Tools to sort out Wi-Fi issues: any suggestions?

TidBITS Talk
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For the entire year I’ve lived in my temporary rental home I’ve been trying to sort out episodic issues on my WiFi network. My ISP is Spectrum, and I have 400 mbits/sec DL service over fiber to the home. I have an Arris 6120 DOCSIS 3.0 cable modem. My LAN infrastructure includes an Apple Airport Extreme 3 TB Time Capsule purchased in late 2017 and a bridged final generation Airport Express (8o2.11n) as a network extender. Most of the 20-25 devices on my LAN are on WiFi; the Extreme broadcasts the same SSID on 2.4 and 5 GHz. A few devices have hardware connections to the router; e.g., my OLED 4K TV has a Cat7 Ethernet connection (I use YouTube TV rather than Spectrum, as my TV provider) to the Extreme).

The most frequent puzzle is that the “Nest Guard” CPU of my home security system unpredicably loses it’s WiFi connection for several minutes to an hour or so. Typically this occurs in the first one or two hours after midnight when there is nothing going on that involves direct user activity on my LAN. The disconnects (sometimes described as “Nest Guard offline,” sometimes as “Nest Guard-no WiFi connection”) heal themselves, and the only reason I know they’ve happened is because a log of events on my local security network is maintained by my iOS Nest App, which maintains a rolling 10 day list.

Some 10-day periods are disconnect-free; sometimes they will occur a few days in succession.

Monitoring tools available to me include Airport Utility (latest version appropriate for each Apple Router), iNet Network Scanner from BananaGlue.de, iStumbler, and of course the core tools provided by macOS.

I have a 2017 iMac running fully updated Mojave on the WiFi LAN (never connected by Ethernet) and a 2019 16 inch MacBook Pro running Catalina 10.15.4 (not updated because only beta-releases of SuperDuper are available for later point-releases of the macOS).

The Nest Guard does not support an ethernet connection to the router, and it requires connection on the 2.4 GHz band. I maintain a “legacy” Nest (rather that “Google-Nest” account, just because Google is Google.

I’ve contacted Nest support, and they don’t have specific suggestions other than “interference.” iNet Network Scanner has been less helpful than I’d hoped, because although the program contains screens that list what clients are served by which bands on which routers, I cannot get it to do so for my AirPort Extreme (it does provide that detail for my extender Airport Express).

One of the reviews I read about iNet Network Scanner on the Mac App Store states that the program requires the router to support “snmp” to provide this information, AND states that snmp is not supported by the Extreme routers. I’ve not been able to verify this independently.

So, I don’t have a clue whether my Nest Guard is misbehaving, or whether it’s my Airport Extreme. My ISP has reviewed its service outage logs and tells me that they have no outage reports that match any of the times when the Nest App has recorded a temporary disconnect of the Nest WiFi device.

I’m about to give up on the Airport Extreme and install a WiFi 6 Amplifi Alien router because it has such universally laudatory reviews, but I really have no clue whether that’s going to help, and some concerns that I’ll screw up trying to keep the Airport Extreme on my LAN as a networked hard drive just to do Time Machine backups. That’s another way of saying perhaps the whole problem is “user error” (what I don’t know about networking far exceeds what I do!).

Does anyone have suggestions for other tools that can do what iNet is supposed to (tell me which clients are connecting to which routers, and information about the quality of those connections? iNet states it cannot provide that information for anything other than Airport routers, and for me it cannot even do THAT, so I think an alternative would help. I’d prefer a macOS tool to an iOS tool, but it looks as though Ubiquiti has both impressive embedded software on the Alien Router as well as a very well thought-out iOS app.

Thanks so much in advance for ANY suggestions.

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Answers to that could result in a many-page document. I won’t do that here.

My approach uses two tools available from the macOS App Store: WiFi Explorer and LanScan, along with Airport Utility and embedded macOS network features. I have found over the years that too many tools simply make the toolbox too heavy to carry. The following descriptions are in order of increasing usefulness.

Airport Utility provides a list of connected clients as soon as the Airport icon is clicked. No authentication is required unless you need to record or modify the Airport configuration. Diagnostic data is not usefully supplied by the utility.

On macOS, configure System Preferences > Network > WiFi to Show Wi-Fi status in menu bar. Option-clicking the menu bar WiFi icon will display a drop-down with detailed information on the current connection. Diagnostic reporting is also available there.

