The way I usually use cable internet, is to connect another router via ethernet to the cable modem/router, and then connect all my devices to that second router. This way, I could use the provider's router (sometimes the model they provide can't be changed), and at the same time use a better router for my devices.
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Do you have a VPN running on those devices to the same network that you are trying to connect to?
Had something like this using WireGuard once
What have you tried so far?
manually setting my ip usually fixed it, but not this time
That seems to be indicative of dhcp issues, not WiFi issues.
Unless the spotty wifi connection is causing the DHCP issue
Unlikely, since DHCP is a pretty short conversation, and other clients aren't having issues.
client or server side?
Yes.
I'd start by pulling NetworkManager, wpa_supplicant and iwd logs (journalctl -u networkmanager.service --since -2h
and so on). Check dmesg as well.
both don't show anything weird
I'd still paste it, redacting SSID and MAC addresses.
Even if it's just info messages, it'll still give us an idea of what it does or doesn't do.
I saw the other comment thread about using a static IP sometimes fixing it. We should see that DHCP attempt in the logs. Maybe it succeeds, maybe it's like "btw the router handed me option 42 and I don't know how to deal with that", maybe it's using the wrong DHCP client (dhclient vs dhcpd) but clues are clues.
Could also tail the entire system log (journalctl -f
) so you'll see live output of every service. Maybe it connects fine but something else immediately kicks in and breaks it.