Question Why does one Galaxy S5 access the internet through a router but another doesn't?

[eastgadsden]

I have two Samsung Galaxy S5s, one as backup, without a SIM card.

My main S5 consistently works through WiFi on my home LAN system, consisting of two Netgear wireless access points and a Netgear FVS318G router. The system has worked fine for some 12 years.

I also have a collection of various Samsung tablets, beginning with Tab 4s. They all access the internet fine over my LAN system.

Recently I turned on my backup S5 and discovered that the device worked on my LAN system and could access a file server on the it, but none of the apps on it could access the internet. I have three browsers on it, Angel, Chrome, and Samsung Internet and none of them could access google.com. Samsung Internet said "This site can't be reached. Google.com took too long to respond." I have several apps, none of which could read their web sites. Network settings says "connected" and does not show the words "without internet." It also says very strong signal. It worked before. All my other devices access the internet without problem.

I tried up update my contacts and calendar with Samsung Switch. I couldn't because Smart Switch wanted to update itself on the backup S5 and couldn't because it couldn't access the intenet. I was able to copy with ftp a current Smart Switch apk file from a Windows system to the backup S5 but the S5 said signing key mismatch with the apk file.

The date and time and good on the S5 that doesn't work are current.

I have rebooted everything, and the reboots changed nothing.

I have looked at my router manual and discovered nothing about turning access of a device for the internet off. Like wise I found not setting in the phone to turn wifi internet access off.

Does anyone have any idea why one Galaxy S5 works and the other one no longer works?

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! When you say you rebooted everything, does that include the router?

 

[eastgadsden]

I found the problem.

I should have added in the original post that Google Play Store presented a completely blank screen.

I also did not include, because I did not think it mattered, that I have given all of my Android devices static IP address and names. I did this with the router webpage interface at Network configuration, LAN settings, LAN groups. I set them up so I could set up FTP links in ES File Explorer on and for each of my Android devices. I frequently copy files among my devices. Over the years, Samsung has provided a number of tools for transferring files that work with current Samsung devices but not older ones. I discovered that FTP and ES File Explorer reliably and easily move files among old and newer devices, but not if the IP addresses constantly change . The static address for my non working phone was 192.168.0.97.

It finally dawned on me that I should next try the nonworking phone on another wireless network. Doing this would tell me if the problem was in the phone or my LAN. I tried it at my local Panera bread. When I turned it on, I quickly got some notifications of new email messages. The phone had connected to the internet. My browsers and Google Play store worked. This raised the mystery of why would my LAN system not provide internet access to one particular device.

I found some posts that said Netgear routers could limit access by MAC address.

I opened my Netgear router and found the display Security, Address Filter, Source MAC filter tab. The page showed no devices being filtered by MAC address. The page had a second tab, IP MAC Binding. I had no idea what that display showed but opened it. To my amazement, I found in it an exclusion rule for my nonworking phone by device name and MAC address but with the IP address 192.168.0.5, not 192.168.0.97. I went to page 4-35 of the FVS318G manual, v1.1 dated August 2010, and discovered that this router rule said that if this device, defined by its MAC address, had an IP address other than 192.168.0.5, to block transmission from it to the external network. There was my problem. According to the manual, this rule serves to "prevent users from changing their static IP addresses." The address 192.168.0.5 would have been a DHCP assigned address the device had before I set up a static address for it. I deleted this rule, and the phone immediately started working.

I have no idea of how this rule ever got set. It's not something I would've done, knowingly or unknowingly. I also don't understand how the phone worked the last time I used it. Since I last used it, I don't recall ever opening the router webpage. I don't understand it at all.