Internet Connection

While at my girlfriend house, we get issues trying to connect mobile devices to the internet. She has her mobile, I have a mobile and tablet. All exhibit the same problems. Sometimes it will connect as if there’s nothing wrong, at other times one can be ages, trying and retrying, again and again, just to get the same utter nonsense failure messages.

Sometimes we try ‘auto connect’, and other times ‘manual connect’.

Sometimes it ignores the press to connect and does nothing. At other times it will state that we need to sign in; which is a nonsense because under normal action the mobile device sorts it out for itself with her router. If one then presses to "sign in" it is just goes to the same infuriating page saying that it can’t connect to the Internet (oh really, I’d never have guessed).

Other times it will make out it is trying to connect, spends ages checking the Internet connection (which it clearly does not need to do as the desktop is finding the Internet ok (most of the time) and it has no problems). Then says It’s connected without Internet, which is utterly useless since the reason to connect to the Internet is to be on the Internet !

We had 2 routers here, a Thomson provided by the Internet supplier, and a BT smart modem which she bought on an earlier occasion when the Thomson seemed to be having issues; but it turned out then to be no different. We have tried both, they both result in the same issues.

I borrowed a spare router from my sister, but found I could not use it as it needed a username & password and she had forgotten what they might be.

Then I brought back 2 routers from my place which have not been used since I changed my internet connection to a faster one, having been told by BT that I could still use them on the faster connection but it would be at a slower speed; only to find out they had lied to me and I needed the BT smart router. Turned out I could not use them either since I also have no idea what the username & passwords are. They must be saved somewhere but after so many years, I've no idea where.

So nothing we have been able to swap in has changed the situation.

I did try to look at settings for router and devices, as I saw some things about MAC addresses and other mysterious stuff, but the reality is I don’t have the knowledge/experience to make head nor tail of those aspects, and they’d probably end up being nothing to do with it anyway.

It is all extremely frustrating. Any help with it would be greatly appreciated.

(And if anyone knows a solution to the secondary problem of having routers without recalling what the username/password is that would be great also.)

Thanks.

Anyone have any ideas ?

Hi. The Internet account details are known, it's the router user/password that isn't remembered. However someone suggested there may be a return to factory settings button: this will be the reset you refer to. They do, but I've yet to try it yet. I intended to do so today but time flew. Another task for the morning.

It's mainly the WiFi that's used and that's the path we notice. I'm not saying the desktop never has issues but I suspect that it's unaffected by this issue.

The mobile devices have no problem connecting to my router when at my place. Never used to have this issue at my girlfriend's either, but this has been going on for a long time now.

I'll do that when I'm next at the desktop.

I've run the base command before to get the page address. Last time was with the router I brought from mine and had 'reset'; got to the bit where it asked for username and password again. Realised I didn't know the default, and that I'd since I'd changed router had no Net access, guessed admin & {blank} to no joy. Later found out that router needed admin & password. Not retried since.

The WiFi is permanently on. Unsure the desktop would see it. Can't use window/DOS commands on Android surely.

Meanwhile, managed to get one of my routers connected. It drops out for ages too so that's 3 of them all the same; it can't be the routers causing it, surely. And since all mobiles/tablet exhibit the same problem, that seems to exonerate them.

Mobile: anything that needs the WiFi, presently 2 "smart" phones and 1 tablet; all Samsung running Android. You mentioned a laptop and I was about to say there wasn't one, but yes, there is one that's rarely used, that uses Windows. As it's not commonly used we've not yet had the opportunity to see if it has the same issue.

Regarding SSID. Not recalling what it does. One sets these things up as instructed at the time and doesn't think much about it afterwards. The 2 modems she had have worked fine in the past so I've no reason to believe they've changed.

I'll have to go up and look a little later today in order to answer your other questions, but the router presently active is the spare I brought; a Netgear. The 2 she has is the BT smart router and the provided Thomson one.

edit
Netgear N600 (ADSL + Modem Router DGND3700)
BT Smart Hub Type A
Thomson TG585 v7

At present the Netgear is set to "Auto" for the 2.4 GHz network, and channel 36 for the 5GHz network.

Mobile is both "smart" phones and a tablet (and as mentioned, a laptop, which I'd forgotten about as it's been switched off).

Think you've lost me now. Surely I need the router part to connect both WiFi and cable connected devices to the phone/broadband socket on the wall ? Unsure how to split the functions anyway.

Yes it has built in WiFi. That's what's going wrong. But I still need to connect to the desktop and to the network via the wall socket. Isn't that the router bit ? I still don't get this idea of splitting them and only using the WiFi part.

I now have 5 routers here. But they are all router/modems. All I've tried (3 or them) show the same issue.

As mentioned, at present the Netgear is set to "Auto" for the 2.4 GHz network, so I'm unsure what change your latest suggestion will make, but I'll run through it all later today to ensure it's tried. (At present it already runs with a name identical to the network at my place so that's a change that already occured. Plus this morning we figured that her sat nav may need it's WiFi settings updating if it is to auto update, so that's a fifth mobile device.)

Worth noting that this is an intermittent problem not a permanent disconnect.