Newly installed Pixel 6 Wi-Fi keeps disconnecting

RabidMongoose Just today, I had a new Pixel 8a arrive. I ran Wi-Fi stability tests before flashing GrapheneOS onto it, and had only one wifi drop. I turned off the "Adaptive Connectivity" in the original OS and that solved that issue. However, after flashing GrapheneOS onto this brand new from amazon pixel 8a, the exact same Wi-Fi dropping issue is there.

At this point, I believe it is safe to say that the issue is not my home wireless network, but an issue with the OS not having the option to disable "Adaptive Connectivity."

I used a Pixel 3a running GrapheneOS on my home Wi-Fi network for a year and change, and since then a 6a, same network (two APs in bridge mode). On both Pixel devices, running GrapheneOS, I have experienced zero Wi-Fi disconnections per day, also zero per week, and I think I can say zero per month.

It is not clear that a baseline drop rate of "just" one disconnect in a small number of hours, regardless of Wi-Fi settings, means that the Wi-Fi network environment is fine. I suspect many users of this forum can report zero sudden disconnects on multiple GrapheneOS devices. So, based on reporting so far, it's not obvious what you are observing.

Can you provide detailed information on some test you can run that fairly reliably results in disconnects? Maybe some people here can try on various Wi-Fi networks (home, maybe corporate).

mdapa My phone disconnects from my wifi every 30-90 seconds. I am not having this issue with any other devices on the network and did not have this issue for the week I used my device with the stock OS.

1. Does this happen with your GrapheneOS Pixel 9 on any other Wi-Fi network, or just your home network?
2. Is the situation improved if the "Privacy" setting for your Wi-FI network is set to "Use per-network randomized MAC" and the router is rebooted?

de0u I have the same issue with the Pixel 9 Pro XL, and I can say that for me it's happening with all Wi-Fi networks and the "Use per-network randomized MAC" has not solved it. Nor has a network or factory reset - it drops out seemingly exactly every 60 seconds for me. I will try reverting to stock OS this weekend to see if that has the same problem to rule out a hardware issue.

Gilboboy Interesting. Please do report back.

de0u It has happened on multiple networks and on all of them I have used "per-network randomized MAC".

mdapa Interesting. Which servers are you using for connectivity checking? Settings, Network & internet, Internet connectivity checks. Are you using a VPN?

de0u Ive tried using both graphene os and google servers for connectivity checks. I have not tried with a vpn. I am using adguard dns, though I have tried disabling it and it has not fixed the issue.

I don't know if this is helpful, but all of the networks I have used recently are from my university. So there are a lot of access points in any given area. I don't know if that might be causing the phone to get confused. Though I am not moving between rooms when the issue occurs. I can just be in my own room and it will disconnect and reconnect repeatedly.

I am currently testing my pixel when connected to a hotspot with one access point. I'll report if that seems to fix the issue.

Ok, it's been about 10 minutes and my phone has not disconnected from my hotspot. It seems like using a network with an access point in every room could be the issue.

I have never had problems on any of these networks with any other device or even this pixel 9 when on the stock os, so it still seems like a graphene os problem.

I'm curious if other people experiencing this issue are using similar networks? If this is the problem hopefully it's easily fixable.

The problem I'm experiencing is on every Wi-Fi network I've tested it with. I first noticed it because the wireless Android Auto setup I use would cut out every minute, but every other Wi-Fi network I've tested has been the same.

The only way I noticed was by monitoring the network traffic from a Wi-Fi router to the device and seeing the device fall off the network every minute. If the device has another method for internet (i.e. cellular data) then it shows the 4G/5G symbol, otherwise it continues to show the Wi-Fi symbol as it drops out for such a short time that the Wi-Fi symbol does not disappear.

So far all Wi-Fi networks I've tested have been the same, so it's interesting to hear a hotspot connection works. I wonder if it's something to do with using a 2.4GHz vs 5GHz, perhaps?

