WiFi slow after some minutes

[noize]

Hi all,

I have problems with my WiFi speed. First I found youtube to load videos quite slowly. After that I used "Oookla Speedtest" to check network speed. I have 6MBit DSL-connection at home, but if I use the speedtest after the WiFi has been switched on for some minutes, I only get ~1Mbits on the Xperia Z3 compact. If I switch WiFi off and on again on the phone, I get the expected ~5Mbits. This happens not only at home, but also at work and at my parents house. WiFi router types are different in all the 3 places.

The problem persists even If I stand 1m away from the router. WiFi reception is shown to be very good on the phone. My old iPhone 4S does not have this problem. Since turning off and on WiFi on the Z3 compact solves that problem for some minutes, I blame it on the phone itself. I already tried turning off and on the phone, as well as factory reset. Problem persists. Any hints?

Thanks a lot!

[viklathia77]

Hi guys

I am new to this forumn but i am also experiencing the exact same issues

my handset is a z3 compact

at first i thought this issue could be just my hanset but going through the net this seems to be an issue not only on the z3 but other z produtcs and other sony hansets

i have a 100mb connection,most of the time i check the speed of my wifi using ookla speedtest app i will get 100mbps there or there abouts

then from time to time i will check and i only seem to get 3 4mbps.  turning the wifi setting off and back on on the hanset will cure the problem but only temporarily,as soon as the wifi connection is remade the speed will read max around 100mbps but then a few moments later it will drop back down to 3 4 mbps.

this is very frustrating as i do not know if this a problem with the sony handsets or is this a software issue?

when this problem arrises i check the speeds on my laptop wifi,ipad wifi and iphone wifi and they all work perfectly and reach max speeds so that shows this cannot be a issue with our routers.

does anyone know if this will be ressolved with an update or maybe on the next firmware ( lollipop 5.0) or could this be limited to a few hansets?

this is frustrating not getting max speeds on the device.

the handset is only a week old so is it worth asking for a new hanset or is problem on all the hansets hence software (operating system)

also i have tried all the fixes that have been mentioned on here and other forumns but nothing is fixing the issue

as i mentioned its only doing this on my sony z3 handset but not on any other device connected to the router 

please helps guys

i really hope this is fixed asap and i am sort of relieved that i am not the only person experiencing this so hopefuly it turns out to be a issue with the software and not my actual handset

sorry for long post....

[noize]

Thanks for helping to investigate Rickard

At the moment I´m testing the safe-mode thing. After that I will go on and see if it is reproducible, that the problem does not exist if mobile data is off.

One thing I can already tell you, 3G only does not help, I already tried this 2 days ago. I will test if 2g only solves the problem, and I´ll give the airplane mode another shot to be sure that WiFi is stable in that mode. I´ll let you know as soon as I have more information.

[noize]

Hi viklathia77,

glad to hear I´m not the only one with that problem with a Z3 (compact) Maybe you like to help investigating? I think it would be a nice thing if you could test if the WiFi problem disappears if you either enter airplane-mode and reenable the WiFi or if you switch off the mobile data and see if that helps. Would be good to have more input than just mine and it could save time for all of us if we "work" in parallel

[noize]

Hi Rickard,

I´ve done the testing in safe mode, problem occurs here as well. I downloaded the 50MB file from http://www.speedtest.qsc.de/ several times. In the "good" case it took about 1.5 minutes, which reflects my DSL speed of 6Mbits. In the "bad" case it took about 9 minutes, which matches pretty well with what I found out before (~1Mbits). When this happened I plugged in USB and took a trace again using the Android Device Monitor, and again I saw this:

10-17 22:07:57.407: E/QcConnectivityService(877): Exception trying to remove a route: java.lang.IllegalStateException: command '765 interface route remove rmnet0 default 0.0.0.0 0 2.202.23.137' failed with '400 765 Failed to remove route from default table (No such process)'

I started a download at 22:03, which finished around 22:08. The two downloads afterwards were the slow ones (~9 minutes)

 If it helps I can provide the whole log to you, I saved it ("verbose", not only "error").

switching WiFi off and on cured the problem just like before.

