Wi-Fi & connectivity

[rwd1959]

I have 3 4K Sticks and all of the sudden they drop connection and then can't find my wifi. Eventually they will find the wifi again but after connecting they will lose it again. This is happening constantly making it impossible for me to watch TV. No other devices inn the house are having a problem. I have tried all of the things I have seen on here but nothing has worked. I talked to a support rep who only wanted to blame my  ISP. I went and bought a Chromecast with Google TV 2 days ago and it works perfectly with ZERO drops. However I still have these useless Roku's on my other TV's. You can't make me believe anything other than Roku has pushed out an update that has FUBARed these 3 sticks. $150 worth of equipment that I need to work like they had worked perfectly with no drops up until last weekend. How about some useful customer service please.

[renojim]

Are you using 2.4 or 5GHz Wi-Fi or do you have one of those "smart" routers that supposedly steers devices to the best band?  If you're using 5GHz Wi-Fi, make sure you're not trying to use a DFS channel (roughly between 50 and 150).  Set the channel to one below 50 or above 150 and don't use "Auto" for your Wi-Fi channel.

[rwd1959]

I have a Verizon Home LTE dual band router. The sticks all have good to excellent signal and are all using 5ghz and channel 6(the same they have used for a year and a half). Again all 3 were great until Friday January 20th and the boom, useless. Might work for 5 minutes or 0 minutes.

[renojim]

Channel 6 is a 2.4GHz channel.  I'm not familiar with that router, but perhaps @AvsGunnar can offer some suggestions as to what router settings you should use.

[AvsGunnar]

@rwd1959 

Post your router model number as most Verizon Home 4g LTE setups are currently using both the older Askey RTL108 and the newer Netgear MBR LTE routers and their settings/locations will be a little different.  (Although it may say Verizon on the router, you should see some "Model Number" on the stickers which will tell us which router you actually have.

---

Some Verizon customers are having trouble with the IPv6 protocol used by Verizon when enabled.  I haven't seen anything in particular related to the 4g Home LTE routers but is affecting their 5g, Fios, and hotspot device networks.  As such, one troubleshooting step would be to disable IPv6 if you are currently set to IPv4/IPv6 (or if you have IPv6 toggled to ON position in settings).  If for some reason you need to navigate to an IPv6 address, you will receive a message that the site is unreachable, so you can always toggle to ON as needed.

@renojim 's advice regarding the DFS channels is likely spot on if you have the newer 4g router.

The Netgear 4g LTE routers (depending on model number) are capable of using DFS channels (52-140) which Roku cannot see or use so would cause the Roku to disconnect and be forced to use the 2.4ghz band if your 5ghz band Channel Selection is set to Auto.  As such, will need to manually assign a 5ghz channel to 36-48 or 149-161 on the 5ghz band and change the 2.4ghz band to use mode b/g/n if you notice the Roku is having difficulty connecting to the the 2.4ghz band.

The Askey RTL108 does not have DFS capability so this would not be an issue.  Additionally, the Roku should be able to connect to mode g/n on this router for the 2.4ghz band, but can also try b/g/n.  The only real reason the Roku would be losing connection on the 5ghz band of the RTL108 is due to interference.  This was really the only complaint of the older router was its strength and prone to interference/channel crowding.  Suggestion on this router would be try different channel numbers. (can optimize a bit more by downloading a free wifi analyzer to your phone that may help you find a lesser crowded channel).

Again, post back with actual model numbers you see on the router so can tailor suggestions.