Frequent Disconnections and Delayed Responses

glennphills-

Your paired Roku remote connects with your Roku over a Wifi-direct connection. This is direct to the Roku, not through your local network. Since the Roku has only one WiFi radio, the remote must use the same Wifi channel that your router has established for connection to your Roku.

If there is significant interference on this channel it can impair the operation of your remote. This interference can be caused by use of a router channel that is crowded by nearby routers using the same or a nearby overlapping channel or from other sources. If you have access to your router's setup, try configuring it to use a different WiFi channel to see if this helps the situation.

This is more likely to be a problem in the more heavily used 2.4 GHz wifi band than in the 5 GHz band. The 2.4 GHz band also is used for Bluetooth connections that can cause interference, and stray radiation from microwave ovens can also interfere with this band. In the 2.4 GHz band, channels 1-11 are supported by Roku. Channels 1, 6, and 11 do not overlap each other and so give you the best chance at reducing congestion, so try each in succession, although depending on what channels your neighbors are using, other channels in the 1-11 range may work best. Also, reducing router bandwidth from 40 to 20 kHz can also reduce interference from overlapping nearby channels.

Note that optimum channel choice can be a moving target as neighbors bring new routers online in your vicinity, or they reconfigure their routers to use different channels. I periodically use a wifi analyzer app on my smart phone that can show me which available wifi channels have the least congestion and I change the channel my router uses accordingly.