Next step is to try with mobile data switched off to confirm that the problem does not exist there

[viklathia77]

Hi Noize

yes ofcourse i would love to help investigate.

i seem to get the full speed most of the day on the handset but when the issue appears if i switch off and back on the wifi or if i enter airplane mode on then off the speed will go back to max but then a few moments later it will totaly drop back down.this issue then could last a few hours

the only thing that seems to help me get back full speed back is to just leave it few hours and go back and check speed and it will work as normal.

its very strange as this problem seems to happen at random times.

i will ofcourse try switching off the mobile data and see if the issues arrises.  or maybe i will wait till the speed drops down then i will switch of the mobile data and see if it goes back up on the wifi speed.

 i could be wrong but maybe for some reason when we get the slow speed it could be the fact the phone is malfunctioning and using the mobile data instead of the wifi connection hence the slow speed.  even though the wifi is full signal and good strength maybe something is malfunctioning from time to time causing the phone to use the mobile data. i only say this as when my speed drops on the speedtest app i get around 3 4 mbps,  when i test the speed of the mobile data with wifi switched off i get around 3 4 mbps also hence this is why i think when i get the slow speed it could be the phone switching from  wifi to mobile data even though its showing the wifi symbol.  or it could just be a coincedence that my mobile speed is 3 4mbps and when my slow wifi issue creeps up its also 3 4 mbps.

the only way to rule out this theory i have is like you say i cold try to switch off mobile data for a day or two while at home and see if the wifi speed stays max speed.

thats is just something i think that could be causing our issue but i may be totaly off the mark.

the more investigationg we do the more we can rule out and hopefuly solve the issue.  we are not alone so hopefully others can help get to the bottom.  so i am more than happy to try anything you ask of me.

my personal opinion is that this is an issue with the software and i hope sony release a minor update or something to resolve this as hopefully we dont have to wait until Android 5.0 lollipop arrives on our hansets (early 2015) to see if that will cure the problem

this is my 1st ever android phone as i have come from ios and i am in love with the handset but same time very frustrated that we are getting this wifi issue.  i have a 100mb connection and its horrible to see sometimes when i check the speed its only reading 3 4mbps not to say also then everything loads and downloads slower.

please keep me imformed and lets work together to solve this

just hope sony are aware of this and are trying to resolve this.  iam sure i have read some other forumns that people had similar issues on their z1 and z2 devices so lets hope this is not and issue with the hardware that receives the wifi signal. just wish more people could let sony know this is and issue

speak soon.... 

[noize]

Hey viklathia,

so it seems we are on the same ship. It´s also my first android ever, I´ve been using iOS before as well  And I also really love my Z3C except our WiFi issue ...

What I noticed for me is, that turning mobile data off when the problem occurs does not cure the problem. I still have to disable/enable WiFi to cure, but if mobile data is off the WiFi stays fast. Let´s see if it is the same with your device.

Two points that seem to be different with your phone:

1) You have full speed most of the, not true for me

2) You say that if the problem appears it helps to leave the phone a few hours on its own and you get full speed again, that´s not the case for me

So it seems our cases have the same rootcause, but as the symptoms seem to differ in some points, I guess they depend on the "infrastructure" around us, like mobile network coverage, router type etc ...

Regarding your assumption about mistakenly using the mobile data instead of WiFi => this is a thought I have come across as well. In my case I am sure, that it´s not using the mobile data, because I only have a 2G mobile data connection here but my speedtest shows about 1.3Mbps, but it seems to switch to mobile connection for a short time and then back to WiFi just before the problem occurs. From the logs I could see that an IP route was tried to be removed just before the problem occured. The IP belonged to my mobile network provider (I used whois).

So lets keep on investigating and hoopefully a fix is found in near future

[noize]

Hi Rickard,

yesterday I tried 3 things:

- safe mode => problem occurs

- mobile data to GSM only => problem occurs

- used another (WiFi certified) WiFi router => problem occurs

- turned off mobile data overnight  => WiFi still fast after 7 hours

I continued reading much in forums, and it seems that there are also other phones of different brands are out there which have WiFi problems since updating to Android KitKat. One interesting thing is here:

http://forum.xda-developers.com/nexus-4/development/wifi-fix-updated-nexus-4-wireless-t2300873

Nexus4 uses a different Qualcomm chipset, but the principle might be the same ... I´m neither that deep into Android nor do I know the architecture of the Z3 good enough to judge if it might be a configuration issue like in the thread above, but maybe it´s worth to take a look at that

[noize]

I think now I can confirm that this problem does not exist if mobile data is switched off. I tried through the whole weekend (at least the times I were at home) and the speedtest always shows my ~5Mbits. No slowdowns since friday night, the time where I started to switch off mobile data when on my WiFi.

Meanwhile I´m using "Tasker" from the Play-Store to automate switching off and on mobile data when connected to my home WiFi. This is not a solution though, only a workaround ...

[noize]

Small update: Sony support answered today and asked me to do a "software repair" using PC companion. I tried that, but it did not fix the problem ...

[Rickard]

Thanks for the extensive testing.

Could you please send me the verbose log in a PM?