Wifi problems since lockdown

arciere

DoaM said:

As said above - yes I was confusing NAT and DHCP. But routers do maintain routing tables ... I don't know what (and how many) connections (protocols/ports) Facetime uses for a video call.

Remember also that whilst Facetime on sister's phone may be LAN-side, the other person is WAN-side.

Yes they do maintain routing tables, but they are pretty much non-existent (you probably have 2 or 3 entries in total).
That's because a router only has to route between itself and the WAN (namely ISP gateway), all the local connections are NATted, not routed.
The other person is on the WAN side, yes, but the router is only routing between itself and its gateway, it has no idea where the other person is or how to reach it (it just forwards all the traffic to its gateway address).

DoaM

I'm sure when I used to have a DG834GT I looked in the admin panel at the "routing" table (expressed that way as I can't remember exactly what it was called) ... it had far more than "2 or 3" entries. It's that table I'm referring to which I think may be getting swamped. (I can't see similar such info in the BT HomeHub 4 that I have now).

bobblebob

DoaM said:

I'm sure when I used to have a DG834GT I looked in the admin panel at the "routing" table (expressed that way as I can't remember exactly what it was called) ... it had far more than "2 or 3" entries. It's that table I'm referring to which I think may be getting swamped. (I can't see similar such info in the BT HomeHub 4 that I have now).

Can you remember how to view that table?

DoaM

Sorry but no ... it must be going on 10 years ago since I last looked at a DG834GT admin screen.

bobblebob

No worries. One thing that does throw a spanner in the works is its not every single time Facetime is used. Sometimes it can be a week, or 3 days or 24hrs. Its random. Only constant is when it happens its shortly after starting a call

debitcardmayhem

I don't suppose you changed all your devices to static IPs ,

bobblebob

Tried that. The one on static still failed to connect. 

arciere

DoaM said:

I'm sure when I used to have a DG834GT I looked in the admin panel at the "routing" table (expressed that way as I can't remember exactly what it was called) ... it had far more than "2 or 3" entries. It's that table I'm referring to which I think may be getting swamped. (I can't see similar such info in the BT HomeHub 4 that I have now).

That could have been the DHCP table or the ARP table, definitely not the routing one.

DoaM

Do you accept that if either/both of those tables get swamped then it may cause the device to hang, and so account for what the OP is seeing? (Please don't get hung up on terminology - it doesn't help the OP address their issue).

arciere

DoaM said:

Do you accept that if either/both of those tables get swamped then it may cause the device to hang, and so account for what the OP is seeing? (Please don't get hung up on terminology - it doesn't help the OP address their issue).

Yes absolutely (sorry, I was just pointing out).
What it's not clear is how a DHCP or ARP table problem would only affect WiFi devices, since there is only one table on a router, so while a corrupt table could (does) cause connectivity problems, it doesn't differentiate between cable-connected devices and WiFi devices...