Kindle Fire HD8 WiFi problem

LOAM · 10 May 2020 at 19:42

Any ideas....we have a drayek router and various wap devices around the house. The drayek is providing both 2.4 and 5g WiFi connection and has been (still is) solid for years. We have several phones, tablets, hive, Alexa's and God knows what else connected and all working fine. So what's the issue you might ask?

We've bought daughter number two a kindle fire HD 8 (8th generation) because daughter number one has a HD 8 (7th generation) and we subscribe to the kids service that is really good and you can have several kids profiles on there. The 7th generation device has no problems but the new one connects to the WiFi for about 10 mins then loses connection and from that point on can no longer see any WiFi signals at all, turning WiFi on and off has no effect and the only thing you can do is reboot it. On restart it will connect fine for 10 mins then drop again.

My first thought was it was a faulty device do we returned it got a refund and got one from somewhere else and this one does the exact same thing.

I've tried manually filling in the WiFi details, static IP address, DHCP up address, WiFi is set to never sleep on idle etc. Any ideas? I'm going insane

Janesy B · 10 May 2020 at 19:50

Did you manually configure the IP address on the kindle or did you give it a static reservation from the DHCP Pool? If you can make a 2.4Ghz only SSID and see if that solves it, maybe it doesn't like the same SSID switching between bands.

LOAM · 10 May 2020 at 21:11

Janesy B said:
Did you manually configure the IP address on the kindle or did you give it a static reservation from the DHCP Pool? If you can make a 2.4Ghz only SSID and see if that solves it, maybe it doesn't like the same SSID switching between bands.

I set it manually on the device, I've got the DHCP pool set from 100 onwards so just picked the next free static available.

I've read that the new gens hate mixed b/g/n mode 2.4ghz which is what we were running because presumably at some point we had older devices that wouldn't connect to n. One of the wap devices only has 2.4 Ng as an option so I set it to that as well as setting everything else to n. With everything on n only (except the ng on the Netgear) it still dropped out.

I've just reset the things network settings and connected to a single bog standard 5G connection, I've not entered anything else at this point, I've also turned the aerial off on the ng Netgear.

LOAM · 10 May 2020 at 22:05

So it's been fine for an hour on 5Ghz only but dies as soon as it connects to a 2.4Ghz WiFi connection. I'm stumped unless it's unable to manage a secured WiFi connection.

LOAM · 11 May 2020 at 00:29

After what seems like a long time I think I'm getting to the actual cause, I've narrowed this down to the kindle being unable to connect (happily) to a dual band router on the 2.4ghz signal. It's fine on the 5ghz and seems to be happy on the two downstairs but if I connect it to the dual band upstairs it ***** bricks. I've had to practically tear the WiFi network apart from a settings pov to get here (breaking repeaters, changing SSID's etc) to find out what it can and can't connect to and the issue is Draytek 2860 dual band upstairs.

I can't turn the 5ghz off either because the speed drop would hurt too much but the signal is a bit pants downstairs for her to be connecting to it. This is probably going to force my hand and make me buy a 5ghz access point for downstairs and clean this arrangement up a little.

MissChief · 11 May 2020 at 00:33

LOAM said:
Any ideas....we have a drayek router and various wap devices around the house. The drayek is providing both 2.4 and 5g WiFi connection and has been (still is) solid for years. We have several phones, tablets, hive, Alexa's and God knows what else connected and all working fine. So what's the issue you might ask?

We've bought daughter number two a kindle fire HD 8 (8th generation) because daughter number one has a HD 8 (7th generation) and we subscribe to the kids service that is really good and you can have several kids profiles on there. The 7th generation device has no problems but the new one connects to the WiFi for about 10 mins then loses connection and from that point on can no longer see any WiFi signals at all, turning WiFi on and off has no effect and the only thing you can do is reboot it. On restart it will connect fine for 10 mins then drop again.

My first thought was it was a faulty device do we returned it got a refund and got one from somewhere else and this one does the exact same thing.

I've tried manually filling in the WiFi details, static IP address, DHCP up address, WiFi is set to never sleep on idle etc. Any ideas? I'm going insane

So if it's not seeing ANY Wi-Fi connections whatsoever then I'd suggest it's not your network that's at fault, but the Kindle? Can you take it somewhere else (not so easy just now!) and see what happens there? When I took Tech calls at Sky if one device wasn't seeing any networks and the Wi-Fi was definitely on and other devices connecting without issue 99% of the time it was the device itself.

Have you split the 5GHz and 2.4GHz so they have different SSID's? So you can then specify the 2.4GHz (or 5GHz) on the Kindle and leave it so it can't auto-swap between the two?

LOAM · 11 May 2020 at 00:51

MissChief said:
So if it's not seeing ANY Wi-Fi connections whatsoever then I'd suggest it's not your network that's at fault, but the Kindle? Can you take it somewhere else (not so easy just now!) and see what happens there? When I took Tech calls at Sky if one device wasn't seeing any networks and the Wi-Fi was definitely on and other devices connecting without issue 99% of the time it was the device itself.

Have you split the 5GHz and 2.4GHz so they have different SSID's? So you can then specify the 2.4GHz (or 5GHz) on the Kindle and leave it so it can't auto-swap between the two?

For clarity I'll single line answer otherwise I'll waffle

1. Initially it can see every signal available.

2. 5ghz and 2.4ghz have and always have been on separate SSID.

3. It will connect and stay connected to the single band (2.4ghz) wap(s) downstairs.

4. It will connect and stay connected to the 5ghz signal of the dual band router (Draytek 2860) upstairs.

5. It won't stay connected to the 2.4ghz signal of the dual band router (Draytek 2860) upstairs. After a couple of minutes the connection drops and it seemingly hangs the module which requires a reboot to get working again. Until this reboot it can't see any signals at all. This is the second device (from different shops) exhibiting the exact same behaviour.

That's where I am with it.

LOAM · 11 May 2020 at 22:52

To close this one out it's been connected all day without fail on everything but the dual band 2.4 WiFi. I found an old BT home hub 5 type A in a bits and bobs box and set it up using the same SSID/encryption/password/frequency as the 5ghz upstairs and now have pretty good 5ghz coverage downstairs.

Happy that the thing is connected, strange that such a popular device can't handle dual band routers.