Sounds more like interference on the local Wifi channel then if it is struggling to connect to Wifi rather than failing to get external internet routing after connecting to the local network.
What does ipconfig or winipconfig say about the connection? Has it been allocated a sensible IP address in your subnet? (or a silly windows default of no use whatsoever)
Dave Liquorice expressed precisely :
It connects via wired LAN almost instantly, just a few seconds.
There are dozens of AP's around me, its a matter of finding which channel has fewest on it.
I'm pretty sure that it is not a congestion issue, otherwise I would have constant issues. Once working it seems to work fine.
It would be too much of a coincidence, for it to only suffer interference when I tried swapping AP's, yet not be a problem once I have managed to successfully connect.
Most of my items use DHCP for IP allocation and they always (eventually) connect within the range of IP's I set up for DHCP on #1 router.
Harry Bloomfield pretended :
Just to expand on that and it maybe means nothing, but....
I have just tried using a wired connection from my laptop to #2. It connected instantly with WAN access. Disconnecting it, it had managed to retain its wifi connection to #2 and just carried on.
Could there be some sort of packet filtering in the second router between WiFi and ethernet sections, for instance preventing broadcast DHCP packets passing, which should be switched off when DHCP is enabled but isn't being?
It happens that Roger Hayter formulated :
None that I could find in the settings.
OK, points even harder at a WiFi problem.
that may or may not be a correct thing to do. As described:
doesn't
Still worth a play with channels. Try swapping the channels used by the two APs, #1 get #2's channel #2 gets #1's channel. Does the problem move to #1? Not conclusive as it could be something very local to #2 that is giving it a headache. Maybe a neighbours video sender or neighbours AP just a foot or two away through a party wall. Your video sender?
Dave Liquorice presented the following explanation :
I have tried many times playing about with the channels and in this case the items needing to connect are extremely close together, some of them just inches from the AP and still struggling to get fully connected.
I am presently changing my IP's from my personally allocated in the
44.???.???.??? range, to the 10.???.???.??? to see if it might be that causing it - just changing the 44 to a 10. It seems to have (maybe) speeded up the reconnection to #2, but it still takes several minutes to establish a full connection with WAN access. Swapping to #1 takes just a second or two, despite access not being that good due to distance and floors in the way.
(I meant DHCP disabled, but you knew that.) You could run wireshark (or tcpdump, but wireshark is prettier) on the wifi connection and see if you're getting the relevant DHCP offers and requests promptly. Compare with an ethernet connection if necessary. You might even see some spurious packets from the router which is supposed to be disabled as a router. I've never done it, but isn't there some open source firmware you can put on some of these routers?
You can be too close... depending on the quality of the radios a really close, aka strong, signal could overload the front end and the introduced distortions messes things up. Gets even messier if there is more than one close source.
A little more I have discovered on the issue....
I have just tried disconnecting from #2, connecting to #1 (instant|), then back to #2 - which took a good while...
Whilst it was failing to connect, I tried ipconfig /release, then renew. Here is what I saw...
The final line suggests it cannot contact the DHCP server, on router #1.
A few days ago I tried setting it so both routers could respond to DHCP requests, but each using different IP ranges - that didn't help..
C:\Users\Harry>ipconfig /renew
Windows IP Configuration
No operation can be performed on Ethernet while it has its media disconnected. No operation can be performed on Local Area Connection* 3 while it has its media disconnected. No operation can be performed on Local Area Connection* 5 while it has its media disconnected. An error occurred while renewing interface Wi-Fi : unable to contact your DHCP server. Request has timed out.
This all tends to confirm that some part of the firmware on router #2 is blocking DCHP packets from reaching the WiFi connection. Is it possible to get any kind of shell connection to the router, telnet or ssh? If so, try iptables -L and if that shows anything try iptables -F to get rid of it all. It's easier than trying to work out what it does, and it doesn't matter if you're not using the WAN connection.
Roger Hayter submitted this idea :
Thanks, I know I can do that on router #1, but I'll look into a way to get into #2..
Well we sort of know that already, otherwise there wouldn't be a problem... B-)
Why stuff can't contact the #1 DHCP server from #2 (WiFi AND ethernet IIRC) is what we want the answer to. I'd dig through all the settings and tables etc and if I didn't find anything do a factory reset. Maybe its simply thrown a wobbly...
Probably for the same reason my DHCP server insn't in Enfield, but right here in my office.
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