[Q] Easy way to monitor network speeds? - Fire TV Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Since I am having problems to get HD on my Fire TV Stick mostly in the afternoon and on weekends, but bandwith tests showing no problem with my connection at all, I want to monitor the network speed directly on my stick while streaming from amazon to see what is happening. What would be the easiest way to do this?

you can monitor the traffic on your router. (dd-wrt, merlin, tomato, whatever)

If you think people are uing your connection, just make your router invisible.

Related

Fire Stick: Connecting to Kodi in Halls of Residence?

Hi all, first post so sorry if it's in the wrong place! I seem to have an issue connecting to my Fire Stick via adbfire. Adbfire won't connect to my Stick (Followed all steps required) and I have a feeling that it could be because I'm connected to my university Halls of Residence WiFi which is a shared network; is it possible that because of this the IP Address on my laptop won't match the one with the Stick? If so, is there any possible workaround to be able to get Kodi on the device?
Many thanks!
John
Hi,
Most universities employ Layer 2 client isolation, so that one wireless client is not able to communicate with another client. You will likely need to bring in your own router and use your own wireless SSID (against most university network AUP) in order to connect and push things via ADB.
Easiest workaround I can think of is to create your own wifi network, either by using your own router (even without an active internet connection, there are cheap ones available) or you could try a laptop/desktop or a smartphone.
If you have a wired ethernet connection or get a router which can connect to another wifi network, you may be able to get away with your own router all the time, but it's a gamble depending on your uni (mine apparently claimed that they would ban people, but I've been using a cable router without any problems so far (touch wood)).
If you go the path of your own router, be sure you hide the SSID.
The Cisco APs we used, at the university I used to work at, had a dubious "feature" that would actively search out "rogue" SSIDs and would continuously associate/deassociate with them in order to overload the AP and cause them to lock up. They didn't want students using other public available SSIDs for fear of privacy concerns.

Fire TV Stick - wifi problems due to Wifi direct remote

I wonder if anyone can advise how this problem might be fixed:
I have a fire-tv stick in my bedroom the latest version which has a voice remote and connects using WiFi direct instead of bluetooth. I'm using 2.4Ghz wifi (using a TalkTalk hg633 super router). I can't use 5Ghz because the signal to my bedroom isn't good enough on 5Ghz. On 2.4Ghz the link score from inSSIDer is 91 with the fire-tv stick unplugged, with a signal of -50dBm. With the fire-tv stick on a WiFi Direct AP appears on inSSIDer with a signal of -39dBm (ie stronger than my normal wifi signal). The link score drops to 71.
If I test download speeds and pings, then with WiFi direct off, i get decent downloads speeds (around 20Mbps) and 18ms pings in my bedroom, in the lounge its a little higher. With Wi-Fi direct on, download speeds drop below 7mbps, sometimes 1mbps, pings increase to 200ms (although I have seen 10,000ms) and the connection often disconnects so the download speed test or ping is unable to complete. (I get about 2 tests that work out of 6, the others fail due to connection issues).
The upshot of all this is that I can't get a reliable streaming service on my fire-tv stick. especially in the evening. The network often disconnects, or slows to a crawl so I get frequent buffering, inability to stream at all or a poor quality picture. In the lounge, I often find my PC disconnects when wifi direct is on though streaming is less of a problem (because there the wifi signal is about 5dBM greater than the WIfi-Direct signal
I contacted amazon, and they suggested changing the channel of my wifi so it isn't on the same channel a Wifi Direct. That doesn't work because the WiFi Direct signal follows my wifi onto the same channel.
I can't use a lan cable (no option for this on a fire-tv stick, and I shouldn't have to in any case). I don't want to add extra extenders / APs to my wifi network as that might just make things worse.
Does anyone know of any way to switch off WiFi direct and use bluetooth for the remote or the FireTV app on my phone instead? Or to decrease the power of the wifi direct signal, or any other solution?
I wonder about switching to an older fire-stick with bluetooth remote - but that I think would mean I lose the voice search facility?
If I swapped to a full Fire TV with voice remote - do they use bluetooth or Wifi Direct?
Same problem. Not as dire a situation because it's in my kid's bedroom and not mine. :silly: But it interferes with the WiFi signal in areas that are closer to her room than my home router.
Not sure why AMZ chose to use the same channel as the FireTV stick talks to your WiFi network on to do their communication to their remote. That seems like a really bad design - if it's messing the 2 of us up, it has to be doing the same for a whole lot of people.
I tried changing my home WiFi from channel 11 to 1 in troubleshooting and had the same experience as you - the FireTV stick's WiFi changed right along with it to continue to clobber my home WiFi signal. Been through the menus in FireTV stick - no way I can see to change its behavior. Google search led me here.
Hi,
Whilst I stand by everything I said, in attempting to get Amazon to replace my remote with one that used bluetooth instead of wifi-direct, they sent me exactly the same remote in replacement. It still uses wifi-direct. However, it has worked fine, despite being on the same channel. That suggests that some remotes are faulty and causing or exacerbating the problem. Exactly why that would be I don't know, but it's all working fine for me now.
Roku has been doing this for years Here is a link to there form maybe amazon will listen I just got a new one for another room but no network problems and is faster on menu loading so I can live with it.
You're always gonna have problems with a ton of stuff on 2.4ghz. If your router has 5ghz, I would recommend reorganizing if possible, or getting a stronger router. 5ghz means no headaches, no problems with other things, controllers\remote work fine, etc.

