New behavior as of last slew of updates: my WiFi connection
drops frequently - often after less than a minute after
establishing the connection. Web scrounging reveals that this
is not simply my problem; many report it.

I looked at all the suggested fixes I could find and none
worked until I tried one that suggested disabling IPV6.
V6 is apparently the Win 11 default. I found how to
disable it, restarted, and --so far-- the problem has
gone away.

Has anyone else seen this behavior? If so, how did
you fix it?

Le Mon, 11 Sep 2023 21:24:42 -0400, jason_warren@ieee.org a écrit :

> New behavior as of last slew of updates: my WiFi connection drops
> frequently - often after less than a minute after establishing the
> connection. Web scrounging reveals that this is not simply my problem;
> many report it.
>
> I looked at all the suggested fixes I could find and none worked until I
> tried one that suggested disabling IPV6.
> V6 is apparently the Win 11 default. I found how to disable it,
> restarted, and --so far-- the problem has gone away.
>
> Has anyone else seen this behavior? If so, how did you fix it?

Wired.

Sorry, I couldn't resist the urge. I haven't tested Wi-Fi on my Windows 11
laptop but none of my coworkers using it are having issues.

On 9/11/2023 9:24 PM, jason_warren@ieee.org wrote:
> New behavior as of last slew of updates: my WiFi connection
> drops frequently - often after less than a minute after
> establishing the connection. Web scrounging reveals that this
> is not simply my problem; many report it.
>
> I looked at all the suggested fixes I could find and none
> worked until I tried one that suggested disabling IPV6.
> V6 is apparently the Win 11 default. I found how to
> disable it, restarted, and --so far-- the problem has
> gone away.
>
> Has anyone else seen this behavior? If so, how did
> you fix it?
>

Disabling IPV6 is not entirely without side-effects.
HomeGroup might be affected by that. The two services
that begin with the letter "F", might depend on it too,
but that would take further research.

The physical layer of the protocol, we can think of it
as "just delivering various kinds of packets". In the
same way an Ethernet wire has a wire-speed and happens
to have packetization, rather than a byte stream.
My Ethernet wire, definitely does not care what is
on the wire. The wire between the modem and the router,
carries PPPOA or PPPOE encapsulation, yet I never have
a stitch of trouble with such wires.

The Wifi then, should not be able to "sense" whether the
packets pertain to IPV4 support, or IPB6 support.

IPV6 seems to me, to be a more "chatty" thing. One reason
I removed my IPV4/IPV6 router and replaced it with an
IPV4-only router, was to make the network lights quieter.
That's to make it easier to spot abnormal networking activity.

If bursts of traffic on IPV6, interfered with some sort of
control traffic, perhaps this would trigger some sort of
"recovery procedure" in the networking stack, or perhaps, even in
the Wifi physical layer (send a RESET to the adapter).

For the last several months, I've been seeing the screen blink
in a few scenarios. Implying the graphics subsystem is being
reset or recovered. Some of the hardware there, has watchdog
capability, and a failure to clear the watchdog, initiates
recovery, giving a blink. The behavior and time constant,
does not suggest it's the same problem source, as previous
video recoveries (which happen once in a blue moon and
are not continuous things).

I don't have a "cure" for you, but I'd recommend keeping
an open mind as to what you're actually looking at as a
problem. It could be an interaction between subsystems,
a failure to "tune" something properly. Or, a new "feature"
some idiot added, has gone bonkers.

One other source of trouble to note, is incoming Windows Updates.
These can leave the machine in various states of dis-repair -- until
a reboot. Didn't you report at some point, that you had
a Windows Update that was installing over and over again ?
would there be a relationship between your Wifi outage,
and the fumbling around of the Windows Update under the hood ? :-/
Perhaps Windows Update "half-installed state", is baking your Wifi.

Paul

"jason_warren@ieee.org" <jason_warren@ieee.org> wrote:

> New behavior as of last slew of updates: my WiFi connection
> drops frequently - often after less than a minute after
> establishing the connection. Web scrounging reveals that this
> is not simply my problem; many report it.
>
> I looked at all the suggested fixes I could find and none
> worked until I tried one that suggested disabling IPV6.
> V6 is apparently the Win 11 default. I found how to
> disable it, restarted, and --so far-- the problem has
> gone away.
>
> Has anyone else seen this behavior? If so, how did
> you fix it?

