Home wifi started misbehaving when I attached a windows device

On my home wifi I normally have a macbook pro, a few iPhones and a chromecast. A few days ago, I bought one of those new cheap windows 8 tablets. It works great, but while it's powered on, the other devices have wifi issues.

The macbook pro and the iPhones will hold a connection for between ten minutes and an hour, and then lose internet. If I toggle the wifi off and back on again it normally re-connects fine, for another ten minutes to an hour.

The chromecast couldn't connect at all, until I made it forget the network and reconnect. Then it seems pretty stable - I was able to watch about 90min of TV last night. The same trick hasn't worked for the macbook and iPhones.

The windows tablet initially had the same problems until I did the same forget-and-reconnect, and has now held a connection for the entire weekend - although it may be just repairing its wifi connection more effectively than OSX. I've noticed things like battle.net say "offline" for a few moments after waking the tablet, but don't require me to fiddle with the wifi settings to reconnect.

As soon as I turn the tablet off, everything goes back to normal on all devices. I can turn it off and replace it with, say, an iPad, and the wifi behaves fine, so it's not a device limit.

Other things I've tried:
- turned off and unplugged the router for a while, rebooted it
- a few of the early tips here http://www.macrumors.com/2014/10/30/yosemite-wi-fi-connection-issues/ but I don't think it's a yosemite issue? Before the new tablet the connection had been fine on Yosemite for months.

I'm a programmer but don't know a lot about network devices. Pure speculation, but could the win8 tablet flipped the router into some mode osx-derived devices do not like?

Any hints on what I can look at next?

tenpn

Posted 2015-01-12T09:45:31.187

Reputation: 215

and just as soon as it started, everything's ok again. I didn't do anything! – tenpn – 2015-01-21T16:43:37.037

Wait. All was good for a week, during which time the win8 tablet was out of battery. I charged it again and turned it on, and lo the wifi is misbehaving again. Turned it off, all is fine. Will update question to reflect this. – tenpn – 2015-01-25T22:48:03.230

I don't seem to have that setting on my router dashboard. Did have a lot of listed devices, and tried to delete some. Will see if that improves thing. The dashboard is being very slow and misbehaving, so maybe the router is just old. I've had it for three odd years. – tenpn – 2015-01-12T10:30:52.990

the setting might be listed something like this:

IP address range: 192.168.15.100 - 192.168.15.105

which would mean there are 6 addresses and therefore devices allowed on the network. Just change the last .105 to something like .110 – Blaine – 2015-01-13T09:39:31.783

Oh good hint. Unfortunately don't see anything like that: https://www.dropbox.com/s/4rfw2p3r87hswao/Screenshot%202015-01-13%2011.00.06.png?dl=0

– tenpn – 2015-01-13T11:02:57.927

thanks for the pic. Is your wifi router connected to any other router, or just straight into the wall? – Blaine – 2015-01-13T11:04:29.560

Ah no, another page https://www.dropbox.com/s/ukuf0w768uc53vp/Screenshot%202015-01-13%2011.10.58.png?dl=0 the IP range there is huge.

– tenpn – 2015-01-13T11:11:46.990

It's the only router/wifi access point in the house, direct to the wall. – tenpn – 2015-01-13T11:12:14.953

ok, so it seems we have decided that it is not a matter of number of accepted devices... I'm a bit stumped right now. – Blaine – 2015-01-13T11:23:55.023

Home wifi started misbehaving when I attached a windows device

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