Xi6 Entertainment box reports incorrect Wifi signal strength while hard wired?

[AV_Fan]

I have 2 Xi6s and 2 TVs. One Xi6 is connected to the TV beside it via ethernet while the second TV is connected via Wifi. The second TV is about 25 ft across and one floor down from the modem inside a house.

For TV  #1, from the Xi6's Device Setting - Network : Ethernet Connection, it says 'Your Wifi signal strength is weak. This TV Box supports Wifi but defaults to an ethernet connection when available'.

If I then disconnect the ethernet cable so that TV#1 also uses Wifi, it will say that the Wifi signal strength is excellent.

The above doesn't make sense. For those of you that have a wired connection between the Xi6/TV maybe you can see what it tells you?

The second TV is also reporting excellent Wifi signal strength. A speedtest shows approx. 450 Mbps at this location.

[AV_Fan]

A small correction for the 1st paragraph...I meant to say that the Xi6 is connected to the modem beside it via ethernet.

Mods - please also move this thread to the Ignite TV section in the forum. I opened it under 'Internet' by mistake.

[-G-]

@AV_Fan  This is normal and there are several plausible explanations for why you might see this.  My guess is that the Ignite STB contacted the LnF service on the Gateway and this was the signal strength reading that got cached for the purposes of displaying the indicator.  There are other ways to obtain a reliable live reading.

[AV_Fan]

Thanks for your reply -G-.

I'm not familiar with what the LnF service does but regardless the Ignite STB is just inches away from the modem so all wireless connections should be excellent.

Based on all observations my suspicion is that it's a software bug. Not a big deal, just inaccurate (in my opinion).

[-G-]

Yeah, it's weird, but I can confirm that I have also seen this many times.

You can always get a proper reading of your Wi-Fi signal strength from the STB's diagnostic info screen:  Press and hold Exit on your Ignite remote for three seconds, key in Down Down 2, then navigate to WiFi Details.

Press Exit to exit this screen.

[AV_Fan]

Thanks for the additional info. -G-.

With the Ethernet cable removed, the diagnostic screen shows -26 under Wifi.

[FrathosCAN]

I recently upgraded a week ago last Friday to the Rogers Xfinity system from a CODA 4582 & NextBox 4K STB and I have the same experience for my ethernet connected XI6 which is also positioned immediately beside my ASUS router:

Xi6's Device Setting - Network : Ethernet Connection, it says 'Your Wifi signal strength is weak. This TV Box supports Wifi but defaults to an ethernet connection when available'.

Today around 1 AM, the STB video froze and attempts to check what was going on using the Xfinity remote failed & only popped up an error message about the network being unavailable (sorry, I don't remember it fully as this message is only displayed briefly before STB returns to displaying a black screen). FWIW, This is a stupid design choice by Rogers (I guess Comcast Xfinity originally) because it prevents me from using the Remote to access the Settings - Help menu to use the Restart or System Refresh options! This forces me to get up & physically power cycle the box or use my tablet or PC to log into My Rogers and issue the Refresh STB command remotely (both are unnecessarily more time consuming).

One of my problems that I have noticed this past week with this first XI6 STB is that despite being plugged in via ethernet, it is occasionally switching back to WiFi 5G. When it is connected via WiFi, the STB reports that the signal level is excellent (it should be given how close it is to the router). The reason I prefer to use a wired ethernet connection due to suspected WiFi interference from my many MDU neighbors that are also using WiFi enabled Rogers systems (my building has a Rogers bulk contract) is that I've noticed a few times now that the STB randomly degrades the video & audio to a lower quality and/or completely fails and only displays a black screen. 

While troubleshooting tonight's annoying STB failure, I noticed in my ASUS GT-AC5300 router interface network client list that the XI6 STB was intermittently showing up for ca 2.6 to 3.1 seconds every ca 55 seconds or so. This behaviour is new today as when I last checked a few days ago, the wired connection was being shown continuously in the client list as long as it was using the ethernet connection (otherwise the WiFi details would be shown while connected via WiFi 5G).