LanScan provides a quick look at how many systems are connected to a particular SSID (WiFi network name). This is where unknow users may be discovered on an unsecured WiFi network.

WiFi Explorer is the heart of my WiFi diagnostic and planning processes.

WiFi Explorer displays a table of all ‘visible’ WiFi networks. Sorting by Channel gives an instant display of how many different networks are trying to use the same Channel. Sorting by Signal provides an estimate of proximity of channel users.

The Signal Strength display provides insight into varying WiFi performance in a cluttered environment as various devices, especially the WiFi Access Points try to manage their RF usage.

The Spectrum display shows how channel usage overlaps, both from co-channel occupants and, in the 2.4 GHz band, the failure to realize that only channels 1, 6, and 11 do not overlap each other. This display is crucial to planning for the least-interfering channel choices. One fascinating item is the display of seemingly random channels appearing and disappearing which may be a symptom of WiFi radios coping with a crowded spectrum.

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I wish iNet were more forthcoming. It is supposed to provide information about every device using an SSID, but I guess that capability was extinguished on the Airport Extreme. Airport Utility identifies devices attached to routers, but sometimes only by their MAC addresses, and doesn’t (so far as I can tell) inform whether they’re connected to the 2.4 or the 5 GHz band. I’ve downloaded the utilities you suggested and am exploring each of them.

Thanks,
Jim Robertson

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I also use Wifi Explorer to check wifi strength. It produces a graph of signal strength over time, which can be useful for intermittent problems.

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One of the reviews I read about iNet Network Scanner on the Mac App Store states that the program requires the router to support “snmp” to provide this information, AND states that snmp is not supported by the Extreme routers. I’ve not been able to verify this independently.

There is a free tool on the Mac App store to test SNMP connectivity… and it found no snmp service when I tried it with the latest Airport Extreme unit.

So, I don’t have a clue whether my Nest Guard is misbehaving, or whether it’s my Airport Extreme. My ISP has reviewed its service outage logs and tells me that they have no outage reports that match any of the times when the Nest App has recorded a temporary disconnect of the Nest WiFi device.

Are you using the default DNS setup or a custom one like Google or OpenDNS? I found that my Rogers internet was flaky until I configured my AE to use OpenDNS and it has much less downtime since then!

OpenDNS is free for the basic service as are a whole bunch of other DNS providers.

Cheers,

Dave

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Thanks for your suggestions!

I use the IP addresses suggested by my ISP for their closest server. I’m virtually certain my WiFi problem is LAN, not WAN; the only issue is whether it’s my router or the Nest Guard device. On my Macs I don’t enter any DNS information; I configure that on my Airport Extreme router.

I do have the 5 and 2.4 GHz radios set as separately-named SSIDs on the Airport Extreme (and I’m not sure why I bothered to do that), but my understanding is that network clients negotiate the best connection they can receive. Airport Utility tells me the Nest Guard is connected to the Airport Extreme which is just 3 inches away from it.

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A few years ago, we rented a house for a month. As soon as we set up the wifi, we had trouble connecting, or, if already connected, we kept dropping the connection. I used netspot.app to measure the output of the router, and found that it timed out for 5 to 10 seconds, repeatedly. I copied the information and sent it to the owner, who replied that the router couldn’t be at fault, as they had used it it without a problem a few weeks before. (He apparently didn’t believe the data that i sent him.) Then a couple of days later, the wiFi totally disappeared, so I Had him contact the ISP company. They came and declared that the router was not working, and (with the owner’s permission) replaced it. The wifi worked fine after that. So you might try using Netspot to check the wifi. (I’m not familiar with the programs tht you already tried.

Hope this helps
Nancy

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I was unaware of Netspot. I’ll check it out. I’ve just peeked at the website, and there are at least 3 different license tiers. It seems that for a Home user the Home tier should be sufficient. Is that what you have?

I’m guessing that, now that I’ve purchased one AmpliFi Alien router (and may soon purchase another to MESH with it), one purpose with be optimizing the location for the MESH point. Another might be to see if there are intermittent dropouts on the output from my Airport Extreme Time Capsule, because I wouldn’t want to try to sell it if it’s defective. I’m suspecting that, because I had a 2.4 GHz Nest device falling off WiFi periodically, even while connecting to the Apple Router’s 2.4 GHz radio and sitting just inches from the Time Capsule, each having an unobstructed “vision” of the other (the Nest device is 2.4 GHz only).

Thanks so much,
Jim Robertston