Why does my Nexus 7 freeze when changing networks - wifi extender?

[ChrisD43]

Nexus 7 freezes when changing network - wifi extender

I have a wifi extender in one room, and the hub with wifi in another two solid walls away. I have set my wifi extender to have the same ssid as the router one, in the hope that I can get seamless networking around the house. Sadly not, as the Nexus (32GB and plenty free) doesn't automatically transfer to the strongest signal. However, if I shut off wifi, then start it again, I get connected. As the Nexus only sees one SSID, the connection is made to this, and it is to the strongest signal. Just to be clear, when I move rooms the signal strength drops as I move away from the point of connection. If I am in the other room, the signal is still showing low, until I switch wifi off. Then when I switch wifi on, the signal strength is high, as I am close to the new point of connection.
This is OK, not ideal, but OK, until I am in an area in the house in which there is little difference in signal strength, so I must be pretty equidistant from the two points of connection. Then it seems as though the Nexus is fighting between signals, as wifi drops regularly, the Nexus freezes or behaves very slowly and erratically. This started to happen after the 4.3 upgrade, got worse with the 4.4 upgrade and now on 5.0.2 is just as bad.
Can anyone explain what might be the problem, and how I can get over this? The annoying thing is that it isn't happening to my Samsung Galaxy Mini 3, it seems to cope quite OK without conflicts. I know I can set the SSID of the extender to something else, but that defeats the objective of having it seamless. There are various products out there that claim to do this, but since the Nexus doesn't seem to be able to cope, I don't want to waste money without properly understanding what is going on.
Help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[jerrykur]

Re: Nexus 7 freezes when changing network - wifi extender

Having multiple SSIDs is tricky because the which one is strongest changes from moment to moment and position of device relative to antennas. I have largely given up on using the same SSID for any of my long range (2.4 GHz) devices in near proximity. The 5 GHz is attenuated so fast (one wall) that I can use the same SSID from room to room or floor to floor. I have this issue with both the Nexus 7 and my Mac Book Pro. I do not see this issue with my iPad Air 2.

 

[ChrisD43]

Thanks for your reply. If I understand you properly, I should change the ssid of the extender to something else. As the Nexus is pretty poor at changing from one network to another, with any luck it will stay with the one it is connected to when I move rooms to the one in which the current signal strengths are just about equal - as measured from the Wifi Meter app.

Are there no products that do let you have seamless wifi in your house? There will always be cross over areas in any house in which there are two signals (or more), so it can't be totally beyond the realm of technical ingenuity. It has to be dome for large offices, but then I guess the equipment is a lot more sophisticated that we'd use at home, and an awful lot more expensive!

 

[jerrykur]

When you do it in an office your do a wifi site survey and adjust the placement and power of the transceivers to optimize the wireless network. If you have ever seen the IT guys wander the halls with a laptop and a clipboard that is likely what they are doing. You can do something similar at home with Wifi Monitor or a similar app that shows signal strength. You want to make sure that everywhere in your house it is obvious which access point is the strongest. That is how I determined that two of my access points were too close producing areas where devices would see multiple Access Points at the nearly the same strength and possible start hoping from one to the other. Unfortunately I could not move them because of structural issues (i.e. I did not want to drill another hole in the ceiling and run more cable). So my compromise fix was to have separate SSIDs.