Better Video Streaming Option(s)?

I am running a Verizon HTC 10 that has been Sunshined (unlocked bootloader, TWRP, ...) and have been using Viper10 2.3.0.
I am going to be on travel, and I wanted to be able to stream from Netflix, HBO, my own personal media server, etc and enjoy my media on the hotel's TV. I still have my Verizon UDP and my rooted ROM provides me with the hotspot feature. So, technically, I could utilize that to accomplish exactly what I want to do, which I have already tested and confirmed would work. However, I am seeking alternative solutions as I do not want to be using my UDP with excessive tethering and risk getting the attention of Big V and get flagged as a "data hog" by their BS definition in violation of some tethering usage. Many UDP users got kicked off the network for this... I am looking to stream media to my phone and simply provide a travel friendly mechanism to display it to the TV.
So, naturally, I tried the Chromecast mirror option and was able to get some result, but not what I wanted. I am looking for an Ad Hoc "wireless HDMI" solution so that I can stream (over my 4G connection to my phone) any media I want and locally cast the content to the TV. That way, Verizon sees my data usage as a non-tethering type of consumption but I can still get away from viewing the media on my phone screen. All the wireless technologies I have seen (including Chromecast) utilize Wi-Fi tech. I can AD Hoc connect to the Chromecast and mirror my device, however, the quality is less than desirable for movie playback. I read up on Miracast tech, but it looks like it too utilizes WiFi. The problem is that I cannot sustain a WiFi connection to a cast device AND maintain my 4G connection. I always lose my 4G when I turn on WiFi, which in every other case I can think if would be the desired action.
So, is there a way to enable both WiFi AND mobile data so that the phone will see the mobile data connection as being internet accessible but still utilize the WiFi to support video casting? Or is my best option to look into USB-C to HDMI adapters and stick with needing to run a cable? It's 2016, I was hopeful a high quality wireless option was available that supported my use case.
Thanks!

Unable to connect to internet!