Brand and model of cable modem (with router and wifi)? Some ancient
models don't have IPv6 support which means enabling IPv6 support is
useless in your workstations (intranet hosts). You should review the
IPv6 settings in your cable/dsl modem, whatever wifi AP (access piont)
to which your computer connects. Disabling IPv6 in your intranet hosts
may be masking the real problem is to where you intranet hosts connect
via wifi (i.e., problem could be elsewhere).

https://www.cyberghostvpn.com/en_US/privacyhub/ipv4-vs-ipv6/

Is your workstation/intranet host gettings its IP address from your
cable/dsl modem's DHCP server, from your ISP, or are you using static IP
addresses for your intranet hosts? In a command shell, run "ipconfig".
What is the IPv4 address your host gets? What was its IPv6 address
(which it won't have now you disabled IPv6, so you won't know until you
reenable IPv6)? What is the IP address of the default gateway?

Using a VPN? Some VPNs don't handle IPv6 well, or at all. They may
convert IPv6 to IPv4 traffic. However, there are some sites now that
only do IPv6 since the IPv4 pool got consumed. I've been finding more
site via nslookup that only report an IPv6 address, not IPv4 address.
Only some VPNs support IPv6 without conversion. Those that don't
implement IPv6 leak protection which means they really don't support
IPv6 at all.

Cable or DSL connection? If DSL, check the keep-alive option in the DSL
modem is enabled.

Using 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz band to whatever is the wi-fi access point? Is
the AP the cable/dsl modem, or some wifi other AP, like a wifi switch,
repeater, etc? Tried resetting the modem or AP? Just be aware that
cable/wifi modems that are long-pressed (over 5 seconds) on the reset
button may do a full reset which require re-provisioning the modem to
your ISP service. First do a short press to reset.

Do you have more than one intranet host using the wifi AP? If so, do
they also shortly disconnect from from the wifi AP, and what OS do they
run? Is the problematic host the only one running Windows 11 that
experiences the wifi disconnect?

Are you segmenting your network using routers or switches to use
different IP address ranges in the segments?

On Tue, 12 Sep 2023 08:38:02 -0400, Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:

>On 9/11/2023 9:24 PM, jason_warren@ieee.org wrote:
>> New behavior as of last slew of updates: my WiFi connection
>> drops frequently - often after less than a minute after
>> establishing the connection. Web scrounging reveals that this
>> is not simply my problem; many report it.
>>
>> I looked at all the suggested fixes I could find and none
>> worked until I tried one that suggested disabling IPV6.
>> V6 is apparently the Win 11 default. I found how to
>> disable it, restarted, and --so far-- the problem has
>> gone away.
>>
>> Has anyone else seen this behavior? If so, how did
>> you fix it?
>>
>
>Disabling IPV6 is not entirely without side-effects.

I think, for most people, there would be no noticeable effects from disabling
IPv6. The people who need IPv6 probably know that they need it because they're
intentionally doing something with it. I don't think anyone here is accidentally
using IPv6.

>HomeGroup might be affected by that. The two services

The Homegroup feature was supposed to have gone away in an earlier version of
Win 10, and this being the Win 11 group, I'd guess that no one is using that
feature here. Even when it was available, it seems like very few people used it.
Straight up file sharing works as well or better.

>that begin with the letter "F", might depend on it too,
>but that would take further research.

<snip>

jason_warren@ieee.org <jason_warren@ieee.org> wrote:
> New behavior as of last slew of updates: my WiFi connection
> drops frequently - often after less than a minute after
> establishing the connection. Web scrounging reveals that this
> is not simply my problem; many report it.
>
> I looked at all the suggested fixes I could find and none
> worked until I tried one that suggested disabling IPV6.
> V6 is apparently the Win 11 default. I found how to
> disable it, restarted, and --so far-- the problem has
> gone away.
>
> Has anyone else seen this behavior? If so, how did
> you fix it?

Some questions/hints:

Does the WiFi disconnect completely, or does the icon on the Taskbar
just say 'No internet' (instead of 'Internet access') when you hover
over it?

Has the driver for the WiFi device (under 'Network adapters' in Device
Manager) recently been updated? I.e. compare the 'Driver Version:' on
the 'Driver' tab with the list of drivers under 'Driver Updates' in the
Windows Update 'Update history'.

Is 'MAC Randomization' of the WiFi device Enabled? Right-click the
WiFi device in Device Manager -> 'Advanced' tab -> check the Property
'MAC Randomization'. If Enabled, try if changing it to Disabled helps.