Hmm okay I don't think it's 2.4/5 related, as on a 2.4/5/6GHz Wi-Fi I've had 20+ minutes without a dropout.

Interestingly, though, it seems to have dropout constantly when per-network MAC address randomisation is on, rather than off. So I wonder if it's actually a bug in this? Wouldn't explain why Android Auto is dropping out though as it's on by default. I'll investigate further.

mdapa when you connected to your hotspot, was randomised MAC per-connection still enabled?

mdapa I don't know if this is helpful, but all of the networks I have used recently are from my university.

This may well be relevant. Enterprise-quality access points are different from regular access points. For example, they often cooperate behind the scenes (over a wired network) in terms of how specific access points behave toward specific endpoint nodes. For example, if the collective wisdom of the access points is that you should be using #4 instead of #11, but you are signed in to #11, #11 might either drop you or slowly degrade service to you to encourage you to switch.

Meanwhile, some enterprise-quality access points behave differently toward different client devices -- for example, if the AP chipset was made by the same company as the client-node chipset, private protocol extensions may be used.

So it might be interesting to try Wi-Fi networks from a different provider -- maybe a public library. In the U.S., I think the McDonald's chain uses enterprise-grade Wi-Fi gear and allows public access. Also, if you can find out whose equipment your university Wi-Fi uses, that could be interesting too.

Gilboboy It was

de0u I have been trying some methodical experiments. Using analiti to analyze my connection I have connected to both my school's network and my hotspot using every network privacy option.

I tested each option for around 2 minutes. In the app I selected "continuous download traffic throughput & bandwidth" since I've noticed the disconnections mostly occur when my phone is actively using the network.

When connected to my university's network, it made no difference if I had per-connection, per-network, or device MAC. Every 30-60 seconds my phone would disconnect from the wifi then reconnect after a few seconds. This meant over the 2 minutes it always disconnected twice.

When connected to my hotspot (which itself is my old phone that is connected to the university's network) it again made no difference if I had per-connection, per-network, or device MAC. My phone never disconnected from the wifi over the 2 minutes.

analit does give some info on the type of access point. It says that my room's access point is by "Hewlett Packard Enterprise". I don't know if this is consistent across the entire campus but every one that I've seen at least looks the same as this one.

It might be a few days until I can test another provider's network. I'll report the results of that when I do. Let me know if there is anything else I should try in the meantime.

mdapa It might be a few days until I can test another provider's network. I'll report the results of that when I do. Let me know if there is anything else I should try in the meantime.

So far this is a good report. When you issue your "final report", please re-state that you believe you did not encounter these issues with the stock OS.

You might try asking your university's tech-support team if they have had other disconnection reports and/or if they are willing to tell you why your device is being disconnected. Somebody would need to hunt through the AP logs a bit, but there may be interesting information there.

FWIW, I am not aware of "HP Enterprise" being top-ranked among enterprise access points. This randomly-selected web page suggests that HPE bought Aruba, which previously I would have classified as reasonable. Meanwhile, enterprise access points have many options, so it's possible your university has turned on some feature that others don't.

Wi-Fi is complicated.

To add to the above, using the same WiFi network as yesterday, I'm now seemingly not getting dropouts with MAC randomisation set to any of the three settings. I'll update if Android Auto is the same (so far that has consistently dropped out every minute every time I've tried), but it would appear whatever the bug is, it can be inconsistent.

I'm also now going back to wondering if it's frequency related. Most of my testing before was on a joint 2.4/5GHz network, so I would have been on 5GHz. My wireless Android Auto box is also 5GHz-only. So it might be worth disabling 2.4GHz/6GHz on a network and seeing if it has the same issue.

mdapa any chance your university network is 5GHz and your hotspot 2.4GHz?

Gilboboy Please report back if your Android Auto wireless is working. If Iam connected I have no possibility to change the WLAN Settings from Android Auto