Issues with Ignite WiFi Pods

[Flynn62]

I have 2 pods where the light dims then brightens all the time and one that does nothing?

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[RogersAndy]

Hey @Flynn62!

Welcome to the community!

I believe what you're referring to is just the activity indicator? It's normal for the light to blink if data is being transmitted. :). Let me know if you have any other questions!

@RogersAndy

[Ndeck]

Where can I find info on pricing for the pods?

[Texman]

Hi all,

For the pods, do I have to hold my phone to every pod to activate it?

Reason I ask is I can get the first pod to come online but not the rest.

What do I do EXACTLY to add more pods after the first one is online?

Cheers.

[-G-]

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@Texman wrote:

For the pods, do I have to hold my phone to every pod to activate it?

Reason I ask is I can get the first pod to come online but not the rest.

What do I do EXACTLY to add more pods after the first one is online?

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Hi.  Yes, you need to bring Pod online individually and your phone needs to be close to the Pod (within 15 cm / 6 inches) when you add it you your network and associate it with your account using the app.  New Pods are discovered by the app through a Bluetooth signal so need to ensure that Bluetooth is enabled on your mobile device and that it is close enough to the pod to receive the signal.

As I mentioned to another user in another post, I have not been able to find a step-by-step self-install guide for Pods on the Rogers website but Comcast does provide online instructions for Xfinity customers on how to activate their xFi Pods.  Rogers uses the same hardware so the installation procedure will be very similar.

[Texman]

Thanks for the reply.

No matter what I do, I cannot get the 2nd pod to come online, I have tried differentpods on different outlets all close to the first pod.

I have removed the 2nd pod in the app, signed out of the app.

The pods have been replaced.

Just says not online try again.

Thoughts?

(Im REALLY not liking these pods.)

[-G-]

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@Texman wrote:

Thanks for the reply.

No matter what I do, I cannot get the 2nd pod to come online, I have tried differentpods on different outlets all close to the first pod.

I have removed the 2nd pod in the app, signed out of the app.

The pods have been replaced.

Just says not online try again.

Thoughts?

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Do you still have a working, active Wi-Fi connection to your modem when you add that Pod?

[Texman]

Yes.

[-G-]

@Texman  Sorry, I'm out of ideas.  This is something that should "just work".

If the Ignite WiFi Pods FAQs support page is not of any help and the @CommunityHelps  team does not have any additional advice or suggestions, I think that now would be a good time to call Rogers Tech Support for assistance.

[Texman]

The setup step 10 advises:

"Once the first Pod has successfully been linked to your account, you’ll be asked to connect any additional Pods. Evenly spread them out no more than 20-30 feet away from the gateway or the nearest Pod. Once all Pods are plugged in, tap All Pods Ready to Go!"

But what does "you’ll be asked to connect any additional Pods" mean?  Does that mean I setup each new pod up the same way as the first with the app?  I mean do I take my phone to all of the other pods one at a time and activate them the same way as the first?  The instructions are unclear.

[tomom77]

adding wifi pods

Help hard to figure out if my wifi pods are working.  Having a hard time adding them under more.

[RogersTony]

Hello, @tomom77

Welcome to the Rogers Community Forums!

I know how important it is to have a strong WiFi signal inside of your home so I definitely want to help you get your Pods working. Please answer the questions below so we can better understand what is happening.

• What is happening when you try to add the Pods using the Ignite WiFi Hub App?
• Is it not recognizing the Pods or do you get an error message of some kind?

Some of our Resident Experts with Ignite TV may be able to shine some light on this for you. I will tag them into the conversation now. @-G-, @Gdkitty, @gp-se, and any other Ignite TV users in the Community with WiFi Pods feel free to chime in.

We look forward to your response!

RogersTony

[mubashir56]

I live in a 50 year old plus three bedroom apartment building. I upgraded to Ignite past February and through trial and error [including installing and uninstalling a power line] I was able to get about 100 plus mbps wifi speed for the TV in the living room off the Rogers Modem in the middle bedroom.  What helped me boost the speed for the living room TV from 10-15 mbps to about 100 mbps was a pod which I installed in the Kitchen next to the living room.

All worked fine for about three months, but last week the speed to the living room dropped to 10-15 mbps again. No amount or plugging and unplugging the pod or rebooting the modem is helping.  

Any suggestions? Thanks. 

[Datalink]

@mubashir56 my guess is that one of your neighbours, either beside you, or above or below you may have set up a new router, or a mesh network of some type that is causing co-channel interference, dropping your data rate.  Here's what I would do just to see who else is using the same channels as you. 