Reason for all this:

End of March, I had a problem with disconnects giving 'No internet'
errors. I 'fixed' it by doing a 'Roll Back Driver' (because Windows
Update had recently (March 24) installed a new driver) and disabling MAC
Randomization [1]. Later, the rolled back driver was replaced by a
*newer* driver (18/04/2023) and the system continues to work. My
conclusion: Bad 'new' (March) driver replaced by a good 'newer' (April)
driver.

Hope this helps.

[1] Disabling MAC Randomization was based on a clue which I got from the
'Wireless ROM Test' part of my 'HP Support Assistant' software.

On Tue, 12 Sep 2023 12:11:06 -0500, VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> wrote:

<big snip>
>
>Are you segmenting your network using routers or switches to use
>different IP address ranges in the segments?

A router will, indeed, allow you to segment your LAN, with each segment then
needing to have non-overlapping IP addressing, but a switch doesn't cause or
provide the same segmentation because the switch operates at OSI layer 2, while
the segmentation and IP addressing happens at layer 3. Switches are invisible to
what happens at layer 3.

In article <MPG.3f6987e3a57a2dcb989687@reader80.eternal-september.org>,
jason_warren@ieee.org says...
>
> New behavior as of last slew of updates: my WiFi connection
> drops frequently - often after less than a minute after
> establishing the connection. Web scrounging reveals that this
> is not simply my problem; many report it.
>
> I looked at all the suggested fixes I could find and none
> worked until I tried one that suggested disabling IPV6.
> V6 is apparently the Win 11 default. I found how to
> disable it, restarted, and --so far-- the problem has
> gone away.
>
> Has anyone else seen this behavior? If so, how did
> you fix it?

Update: All's [apparently] well!

I was in Massachusetts the past two weeks - Comcast land.
The laptop performed perfectly while I was there. That
would seem to exonerate Windows, thus narrowing the search
to my router at home or to something Spectrum had done.

When I returned, the problem reoccurred. A couple days
later, robot email from Spectrum told me that the service
would be offline for a period of time after midnight the
following day and then another email reporting that whatever
they'd done was complete.

Voila! the issue is gone. I re-enabled IPV6, per Paul's
comment, with no further issue. Thanks, everyone.

On Wed, 13 Sep 2023 11:35:38 -0400, Jason wrote:
> Update: All's [apparently] well!
>
> I was in Massachusetts the past two weeks - Comcast land.
> The laptop performed perfectly while I was there. That
> would seem to exonerate Windows, thus narrowing the search
> to my router at home or to something Spectrum had done.
>
> When I returned, the problem reoccurred. A couple days
> later, robot email from Spectrum told me that the service
> would be offline for a period of time after midnight the
> following day and then another email reporting that whatever
> they'd done was complete.
>
> Voila! the issue is gone. I re-enabled IPV6, per Paul's
> comment, with no further issue. Thanks, everyone.

And thanks to _you_, Jason, for posting the followup. It's always
interesting to hear the solutions to these "weird" problems.

--
Stan Brown, Tehachapi, California, USA https://BrownMath.com/
Shikata ga nai...

Char Jackson wrote:

> Paul wrote:
>
>> Disabling IPV6 is not entirely without side-effects.
>
> I think, for most people, there would be no noticeable effects from disabling
> IPv6. The people who need IPv6 probably know that they need it because they're
> intentionally doing something with it. I don't think anyone here is accidentally
> using IPv6.

Prior to 'Quick Assist' the predecessor 'Remote Assistance' required
IPv6 connectivity using teredo tunnels ...

On Thu, 14 Sep 2023 11:56:16 +0100, Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> wrote:

>Char Jackson wrote:
>
>> Paul wrote:
>>
>>> Disabling IPV6 is not entirely without side-effects.
>>
>> I think, for most people, there would be no noticeable effects from disabling
>> IPv6. The people who need IPv6 probably know that they need it because they're
>> intentionally doing something with it. I don't think anyone here is accidentally
>> using IPv6.
>
>Prior to 'Quick Assist' the predecessor 'Remote Assistance' required
>IPv6 connectivity using teredo tunnels ...

Didn't teredo tunnels (and teredo relays & servers) pretty much disappear around
2014-ish? I haven't seen any of that stuff being used in a very long time.

Fair point, though, although I don't think I remember seeing reports of anyone
attempting to use Microsoft's Remote Assistance tool. Typically, when that topic
would come up, people would recommend third party tools, such as Teamviewer,
GotoAssist, or AnyDesk, among others.