I have received a second XI6 STB for my bedroom that I haven't set up yet (haven't bought another TV for it yet) which I will connect later in the day to test & see if it performs similarly to the first STB or to see if perhaps the first STB is defective & therefore not operating 100% properly.

[RogersCorey]

Good morning @FrathosCAN!

I completely understand why you'd prefer an Ethernet connection in a situation like this. It is strange that your STB is dropping the Ethernet connection. Having it freeze up is certainly not ideal.

Have you tried replacing the Ethernet cable that's connected to the STB as of yet? That would be my first step in a situation where the Ethernet connection itself is dropping.

Please also keep in mind that we do not officially support a bridged mode setup. We cannot guarantee that your STBs will work if you choose to bridge your own router to the gateway. If swapping the Ethernet cable out does not resolve this, my next suggestion would be to remove your router, take the gateway out of bridge mode and try connecting directly to the gateway itself.

If a direct connection to the gateway fixes it, then that would indicate a problem with your router.

~RogersCorey

[-G-]

@FrathosCAN  The behaviour that you report is not at all unexpected.

One other thing.  When you performed the initial setup of your Xfinity Gateway, did you configure the same Wi-Fi network name and passphrase that you have configured on your external router?  I suspect that you did not... and that will cause problems, regardless of whether your set-top boxes are connected by Ethernet or by Wi-Fi.

[-G-]

@FrathosCAN  Just adding to my previous comment...

The Xfinity set-top boxes were designed to connect to an Xfinity Gateway by Wi-Fi, whether directly or through a Pod.  They will still try to connect to Wi-Fi when Ethernet-connected, even though they will not use the Wi-Fi connection for data transmission.

Whenever an Xfinity STB loses network connectivity, it contacts the Xfinity Gateway over a special hidden Wi-Fi SSID (that is active even when the Gateway is in Bridge Mode) to obtain Wi-Fi credentials and will use those credentials to try to connect to Wi-Fi.  If that Wi-Fi network is inactive/non-existent or unstable or the passphrase on an external Wi-Fi AP is different, the STB will constantly try to reconnect and will constantly glitch when streaming TV.

[FrathosCAN]

Replacing the ethernet cable was the first thing I did & current cable is CAT5E rated which is more than sufficient for the paltry 100 Mbps connection that the XI6 connects at.

I have also changed the setup back to NOT bridged and connected the STB directly to the XB7 via ethernet. So far the XI6 STB has continued to use ethernet connection daily however I believe that is simply due to the XB7 not being rebooted on a daily basis like my ASUS router was to prevent memory leaks etc from developing due to prolonged operating up time (this usually manifests as WiFi connection issues after a number of days continuous operation).

[FrathosCAN]

No I didn't as I wasn't aware of that unexpected operating behaviour.

[FrathosCAN]

Thanks for the additional information. It seems odd that it would contact the gateway for WiFi credentials when I had already manually configured it with the WiFi credentials that it needs to use for my router. Sometimes clever solutions to problems that don't exist actually cause problems. 😐

I'll have to take another look at my WiFi scanner as I don't recall seeing any hidden WiFi SSID's being shown amongst my router's 3 SSID's & the many nearby neighbor SSID's.

I'm not a fan of devices with hidden SSID's as it just further increases the number of possibly interfering WiFi sources especially in a dense MDU environment. I also noticed that the XB7 WiFi 5G Channel Bandwidth is set to 20/40/80 and greyed out among other settings similarly blocked from user changes. If I understood WiFi implementation best practices from years back research on the topic, it is not advisable to select wide bandwidth settings in dense MDU environments as that contributes to more cross channel interference which in my building is only going to become worse after everyone switches from CODA 4582U/NextBox to XB7/XI6 systems by this September.

This XI6 still seems somewhat suspect to me as to whether it is working 100% properly. In addition to randomly not reliably using the ethernet port, I noticed this oddity:

Wi-Fi LAN port (2.4 GHz)

System Uptime:49275 days 1h: 30m: 5s

Wi-Fi LAN port (5 GHz)

System Uptime:13 days 11h: 7m: 13s

The 2.4G WiFi uptime time shown since I opened the shrink wrapped box and connected XB7 to power would require over 135 years of operation. That doesn't seem realistic! 😲