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ADL WiFi Issues

I remember seeing someone complaining that their ADL wasn’t connecting properly and all they saw was “WiFi Waiting” or “WiFi Connecting”.

I had exactly this issue flying to Friedrichshafen, so I took the box to Sebastian to ask him what the problem was.

He referred me to this document.

The bottom line is that the problem lies in other apps trying to access the Internet through the ADL. So, for example, the Mail app may be continuously trying to access mail, and hitting the WiFi time and again, flooding it and preventing the ADL app from getting a working connection.

The answer is two-fold:

  1. Close as many other apps as possible. It seems OK to keep SD and Jepp FD open, and I assume the same is true for GP, FF etc
  2. Change the setup of the WiFi connection, by giving it a fixed IP, say 192.168.1.99, and by removing any reference to a router.

This is probably belt and braces (you can probably do 1 or 2) but doing both has certainly done the trick for me.

EGKB Biggin Hill

A search with a term like
ADL* AND WI* AND IP
digs out previous threads on this.

A wifi client cannot tell if the wifi provided by the ADL is a real internet connection or not.

On win10 you can mark a wifi connection as “metered” and that should stop huge updates getting downloaded through it; this is hugely desirable if using a phone as a hotspot for a laptop. But it isn’t going to solve anything here.

I don’t think you can set a fixed IP on android; I recall trying that.

Closing all other apps is the best way. All those which involve internet access are useless anyway if the ADL is running, unless you use the new ADL which has a SIM card and can use 3G/4G if available (which sometimes works intermittently when flying).

On the wider topic, I find it amazing that in this day and age we have devices trying to blindly connect to any connection they find, without checking if it has real connectivity to the internet. On occassions this issue has been tackled; for example Nokia would try connecting to some nokia.com URL and if not successful it would not use the connection. I believe Apple had a similar system at one point. But I think these are not used now. The vast majority of public wifi around today provides no connectivity unless you go through a login process, but unless the device does some kind of URL check, it will never know.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Timothy wrote:

Change the setup of the WiFi connection, by giving it a fixed IP, say 192.168.1.99, and by removing any reference to a router.

I would say the ADL is at least partly to blame here as it includes a gateway address in its DHCP response.

If it didn’t do this, then nothing would try to use it as an internet connection.

I am told the hardware is not capable of this. You can get around it by setting a fixed IP but this is possible only on IOS. not android.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

stevelup wrote:

I would say the ADL is at least partly to blame here as it includes a gateway address in its DHCP response.

If it didn’t do this, then nothing would try to use it as an internet connection.

I rather agree.

Peter wrote:

I am told the hardware is not capable of this.

Hu? That’s weird. It should be purely a software issue/setting. Maybe the box using some firmware that just can’t be configured to not give a gateway address.

You can get around it by setting a fixed IP but this is possible only on IOS. not android.

On Android, long press a WiFi connection you are connected to, press “modify network”, in “IP settings” change “DHCP” to “Static”, and enter the information you want.

ELLX

Yes you are quite right. But I would have found that right away. So I must be incorrectly remembering the issue. I am getting old Maybe @Sebastian_G will know.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

So, how do I avoid “WiFi waiting” on my iPad? Had to restart my box a couple times yesterday as the software would only switch between “connecting”/“waiting” mode after a while. I had all other apps closed

Usually, I disable Wifi to launch the app and turn it on after.
It works very well with Jepp FD VFR which always try to check subscription and new data when connected to a wifi network.

The other tip was in my OP:

Change the setup of the WiFi connection, by giving it a fixed IP, say 192.168.1.99, and by removing any reference to a router.
EGKB Biggin Hill

It’s probably not that simple to fully adress in SW, in particular for the ADL200 where letting data trafic trough when on 4G does not cost much anything.

Peter wrote:

I believe Apple had a similar system at one point. But I think these are not used now.
I would say it’s still there, that’s how the “login” pages are brought up when you need one (at the hotel, airport etc…), if you’re fast enough you can see the apple adress displayed shortly.
ESMK, Sweden
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