[proussak]

On behalf of my wife, who can't seem to get a straight answer from TMO: her Curve can locate and log on to my home's wi-fi but doesn't seem able to stay logged on to UMTS in the house - she says calls are constantly being dropped if she tries it, so she sticks to the cell signal instead.

TMO says we need to use their router for the wi-fi signal or change the channel on my current wi-fi router, a Buffalo Tech. But they can't give her any more specific answer as to what channel it should change to. And since I have a bridge tied into the router, I don't want to switch routers unless I really have to - or when I upgrade to a "n" router - at which point would there be any interference with TMO's "g" router signal?

Thanks for any help you can provide.

[Sith_Apprentice]

there is no UMTS, are you referring to UMA? UMA has some issues, and it depends on the router, bluetooth, signal in the area, etc. N isnt actively supported by the BlackBerry at this time so that will also cause problems.

[Dinan3]

I have the same problems with my router as well. I use a verizon dsl modem/router and although I am connected 90 percent of the time, i get dropped calls. I have no problems with other wifi networks though, just mine.

[proussak]

Originally Posted by Sith_Apprentice

there is no UMTS, are you referring to UMA? UMA has some issues, and it depends on the router, bluetooth, signal in the area, etc. N isnt actively supported by the BlackBerry at this time so that will also cause problems.

Sorry, meant UMA, confused my acronyms.

But specifically the question centered on whether anyone knew what adjustments I could make to my Buffalo router to make UMA more reliable.

(I understand that the BB won't recognize an N signal, but N routers are backwards compatible so a g-based BB would find a g-signal to log on to, no?)

[Dinan3]

Originally Posted by proussak

Sorry, meant UMA, confused my acronyms.

But specifically the question centered on whether anyone knew what adjustments I could make to my Buffalo router to make UMA more reliable.

(I understand that the BB won't recognize an N signal, but N routers are backwards compatible so a g-based BB would find a g-signal to log on to, no?)

are there any upgrade firmware available for your router? t-mobile's router will definately work, but its not absolutely necessary.

[proussak]

No, it's an old and discontinued model but works well enough for me . I'll probably upgrade to an N model soon enough and at that point I'll see if UMA works any better on my wife's Curve.

[Sith_Apprentice]

*edit title to not give false hope of a 3G 8320*

[Tank2379]

Well you can try one or 2 things.... 1. you can Delete your Wi-Fi Preferences after that pull the battery 2. Reset your router Power Cycle it that should work. Hopefully. You would have to re enter in you WEP key...

Good Luck...

[fencepost]

The T-Mobile router may help, if only in keeping battery life reasonable. It (and some other newer wireless routers from various manufacturers) supports some Wireless Multimedia extensions that let the phone drop to a lower power mode.

As far as staying on UMA, a couple of things:

• Changing wireless channels will help if there are many routers using the same channel - you can check this from the Blackberry by going into Manage Connections/Wi-Fi Options/(Menu)/Wi-Fi Diagnostics/(Menu)/Site Survey to get a list of wireless networks that the BB is seeing. You should only use channels 1, 6, 11 - in between they overlap onto those channels anyway.
• If your Internet connection is saturated or even under heavy use, expect UMA to suffer or be unusable. That means downloads, torrents (particularly), etc. because the phone doesn't have all the bandwidth whenever it wants it. Torrents are more of an issue because most home connections have much lower upload capacity, so you may be saturating the outbound connection. Even email with large attachments can be an issue, because very few home routers do Quality Of Service (QoS) to prioritize the UMA packets. Remember that UMA is not affected just by the quality of your phone's connection to your wireless network - it's affected by the quality of your phone's connection all the way to the T-Mobile servers over the Internet.
• Try a laptop where she's using the phone. What's the signal strength and quality? The phone may not be as good at handling marginal signals. If you're on 802.11b, replace the router in any case - marginal signals there go from 11Mbit to 5.5Mbit, not in smaller drops.
• Do you have cordless phones in the 2.4GHz range? Have you checked the manual for the phone to see what precise frequency range it uses? There's a 90+% chance that it overlaps at least part of the channel/frequency range used for WiFi, so if you have one you should pick a channel outside the phone's frequency range (even if that means picking a channel with more routers on it). You may also see performance drop when close to either a handset or the base station.

[monkeypaw]

Originally Posted by proussak

No, it's an old and discontinued model but works well enough for me . I'll probably upgrade to an N model soon enough and at that point I'll see if UMA works any better on my wife's Curve.

Unless things have changed, N routers seem to give problems also. Sticking to a g model is the least risky. The less fancy the better. Plain Linksys or Dlink.

Find one you can load DD-WRT onto to allow the most ability to customize the settings. Supported Devices - DD-WRT Wiki

The Tmobile linksys router is one that can be upgraded if needed. But should work ok just as it is.

[sharpie00]

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry 8100)

I have a buffalo 54g wireless router and have no complaints. It works flawlessly. I didn't do anything special at all to my settings. I wonder if your bridge is causing the issue?

[John Clark]

The TMo Linksys router is not easy to upgrade to dd-wrt. I don't recommend it for just anyone. The WRT54GS is a good Linksys router that can be picked up just about anywhere and works great with UMA out of the box.

[michin1]

I had so many problems with UMa until I bought the router from TMobile. Have no idea why that router works better than the billions of other routers I have lying around but works great, no issues

[proussak]

Thanks for the input from all.

To sharpie: it may be the bridge but due to the layout of the house and my home office location, it's the bridge that provides most of the coverage. I'll ask her to make some calls logged into the base station and see what happens then.

To michin1: That's probably the solution then (would it be too cynical to think that TMO has some tweak in the phone that makes it difficult to work with other routers but OK with its own so that you sign up for the extra service level?). I'll just have to see what happens when I upgrade the house to an n router, see if they play well together.

[raygnlz]

I had the same problem. I backed up my apps, downloaded the most recent OS from TMO at Unsupported Browser then I reloaded my BB messenger that i had originally had. I am running a Verizon router. TMO is trying to get you to use their router. As soon as i downloaded the newest OS version, the dropped calls went away.