How come turning wifi/data on and off again makes it work better?
In: Technology
It’s kind of like a sink drain. It gets super clogged and you gotta unhook the tube to get the stuff out.
Like pretty much anything computer related, resetting fixes an abundance of issues. By starting something over it is forced to run all it’s code from the beginning, refreshing anything that might have gotten out of whack.
I don’t have a specific technical answer because it could be a whole number of things making your wifi or data not work well in the first place, but in short, it’s like when you’re in a conversation with someone and you get confused and say “woah woah hold on let’s start over.”
One potential cause can occur if you are on some sort of extended network system where many access points (APs) are all broadcasting the same SSID (that is, a bunch of antennas all pretending to be the same network that shows up on your device). You’ll usually find these in large offices or school campuses. Even though these APs are all the same network, most basic configurations can only let you talk to one of these APs at a time, so your device can still tell them apart. To that end, when you connect your device to one of them, it will do everything in its ability to stay connected to *that* AP in particular, no matter how bad the signal gets, even if a better connection to a different AP is nearby. That is, if you’re walking about and roam out of the zone of the first AP you connected to, your signal will get worse and worse, even if there are other APs in your area to cover you. Your device will only break the connection and start over on its own if the original connection outright times out. Cycling your network connectivity forces your device to drop the old connection and look again, which will presumably select the strongest signal in your area.
Newer network equipment is being made that can address this by giving the central router the ability to detect signal strengths of clients and dynamically route traffic through the best AP possible, making the switch seamless. These are marketed as “WiFi mesh” systems.
I’m not at all versed on how the cellular network system operates, but I think it has some parallels to a Wi-Fi mesh system, with towers dynamically trying to shift you between one another seamlessly as you roam, but due to their greater distances and higher volume of clients this can be unreliable. Turning data off and on can easily shift you to a new tower if you are in range of more than one. You can often verify that this has happened by checking your public IP address before and after cycling.
Doing this allows the device to re-register with the network and re-establish data transmissions with the switch (give data direction). If you have to do this frequently on your device, there are three likely causes: 1) there is something wrong with the internal antenna and the device itself needs to be replace, 2) there is a software issue that’s causing you to lose your connection (make sure you have the latest update installed on your device), or 3) you’re just in a poor signal area and a myriad of factors could be interfering with the data signal.
Basically, anytime there is a signal issue, your device will run slow because it is constantly pinging the external network to re-establish or strengthen the connection. This allocation of power (battery drains faster) and processor (runs slow), will cause your device to run sub-par. Resetting that connection will often alleviate the issue if it was temporary.
WiFi is prone to interference from other nearby networks or other devices on similar frequencies/bandwidths or channels. To help prevent inference, there are different WiFi channels you can set your network for. In the US, there are 11 channels. I think overseas, they have upto 14 channels. In systems with multiple WiFi access points, typically each AP will have a different channel to prevent interface. This can cause your device to “hunt” to find the best signal. However WiFi is notoriously bad at doing so.
There are two typical network scenarios.
The first for example take my home; I have multiple access points on different WiFi channels. These APs allow you to connect to my network in multiple locations using the same WiFi network name but allowing traffic across all of them as one network. They have different channels so as to not interfere with each other and my neighbor’s networks.
In my scenario, dropping the connection and resetting it allows a device to grab a stronger signal from a closer AP. Like I mentioned earlier, WiFi isn’t so great at switching to the strongest connection on its own so resetting it allows it to do so.
Many public WiFi networks are similar as well. If you walk from an area with good WiFi and notice it gets weak, dropping it and reconnecting may allow it to connect to a stronger connection that’s closer or has better signal. If you’re between two good connections but they are on different channels, your device can get confused and hunt between them, causing the appearance of a slow connection. But in a public network, it’s most likely just network congestion.
The second scenario for most home setups, is a bit different. Most people don’t have multiple APs in their network. I’m not sure how in this scenario resetting the connection helps but I know most people’s routers are set to auto for the WiFi channel. I don’t think resetting your device’s WiFi connection will grab a new WiFi channel but resetting the router itself most likely will.
Maybe someone can tell me why I can be sitting in my house in the same spot on the couch for 2 hours on my iphone and lose all signal multiple times, but turning air plane mode on and then off will yield a good signal again. I never had to do this on my android phones but it happens all the time in all kinds of places on my iPhone in a major city. I’ve even switched carriers recently and it’s the same issue. Friends with iPhone report the same issue as well.
There are probably many more reasons, but maybe one is that the WiFi changes the channel being used which might have been being jammed by noise.
It’s like if many people are speaking English in a room, so to make things a little clearer you switch to German. Sure, the noise remains the same but because you’re talking a different language you don’t get confused by the English words.
In the same way WiFi has different channels it uses, which are basically bands of frequency.
It drops the data connection and forces it to reset many of the background processes, which is effective for hung processes.
Many of these processes have a “only once every 24 hrs” or some other limiter on it so they don’t reinitiate
Good answers here, I’ll try to be as ELI5 as possible. So, Computers sometimes have good days and bad days. Sometimes it’s just one little thing that can make them.not work. The longer a computer is awake, the more things happen to it, and eventually it needs to reset itself. Much like us, the longer we are awake, the more likely, a little thing will throw us off, so we need to take a nap and come at some problems fresh with some rest. Computers were built the same way. So if your computer is being cranky, and won’t work, give it a little nap by turning it off, waiting a few seconds and turning it back on again. Now, this advice applies to your router, phone, tv, car, watch, refrigerator, and soon, pretty much everything, because they all have computers in them.
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