If you're using a Windows laptop or desktop, load Winfi Lite from:  https://www.helge-keck.com/

When that's running select the wrench (tool) symbol or i for info symbol in the second row from the top, near the hand side.  That brings up the lower display area.  Select "Spectrum" to display the graphical interpretation of the wifi network data so that you can see who you're competing with.  There is a setting in the lower right hand setting section that can be toggled to show the network names in the graphical area.  You can select the settings "wheel" symbol to bring up the settings menu on the right hand side.  The text data shown above can be sorted up and down by selecting any column title.  Go ahead and sort the data by RSSI, which is the received signal level at the receiving device.  Now, since you're using pods, which are using the same network name, I think you should see the modem and pods, all listed by the same network name but separated by the BSSID (MAC address).  That should allow you to see the RSSI (signal strength) of the modem and pods and allow you to see who else is operating on the pod channels.  If you only have one pod, then it should be easy to determine which of your network names that are shown in the list are the modem and pod.  If you look at the bottom of the modem, you should see the modem's MAC address.  The wifi BSSID should be the same for the first five octets (?) with the last or right hand octet running a different alpha-numeric combination.  

So, have a look at the signal level of your network compared to any other network in the same channel band, just so that you know who you're competing with.  If you're using a 5 Ghz network, use the 149 to 165 channel group as the output power level is higher than the lower 5 Ghz channels.  That higher power level can make a considerable difference in operating range from the modem or pod, resulting in higher data rates, despite any nearby competition.  If you walk around your apartment with Winfi Lite running, assuming that we're talking about a laptop here, stop in place for two to three minutes to let the program catch up with the change in location.  Take note of the signal level of your network, just so that you know how much it changes, up and down, depending on the laptop's location.  

Other food for thought, do the pods run in a Auto Channel mode selecting the 2.4 and 5 Ghz channels on its own?  

Is there a manual channel mode that allows you to lock the channel to one that you specify?

Is Band Steering active, which will bounce a remote device between the 2.4 and 5 Ghz network on its own, without your intervention?  If so, maybe its time to disable band steering and set both 2.4 and 5 Ghz network name to separate them and link your wifi devices to either band.  That would call for an experimentation session, in conjunction with using Winfi Lite to see what channels are good or poor to use.

I'm wondering, if the pod and modem are running in Auto channel mode, with Band steering enabled, that there reacting to something that your neighbour has set up, causing a change in wifi bands and channels that the remote devices connect to?  If you've been watching how the modem and pods acted previously, and knew what the wifi environment looked like before, you would have an idea of what has changed within that environment. 

Unfortunately, wifi is good when there's no competition, potentially lousy in a crowded wifi environment, where there's lots of competition for channel time.  All it takes is for your neighbour to set up a new router or mesh network and your wifi networks are potentially toasted. 

My thinking here

[-G-]

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@mubashir56 wrote:

All worked fine for about three months, but last week the speed to the living room dropped to 10-15 mbps again. No amount or plugging and unplugging the pod or rebooting the modem is helping.  

Any suggestions? Thanks. 

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Pods just relay traffic between the WiFi client device and their upstream neighbour, which is usually the XB6 gateway but could also be another Pod.  If you are getting slow speeds, it is either due to a poor upstream or downstream connection or possibly due to a problem with the Pod itself.

If you unplug the Pod and then take a mobile device to the Pod's location, are you still able to get a good connection to your XB6?  Is anything interfering with the Pod's connection back to the XB6 gateway?  (Plug the Pod back in when you have finished testing... or you may need to relocate the Pod.)

WiFi can also perform very poorly if you have multiple devices with poor connections actively sending traffic, or if some other device on that channel/frequency is constantly transmitting.

With Pods installed, WiFi channels are all auto-selected so you will need to work with Tech Support to help troubleshoot.  They will have access to information/stats about your WiFi network that you do not.

You can still use a WiFi scanner/analyzer on a laptop/mobile device to troubleshoot your WiFi environment.  Keep in mind that for Pods to work well, they need a good connection to the XB6 gateway AND to the WiFi clients that connect to them.

[mubashir56]

Thanks! Yes standing next to the pod, I see about 300 mbps speed off the Gateway on my iPhone !

Update: After a couple of days, plugged it back and things seem to have gone back to normal!

