Wireless Joey loses connection to AP

[tpribors]

We moved into a new house last fall and Dish moved the service.

As part of the installation the tech swapped Wireless Joey Access Point to a new model. The Hopper is now in a a bedroom separated by a kitchen wall with the joeys being less than 30' from the hopper. The installer concluded that the AP-JOEY wifi signal was inadequate (50%) and used an orphan cable tv connector to add a MOCA-Ethernet bridge and connected the AP. This put the AP no more than 15' from either Joey.

The connection to one or both is randomly dropped. The Joey goes black and then puts up a screen that says to go to the AP and use the button. I just navigate to the network settings page and reset the net (which says it will reset the Hopper-router link but appears to reset the Joey-AP link). It comes back. If I ignore it it will take several minutes and self recover. It usually happens once a day, sometimes more often.

Since proximity didn't change I moved the AP back to be adjacent to the Hopper since where he put the MOCA-Ethernet box was horrible (I wouldn't have let him had he asked) since it was in the middle of some statues. The Joey still has a signal strength of 45-60. It still drops the link but at the same frequency as when it was adjacent.

This never happened with the old AP which we had for over 12 years. And the Joeys were on two levels at least 50' and 4 walls from the AP... Signal strength for them was in the 35-50% range and we never ever lost the AP-Joey link.

I assert that there is some kind of interference that is causing the new AP to lose the link. The area has at least 20 different WIFI networks in range of my internet AP so there is alot of traffic...

An additional thing that happend was an extreme latency in remote control activity. Before this AP the skip forward and backwards had a small, coulpe of milliseconds, latency vs. the remote on the Hopper. With the new AP, remote response is up to several seconds. In fact, I've had it take longer to respond than the skip! I've had it take 45 seconds to do a 30 second forward and it is quite frequent that a 10 second reverse to take more than 10 seconds, and it's typically around 3 seconds... I lay this on the wifi link. The video doesn't stutter but that can be because it buffers internally enough to ride through these.

So two questions:

1. Does anyone else have this same problem?

2. Can I get an old AP back (I asked Dish and they said they couldn't.)

Frankly this is getting annoying enough that I'm for the first time in 30 years, considering dropping dish...

the only reason I have dish is for the DVR...

 

[HipKat]

and used an orphan cable tv connector to add a MOCA-Ethernet bridge and connected the AP.

Wait, a what??

 

[tpribors]

Wait, a what??

In this installation the dish is connected to the house's cable TV box on the outside wall. There is no CATx cable in the house (built in 1999 or so). That means the satellite signal goes to every cable TV outlet (unless there are splitters in the box and they rewire them, but the CATV default is to split it everywhere). There is some signal loss but not enough to keep the sat signal from meeting the hopper requirements. The dish box sends a MOCA signal back onto the COAX so you can plug in other MOCA devices to make a network-over-coax network. Since the Joey doesn't have a coax connector they added a MOCA-to-ethernet bridge and connected the router to that. That got the AP physically closer to the joeys and got 90+ signal strenth but they still dropped at the same rate as before.

 

[tpribors]

One solution to the problem would be to use ethernet to connect the joeys. I've already had to use powerline adapters to connect the hopper to my WiFi router (a Verizon 5G home internet router) because the signal is also too weak and they won't give me a repeater because of my service class. So the powerline backhaul is fast enough to stream internet based Dish channels. They did give me a repeater but it would also require wire-based backhaul.

Anyway while I was experimenting with a potential solution to the Joey-AP connection I took the worst one and connected it to the powerline and connected the Hopper ethernet port to the powerline. I disconnected the AP because I was using its cable to connect to the powerline. This ran the Joey over the "home" network. It worked until I plugged the AP back in. The AP first paired with the other wireless joey but after a few minutes the wired joey switched back to the AP based wifi and I could never find a way to configure the joey to prefer ethernet.

But I guess the real question is whether the Wireless Joeys are actually compatible with being used in ethernet only mode??? If so, will Dish supply the powerline adapters? They wanted to charge me to go to "wired joeys"...

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

But I guess the real question is whether the Wireless Joeys are actually compatible with being used in ethernet only mode??? If so, will Dish supply the powerline adapters? They wanted to charge me to go to "wired joeys"...

Yes.

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[tpribors]

Sorry there were two questions there so I don't know which the "yes" applies to.

First q: Can Wireless Joeys be used in ethernet only mode?

Second q: If so, will Dish supply powerline adapters? If so, what magic incantaiton to the gods do I need to utter to get them because previously they said no... (I'd need 4 - two for the Joeys, one for the hopper, one for the router)

I guess a 3rd q is : Is there a way to constrain a wireless joey to Ethernet only mode such that it won't be grabbed by a wireless AP so I can use the Wireless in another location.

