Topic: Two devices keep shutting down my broadband

[S]

I'm on BT Broadband. Pretty standard setup. We have multiple laptops, phones and tablets connected all day. People come round and connect their new devices just fine. Very small house so speeds are fine wherever you go.

However, in one room I have a PS4 and smart TV (also made by Sony coincidentaly) and whenever I first use the internet on these two the whole system breaks down. Then I reset the router and it all works fine. I've actually just disabled it on the TV, but pretty much every time I want to use the PS4 this happens;

1. Internet working fine
2. Turn on PS4
3. Internet goes down as soon as PS4 attempts to connect online
4. Reset router
5. Everything works fine

Any idea what the reason for this could be? As I said, I'm getting perfectly fine speeds in this room. It's just these two devices causing the problem.

[Riquende]

Two devices getting the same IP? Normally it would only knock the specific ones offline but if your PS4 is trying to use the same IP as something more important in the network it could cause you a problem.

Are the PS4 and TV using wireless or have you got homeplug/powerlines etc?

[S]

Two devices getting the same IP? Normally it would only knock the specific ones offline but if your PS4 is trying to use the same IP as something more important in the network it could cause you a problem.

Are the PS4 and TV using wireless or have you got homeplug/powerlines etc?

I’ll have a look at this later and see, thanks.

And yes, everything is wireless.

[.adam]

If it is the above, assign IPs to each device using their MAC address. Usually pretty simple to do.

[gamble]

Does the router turn off electrically when the ps4 is turned on?

Just trying to guess if it is hardware or software conflict

[Elmo!]

When this happens, are your other devices still connected to the wireless, but can't access the internet?

From your computer try pinging the router and see if it responds. If it does, try access the routers web interface. If you don't know the routers IP address, just type in 'ipconfig' in a comand prompt and check what your default gateway is - that is your routers IP address.

If that works, try pinging www.google.com, and then ping 8.8.8.8.

Good first steps to check for any network issues - helps if issue is just access to the internet, or affecting local network as well, and also can rule in/out DNS issues.

[manx_red]

I had similar problems in my house. I discovered that the router was outputting both the 2.4ghz and 5ghz WiFi signals on the exact same SSID, with the exact same password. So the devices were probably trying to connect to both signals or something. Anyway, I went into the router settings and disabled the 2.4ghz signal and voila, problem went away. Perfectly stable now. If you have some older devices that need the 2.4ghz signal, you could always re-enable it and just name it a different SSID so your 5ghz capable devices don't try connecting to it

[S]

Thanks for your help all, I haven't actually used the PS4 in a few days so forgot to check this.

Unfortunately none of these solutions seemed to have fixed it.

I had similar problems in my house. I discovered that the router was outputting both the 2.4ghz and 5ghz WiFi signals on the exact same SSID, with the exact same password. So the devices were probably trying to connect to both signals or something. Anyway, I went into the router settings and disabled the 2.4ghz signal and voila, problem went away. Perfectly stable now. If you have some older devices that need the 2.4ghz signal, you could always re-enable it and just name it a different SSID so your 5ghz capable devices don't try connecting to it

This is the only one I wasn't able to try though. I've looked everywhere but I can't see an option to change anything related to this in my router settings. For what it's worth I'm on BT.

[S]

Does the router turn off electrically when the ps4 is turned on?

Nope. Everything shows as normal on the router itself.

When this happens, are your other devices still connected to the wireless, but can't access the internet?

Yeah all devices still show as connected with full WiFi signal, but can't do anything. For example if I was watching Netflix on a laptop and then turned my PS4 on, Netflix wouldn't disconnect. It would just buffer continuously. Same as a webpage, they just load forever and never make any progress. Everything looks like it's connected as normal, but you can't actually do anything.

The weird thing is, once I reset everything and actually play on my PS4 I experience next to no issues. I can play online whilst everyone streams TV and there are no problems.

[manx_red]

Thanks for your help all, I haven't actually used the PS4 in a few days so forgot to check this.

Unfortunately none of these solutions seemed to have fixed it.
This is the only one I wasn't able to try though. I've looked everywhere but I can't see an option to change anything related to this in my router settings. For what it's worth I'm on BT.

So you need to get into your router settings. Do this by opening a web browser on one of your devices (easiest on a desktop or laptop). In the address bar, type 192.168.1.1 and hit enter. That should take you to the login page of your router. Username and password for this will be on the router somewhere. You're looking for admin credentials.
Once in, find wireless settings (maybe in an 'advanced' area). Then when you find it, disable the 2.4ghz frequency or rename it as suggested previously etc

[S]

So you need to get into your router settings. Do this by opening a web browser on one of your devices (easiest on a desktop or laptop). In the address bar, type 192.168.1.1 and hit enter. That should take you to the login page of your router. Username and password for this will be on the router somewhere. You're looking for admin credentials.
Once in, find wireless settings (maybe in an 'advanced' area). Then when you find it, disable the 2.4ghz frequency or rename it as suggested previously etc

Still can't find it mate. For reference I have a BT Hub 3.0.

Edit - Just found this on BT. Only the hubs past the 3 are listed so I suppose that's the issue.

The BT Home Hub 4, Hub 5 and BT Smart Hub are dual band with two wireless frequencies for devices to connect to: 2.4GHz and 5GHz. On both Hubs, the default setting has the same network name (or SSID) for both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands. Connecting a typical 5GHz-capable device to this single SSID will automatically connect the device to both the 2.4 and 5Ghz frequency at the same time.

[Graeme]

If I could make one suggestion, log into your BT account online and turn off all the parental controls and web protection extras. They’re shite and caused headaches when I was with BT

[Claire.]

Another thing to try is picking a channel rather than putting it on auto. In places where you have lots of networks, your router will switch channels to try to find the optimum one, sounds good but when it switches everything gets kicked off. Let the divs in the houses around you have the problem.