 Kindles, 2 laptops, 2 Android phones, various visitors with their devices etc. Been wanting to buy my own just haven't gotten around to it..

They really are unfortunately. The problem is that it's nearly impossible to find standalone VDSL2+ modems on the market...at least any decent ones.

The issues for me were random. One of the modems wouldn't allow me to connect to another router that was functioning as a wireless bridge to allow other devices in the home to be connected that didn't have built-in WiFi. Another was fine with that...but then would randomly drop my 900 several times a day (while still showing it as connected and even having a proper IP address assigned) while my fiancee's 900 (we're on 1520s now though) wouldn't drop at all.

That's why I finally just set the modem into the Transparent Bridging mode and hooked up the router directly to it so it would handle all the real work and traffic. Since then I haven't had any issues with any devices luckily. Plus I gained the benefit of having the 5GHz spectrum available to connect to...which has eased some of the issues I was having with speeds and such since I live in a place where the 2.4GHz spectrum is crowded to hell and back (30 WiFi networks within range of me...and only 1 other on the 5GHz bands).

That still doesn't help with the 2 devices I have that don't have built-in WiFi...but I can figure out something for those later

 

[Citizen X]

Forgot to mention I was able to connect to my work wifi no problem. Did all of the updates there.

Yea I've heard these modems are crap and its Centurylink formally Qwest. But haven't had any problems connecting any other devices with it in the year I've had it. 2 Kindles, 2 laptops, 2 Android phones, various visitors with their devices etc. Been wanting to buy my own just haven't gotten around to it..

Modem/wifi/router all in one units from telcos do often suck. My advice is to bridge it and get a real wifi router to handle your routing. Honestly if you can buy a modem with warranty you may want to do that as well and stop renting. I did that years ago and saved tons on the $5/month or whatever rental fee. None of my Windows Phones have ever had a problem connecting to a router that is properly configured with WPA-AES and hidden SSID. I'm sure there are some Windows Phones out there with issues, nothing is perfect, but it's not normal. iphones? Well that's a different matter.

 

[scdkad]

Well now another problem has cropped up with this phone. Put an SD card in and now phone is rebooting itself every 5 minutes! Took it out and rebooting stopped. It's going back. Thanks for the input all.

 

[paulxxwall]

Had this same issue! I would turn off WiFi then turn on and the phone would get the 198 IP address . But then when my phone would screen time out......and unlocked.....my IP address would change to that 168.ip and could not use WiFi. But since the new att firmware update I've had no problems but what's funny.....my 920 never had this issue ! Same WiFi router!

 

[Morpheus Phreak]

Well now another problem has cropped up with this phone. Put an SD card in and now phone is rebooting itself every 5 minutes! Took it out and rebooting stopped. It's going back. Thanks for the input all.

Just to ask (and I know this is silly) but have you tried a different MicroSD card in it or doing a hard reset and seeing if these issues still exist?

The 1520 (all of them to be honest) seems to be picky about the quality of the MicroSD cards used in it.

 

[scdkad]

It is an old Sandisk 8GB from my Moto Q so its probably 5 years old. But make a phone reboot? Just got the phone Friday, I haven't had a chance to get a new one yet.

As for hard reset-the wifi issue was there 2 minutes after turning phone on for first time. But went ahead and did it-no change. Same wrong IP. Now I get to see how restore works!

I know what next question is-why don't I call ATT? I will-when I'm ready to be on the phone for 2 hours!

 

[Morpheus Phreak]

It is an old Sandisk 8GB from my Moto Q so its probably 5 years old. But make a phone reboot? Just got the phone Friday, I haven't had a chance to get a new one yet.

As for hard reset-the wifi issue was there 2 minutes after turning phone on for first time. But went ahead and did it-no change. Same wrong IP. Now I get to see how restore works!

I know what next question is-why don't I call ATT? I will-when I'm ready to be on the phone for 2 hours!

Actually I never call them, and in this case since you're within the 14 days you can just walk in and exchange it within about 20 minutes.

The store staff are usually way better than the phone folks.

 

[scdkad]

Got it assigned correct IP. Router was set for "beginning" and "ending" IP values from 192.168.0.2 to 192.1680.10 and for the heck of it changed it to ending at 0.50. Phone got assigned 192.168.0.31 and all is well! Did some speed tests with BandWidth app and definitely connected to WIFI..

 

[Morpheus Phreak]

Got it assigned correct IP. Router was set for "beginning" and "ending" IP values from 192.168.0.2 to 192.1680.10 and for the heck of it changed it to ending at 0.50. Phone got assigned 192.168.0.31 and all is well! Did some speed tests with BandWidth app and definitely connected to WIFI..

Aha. So it sounds like the range was limited and the IPs were already assigned. Once a larger range opened up poof.

I hadn't even thought of that...and I really should have since the first thing I do when I get a modem/router from an ISP is change all the settings starting with increasing the IP range to a larger value and setting it up to a higher number so I can assign easier static IPs to some of my devices that I'm doing to be doing port forwarding on, and using DMZ (Xbox so I don't have to worry about blocked ports and such).

 

[scdkad]

I now see at the Device Table page IPs of 16, 19, 21-what happened to lower numbers? Does "server lease time" reset IPs? No, I'm not experimenting!

 

[Morpheus Phreak]

I now see at the Device Table page IPs of 16, 19, 21-what happened to lower numbers? Does "server lease time" reset IPs? No, I'm not experimenting!

Sorry for the long post in advance, and please let me know if I bore you or am being pedantic...but I thought some folks might be interested in how my logic works for how I set things up.

Sometimes IP's can get held up if the modem doesn't release them...so when changes are made and devices try to connect they may get assigned a new IP, because the old ones haven't been released yet for use...even if it's the same device connecting.

That's the nature of dynamic IPs.

My usual setup is that my modem/router is of course something like 192.168.0.1.

So then I set the range to start assigning the IPs from 192.168.0.100 and higher.

Then I set almost of my usual household equipment that can have static IP's set to things like 192.168.0.2 - 192.168.0.10 or 192.168.0.20 (depending on how many devices have the ability to configure a static IP).

That prevents issues with dropped IP's or conflicts. My Xbox always gets set as 192.168.0.99 (right below the dynamic address range) and I set it as the DMZ device since it's pretty save to have an Xbox exposed luckily.

Then my phones (pretty much the only devices I have currently that don't allow static IP's to be set) pick up dynamic addresses above that 192.168.0.100 mark.

It keeps things remarkably easy and clean. I almost never have conflicts or dropped connection issues this way...even when friends come over and hook up to it...all my stuff sites in a range they can't be assigned to.

The phones also access the 5GHz range (since I'm using a router that is hooked up to the modem via transparent bridging) so that means I don't really get any interference from neighbors either...which is nice.

So all of my stuff is neatly compartmentalized, and designed to work with minimal issues in a complex where I have somewhere around 30 other networks in range that can interfere.