My firestick says it is connected to the WiFi, but not the internet. "Home is not available". Sometimes it connects and sometimes it doesn't. I have moved it around but nothing seems to matter. It won't stay connected. I'm confused how it can be connected to WiFi, but not the internet. Can anyone help me please?
I have the 3rd generation Amazon Fire TV. I notice this happens a lot with the FoxNow app as well as when streaming from Amazon Video. I don't see this with Netflix or when I stream from my Plex Media server. Mainly only with Amazon Video and FoxNow. It keeps telling me that Amazon Home is unavailable and it shows in the network status that it's connected to WiFi but not the internet. I'm running on the 5ghz band on channel 153 and all my other devices connected to the router work when the Fire TV states there's no internet. I've unregistered and re-registered my device as well as rebooted it several times, but the issue keeps coming back.
It doesn't happen all the time. There will be some days where there's not an issue with it. But when it happens, I have to reboot the Fire TV or unregister and re-register it on Amazon. I've ran a WiFi scanner and it tells me channel 153 is the best one for me based on my area. The Fire TV is just a few feet away from my WiFi router. I'm using the power adapter that came with the Fire TV in a wall outlet as it won't work with my TV's USB port (not powerful enough).
Our router is brand new (NetGear Firehawk R7000) and our cable modem is fine as well. Like I said, everything else works fine after the Fire TV loses connection.
We only have a 30mbps connection. Could that be it? Didn't seem to bother us when we had a Roku, but I wanted to get something that used the 5ghz channel so I went with the Fire TV since it was on sale.
friendlyphil said:
My firestick says it is connected to the WiFi, but not the internet. "Home is not available". Sometimes it connects and sometimes it doesn't. I have moved it around but nothing seems to matter. It won't stay connected. I'm confused how it can be connected to WiFi, but not the internet. Can anyone help me please?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
iBolski said:
I have the 3rd generation Amazon Fire TV. I notice this happens a lot with the FoxNow app as well as when streaming from Amazon Video. I don't see this with Netflix or when I stream from my Plex Media server. Mainly only with Amazon Video and FoxNow. It keeps telling me that Amazon Home is unavailable and it shows in the network status that it's connected to WiFi but not the internet. I'm running on the 5ghz band on channel 153 and all my other devices connected to the router work when the Fire TV states there's no internet. I've unregistered and re-registered my device as well as rebooted it several times, but the issue keeps coming back.
It doesn't happen all the time. There will be some days where there's not an issue with it. But when it happens, I have to reboot the Fire TV or unregister and re-register it on Amazon. I've ran a WiFi scanner and it tells me channel 153 is the best one for me based on my area. The Fire TV is just a few feet away from my WiFi router. I'm using the power adapter that came with the Fire TV in a wall outlet as it won't work with my TV's USB port (not powerful enough).
Our router is brand new (NetGear Firehawk R7000) and our cable modem is fine as well. Like I said, everything else works fine after the Fire TV loses connection.
We only have a 30mbps connection. Could that be it? Didn't seem to bother us when we had a Roku, but I wanted to get something that used the 5ghz channel so I went with the Fire TV since it was on sale.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try channel 36 on 5ghz band..
I've had this same issue for a year with no solution. I'm stuck on channel 36 which is the most crowded in my neighborhood
Well, I bit the bullet and purchased the LAN adapter for the Fire TV device and since this past Monday (4/23/2018) after hooking it up directly to my router and not using WiFi, I have not had a single issue. Before that, over the weekend and the past week, I had numerous hang ups and loss of internet (at least, the Fire TV said I had no internet but I did) after watching a movie, or a couple of TV shows.
I'm really thinking the issue is tied to heat (it heats up after using it for one movie or a couple of TV shows) and that causes an issue with the WiFi chip in the device. Since moving to using a LAN cable instead, there doesn't appear to be an issue with this now.
Also, I've noticed where lag/delay between audio and video that slowly creeps in as time moves on while watching a movie has appeared to have disappeared as well. Definitely, something is up with my WiFi. Not sure if it's my router or how it's configured (Netgear Nighthawk), but I have checked various settings (no dual band being used and only used 5ghz band, but the same issue was also on 2.4ghz band when I tried that) and nothing fixed the issue until moving off of WiFi.
I do have a repeater in the house for my wife because her laptop has a crappy wifi controller in it so she can't get a good signal upstairs whereas the rest of us have no issues. But, that's not always plugged in. Only when she needs to use her laptop upstairs so when she's not using it, it's turned off/unplugged from the wall. It also only uses the 2.4ghz band.
But in any case, using the LAN adapter appears to have solved my issue. Only time will tell, but the loss of internet via the Fire TV would happen daily. Now, after 3 days, it hasn't happened once. Knocking on wood that this fixes my issue.
UPDATE 4/26/2018:
Day 3 of using the Fire TV with the LAN adaptor. Watched over 5 hours of Dexter and not one issue. I watch it via Netflix and usually, after a few viewings, Netflix goes into buffering mode. Hasn't happened once this week since getting the LAN adapter. It definitely seems to have fixed my issue.
vic_singh said:
Try channel 36 on 5ghz band..
I've had this same issue for a year with no solution. I'm stuck on channel 36 which is the most crowded in my neighborhood
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ya you're right about going with lower / middle of the bands. I noticed this with 2.4ghz band too, I had it set to auto in my router settings and it picked 11, but AFTV didn't like anything 10 or over, so just changed band in router settings manual @1 or 6 and no issues.
Well, over a week now and not ONE single hang up and need to reboot. Definitely something with the WiFi in the device if you ask me. Interference, possibly brought on when the device gets too hot maybe? I dunno. Problem solved if you ask me! So happy now. Love my FireTV even more!

Slow Wifi?

Cant figure this out. I have a Fire TV Stick with Alexa. I have an 80mb connection. Over wifi, my laptop gets 70mb download on 5GHZ. The Firetv stick on 5ghz floats around 10-15mb, and that's 3 meters from the router. Its the closest device to the router.
HD Buffers constantly. Anyone any ideas?
I experienced similar on 5G WiFi where phone showed excellent speed but Fire TV showed terrible speed. However the problem was a useless speed test app on the Fire TV. I tested it with a few internet based speed tests and test results were fine.
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Hammy

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