Question Wifi became unstable out of nowhere

[Caracalent]

3 days ago, around 9pm edt, the wifi went from perfectly fine to very unstable. I am able to watch videos(bc of the grey bar) and load pages but we get kicked from online games, zoom/team calls while working from home. While doing speedtests its all over the place (from 3mbps to 120mbps). At first we waited bc there was a lot of wond so we figured something happened to their equipment.

We have an Arris tm822 and a zyxel emg2926 and our isp videotron (both router and modem from the isp i think.. been a while). It is not a single device it's for every device (3 cellphones 1 windows 10, 1 tablet).

I've tried rebooting both the modem and the router a couple times and nothing changes. Closed every devices 1 by 1 without success and added one of the google dns . Nothing worked.

On the arris the lights seem normal, the link light is blinking green meaning it's transmitting data according to the manual which sounds normal. The zyxel's lights for the different channel are flashing and it only talks about them being on or off in the manual.

We also have to wait until thursday to call ISP since the owner of the account is out of the country.

At this point just trying to find other things we could try bc working has been hell with this wifi.

Edit: Also weird messages in the logs about teardrop attack being spammed. When looking up ip/mac address it points to zyxel which is the maker of the router

 

[dwd999]

3 days ago, around 9pm edt, the wifi went from perfectly fine to very unstable. I am able to watch videos(bc of the grey bar) and load pages but we get kicked from online games, zoom/team calls while working from home. While doing speedtests its all over the place (from 3mbps to 120mbps). At first we waited bc there was a lot of wond so we figured something happened to their equipment.

We have an Arris tm822 and a zyxel emg2926 and our isp videotron (both router and modem from the isp i think.. been a while). It is not a single device it's for every device (3 cellphones 1 windows 10, 1 tablet).

I've tried rebooting both the modem and the router a couple times and nothing changes. Closed every devices 1 by 1 without success and added one of the google dns . Nothing worked.

On the arris the lights seem normal, the link light is blinking green meaning it's transmitting data according to the manual which sounds normal. The zyxel's lights for the different channel are flashing and it only talks about them being on or off in the manual.

We also have to wait until thursday to call ISP since the owner of the account is out of the country.

At this point just trying to find other things we could try bc working has been hell with this wifi.

Edit: Also weird messages in the logs about teardrop attack being spammed. When looking up ip/mac address it points to zyxel which is the maker of the router

You could use a wifi analyzer like the one in the windows store to check other wifi activity in your neighborhood. It may be another nearby user is trying to use the same channel as you and their stronger signal is interfering with yours. If you can find a channel with less traffic and change the router to that it may help.

 

[bill001g]

Does it affect both devices that connect via wifi and devices that are ethernet connected.

You need to try a ethernet connected device if you have not. Wifi can be as simple as a neighbor on the same radio channel doing a large data transfer at that time. So you try to change the radio channels even though that tends to not work so well because most routers actually use large blocks of channels rather than 1 and there are so many people with router around that you have massive overlap on every channel.

If it affects ethernet also then it is not a wifi issue and you will need to do more testing to see if for example if you are getting packet loss.

 

[Caracalent]

You could use a wifi analyzer like the one in the windows store to check other wifi activity in your neighborhood. It may be another nearby user is trying to use the same channel as you and their stronger signal is interfering with yours. If you can find a channel with less traffic and change the router to that it may help.

I tried looking at a wifi analyzer most channels are around the same, router automatically switches between them so i don't think it should be the problem

 

[Caracalent]

Does it affect both devices that connect via wifi and devices that are ethernet connected.

You need to try a ethernet connected device if you have not. Wifi can be as simple as a neighbor on the same radio channel doing a large data transfer at that time. So you try to change the radio channels even though that tends to not work so well because most routers actually use large blocks of channels rather than 1 and there are so many people with router around that you have massive overlap on every channel.

If it affects ethernet also then it is not a wifi issue and you will need to do more testing to see if for example if you are getting packet loss.

I don't have anything connected via ethernet. The unstableness happens on every device. I might be able to find an ethernet cable somewhere to test but not sure if we still have one. Currently going to a relative's place to be able to work during the day.

 

[bill001g]

Your problem is you do not want to spend large amounts of time say changing wifi setting or moving equipment around when it turns out your ISP has a issue. You also don't want to just assume it is say a internet issue. If you call them they will just say everything is fine and you nothing to say otherwise. A ethernet cable is going to point you in the correct direction.

 

[dwd999]

I tried looking at a wifi analyzer most channels are around the same, router automatically switches between them so i don't think it should be the problem

Allowing your router to change channels automatically would certainly be a factor in getting different performance on different days and is not something I would do. Also do you not have an ethernet cable connecting your modem to your router that you could test your computer with? How can you work from home without an ethernet cable since relying on wifi for essential home work is not something anyone should do.