[toolcubed]

Hi everyone, I'm having similar issues with an Ignite Wifi pod as numerous others have reported with theirs.  My sister-in-law has Ignite.  She's in a relatively small (and older) townhouse (~1200sq ft or less if I had to guess).  The Ignite gateway is located in the basement next to the electrical panel where the coax comes into the house...it's the only place we could put the gateway because she doesn't have coax running to any other room in the house.  It's also a fully finished basement so running a new coax line up to the main floor family room (where I originally wanted to put the gateway) is not possible unfortunately.

When running the WiFi network exclusively off of the gateway (i.e. no pods), coverage and WiFi speeds are excellent throughout the entire house.  She's on the 150u Internet package and I've consistently been testing (literally in every corner of the house) at ~290Mbps!  Not one slowdown anywhere in the house (not even two floors up at the opposite end of the house), and full WiFi signal almost everywhere, which is exactly what I expected with the size of the house.  The only location where WiFi signal drops (but drops by only one bar according to my iPhone) is at her front door, yet speeds are still ~290Mbps.

So why did I need to connect a pod you might ask?...

The issue she was having is that she has a Google video doorbell (mounted just outside her front door, obviously :)) and without a pod, it would refuse to connect to her WiFi network.  Signal strength measured by the doorbell (without pod installed) was pretty much next to nothing.  Standing outside next to the doorbell, I was still getting WiFi signal on my phone (only one bar) but the connection wasn't stable at all.  Yes - performance on my phone went from 2/3 bars of WiFi signal and full download speed right inside the front door to almost no WiFi signal and an unstable connection right outside the front door.  For some strange reason, WiFi signal and performance seem to drop off completely (from almost perfect to almost nothing) by simply stepping outside the front door.  This led me to try installing a pod in her entrance...about 6 feet from her front door (and from the doorbell), which immediately allowed her doorbell to connect to her WiFi network and function properly.

The problem now is that other devices (tablet, my iPhone, etc.) seem to always want to connect to the pod instead of directly to the gateway and performance is terrible.  Ping and jitter are significantly higher and we're lucky to get even 40Mbps...sometimes it's as low as 15Mbps...speed, ping, and jitter are all over the place while connected to the pod.  The only device that seems to stay connected to the gateway (and not to the pod) is the Ignite TV box.  Distance from gateway to pod is about 15ft but they're on separate floors...again, gateway is in the basement and pod is on main floor (entrance, close to front door).

Is there a way to restrict the pod so that the only device that connects to it is her doorbell and force all other devices to always connect to the gateway and never to the pod?  This would solve the problem but I haven't been able to figure out if this is possible.  If it's not, I'm going to have to remove the pod and figure something else out.  If anyone has any advice, it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

[-G-]

@toolcubed  What is the signal strength from the XB6 gateway like in the location where the Pod is installed?  If it's located in an area where the signal is already marginal, you will get a strong connection to the Pod but horrible speeds between the Pod and the XB6.  Performance should improve if you move the Pod closer to the XB6 gateway.

To get a more accurate measurement than the signal strength bars on your iPhone, install Apple's "AirPort Utility" from the App Store, then enable its "Wi-Fi Scanner" in Settings.

[toolcubed]

Thanks for the quick response.  I'll have to go back to measure signal strength more accurately using AirPort in the location where the pod is currently installed.  Using a less accurate means of measurement (i.e. by looking at 3 different phones' WiFi bars and an iPad Air's WiFi bars) in the location where the pod is installed - my iPhone 8 fluctuates between full WiFi bars and one less than full (2/3).  On another iPhone 7, signal behavior is the same - fluctuates between full and 2/3.  On a Samsung Galaxy S10 - 3/4 bars.  On the iPad Air - mostly full bars and occasionally dropping to 2/3 bars.  Without the pod installed, all devices test at close to 300Mbps download speed in that same location.  With pod installed, performance tanks on all devices in that exact same location.

I will also try to move the pod and re-test but I'm worried that if I move it closer to the gateway, and thus farther away from the doorbell, then the door bell is going to have problems connecting again.  With the current setup with the pod being installed 6ft away from the doorbell, WiFi signal strength of the doorbell (measured within the Google Nest app) is already not great at only 2 bars.

[Don_Ca]

That seems odd. Are you sure the doorbell is connecting to that POD? You can see in the app what is connected to what device. If it is connected to that POD there is a chance that POD is a dud.

[toolcubed]

Yup. It’s connected to the pod...confirmed in the Ignite WiFi Hub app. Without the pod installed, the doorbell refuses to connect to the network (i.e. to the gateway located in the basement). And it’s the only pod installed.