 

[HipKat]

In this installation the dish is connected to the house's cable TV box on the outside wall. There is no CATx cable in the house (built in 1999 or so). That means the satellite signal goes to every cable TV outlet (unless there are splitters in the box and they rewire them, but the CATV default is to split it everywhere). There is some signal loss but not enough to keep the sat signal from meeting the hopper requirements. The dish box sends a MOCA signal back onto the COAX so you can plug in other MOCA devices to make a network-over-coax network. Since the Joey doesn't have a coax connector they added a MOCA-to-ethernet bridge and connected the router to that. That got the AP physically closer to the joeys and got 90+ signal strenth but they still dropped at the same rate as before.

I understand how cable works and I understand how cabling for hopper system works since I do it every day. What I don't know is what a MOCA to ethernet bridge is.

The access point can connect to the system two waves. One by connecting directly to the opera via ethernet or two is adding a hopper Internet connector to the system by connecting it as if it were a Joey. And then the access point can connect to that by ethernet. I assume that's what you're talking about, I've just never heard it called that before.

Also, repeaters or extenders typically do not play very well with a hopper. I don't know about using a power outlet. We did that with the old VIP boxes and it worked great but I don't know how it would work with a hopper.

 

[HipKat]

Sorry there were two questions there so I don't know which the "yes" applies to.

First q: Can Wireless Joeys be used in ethernet only mode?

Second q: If so, will Dish supply powerline adapters? If so, what magic incantaiton to the gods do I need to utter to get them because previously they said no... (I'd need 4 - two for the Joeys, one for the hopper, one for the router)

I guess a 3rd q is : Is there a way to constrain a wireless joey to Ethernet only mode such that it won't be grabbed by a wireless AP so I can use the Wireless in another location.

Yes, any Joey can be used with ethernet either connected directly to the hopper or connected to a switch that's on the same network that the hopper is connected to.

I assume there is a way to get the wireless Joey to disconnect from the excess point, I'm just not sure what it is. It could be going into the diagnostic screen by hitting the home button until you get to it, two or three times and then scrolling down to network and then selecting network settings, and then clicking info, recall. That is how you disconnect a hopper from an Internet network. It may be how you disconnect a wireless Joey from an access point.

Dish will not supply powerline adapters because dish no longer carries or supports them

 

[Foxbat]

What I don't know is what a MOCA to ethernet bridge is.

I have used these in my home to connect to the home LAN through the cheap RG-59 that was installed when our house was built. It really isn't a Bridge so much as an Adapter that takes 75Ω coax on one side and 100/1000BaseTX on the other. It uses MoCA to multiplex the LAN traffic over the same Coax I use for OTA in the bedroom that has the computer and printer. In theory I could have one MoCA Adapter located in my LAN closet and place additional MoCA Adapters wherever I have OTA Coax outlets since it supports Coax splitters.

 

[DB10]

We moved into a new house last fall and Dish moved the service.

As part of the installation the tech swapped Wireless Joey Access Point to a new model. The Hopper is now in a a bedroom separated by a kitchen wall with the joeys being less than 30' from the hopper. The installer concluded that the AP-JOEY wifi signal was inadequate (50%) and used an orphan cable tv connector to add a MOCA-Ethernet bridge and connected the AP. This put the AP no more than 15' from either Joey.

The connection to one or both is randomly dropped. The Joey goes black and then puts up a screen that says to go to the AP and use the button. I just navigate to the network settings page and reset the net (which says it will reset the Hopper-router link but appears to reset the Joey-AP link). It comes back. If I ignore it it will take several minutes and self recover. It usually happens once a day, sometimes more often.

Since proximity didn't change I moved the AP back to be adjacent to the Hopper since where he put the MOCA-Ethernet box was horrible (I wouldn't have let him had he asked) since it was in the middle of some statues. The Joey still has a signal strength of 45-60. It still drops the link but at the same frequency as when it was adjacent.

This never happened with the old AP which we had for over 12 years. And the Joeys were on two levels at least 50' and 4 walls from the AP... Signal strength for them was in the 35-50% range and we never ever lost the AP-Joey link.

I assert that there is some kind of interference that is causing the new AP to lose the link. The area has at least 20 different WIFI networks in range of my internet AP so there is alot of traffic...

An additional thing that happend was an extreme latency in remote control activity. Before this AP the skip forward and backwards had a small, coulpe of milliseconds, latency vs. the remote on the Hopper. With the new AP, remote response is up to several seconds. In fact, I've had it take longer to respond than the skip! I've had it take 45 seconds to do a 30 second forward and it is quite frequent that a 10 second reverse to take more than 10 seconds, and it's typically around 3 seconds... I lay this on the wifi link. The video doesn't stutter but that can be because it buffers internally enough to ride through these.

So two questions:

1. Does anyone else have this same problem?

2. Can I get an old AP back (I asked Dish and they said they couldn't.)

Frankly this is getting annoying enough that I'm for the first time in 30 years, considering dropping dish...

the only reason I have dish is for the DVR...

I noticed on my AP the Hopper constantly vacillating between excellent and poor signal. That was at 2.4GHz and switching the Hopper to a 5GHz connection took care of it. You might try that if you haven't already. The range for 5GHz is lower though and it doesn't love obstacles.

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