WiFi not connecting - general

[Plugsuvohio]

In addition to my Homelink/Genie/Tesla difficulties when I brought the baby home I could not get the WiFi setup to work. I've got loads of experience with this networking stuff and finding other people's difficulties but have not yet solved my own. I have searched the forums and tried some ideas offered by others having related problems. I called Tesla and went through the steps they asked me to do while I spoke to them live and they could monitor some of the system's response during all this. Their comment was that signal strength was in the required range and would have forward this to engineering for more help. Have not heard back yet, but its been over the weekend.

Symptoms:
Tesla's display shows all the network SSID'S I expected both 2.4 and 5ghz.

The display shows only a single curved bar line over all of them whether they were in my house, inside the garage with the AP itself, or my neighbors AP units. But my iphone, inside the car, had no difficulty connecting with any of my SSID's with my AP located even at its farthest location from the MX.

If I set up the iPhone as a hotspot, the MX could immediately connect with that and data flows; using both systems are their default settings. The signal graphic for an instant on the Tesla showed all bars as this set up, but then only shows the 1 bar I see on the other systems too.

I tried this with (2) different manufactured wireless routers, Amped WIreless and my business class Draytek. All can do A, C, N, B etc. No joy,

I tried setting my routers to require no passcode or key; WPA versions and also WEP.

We did full reset of the Tesla (hold down both steering wheel buttons). We "forgot" the SSID in Tesla's list and tried both manual and another automatic setup.

Anyone who has run into this and resolved it ? Sure would be appreciated help.

 

[chillaban]

I've done some range vs RSSI testing of the Tesla wifi antenna, and it is quite frankly abysmal — I've seen some barcode scanners and ebook readers with better wifi antennas.

You are seeing fairly expected behavior that Teslas will struggle more than a laptop, good smartphone, etc at picking up a weaker wifi signal…. It's unfortunate but not unheard of.

Note that in general though, it's not surprising to find devices that are worse than iPhones at picking up wifi signals.

 

[Plugsuvohio]

I've continued to play with this because I'm a glutton for IT punishment. I have found that a different router/AP located in the identical position as my main one will connect with the Tesla system. I think I have also seen that my original system does connect if i take I remove all encryption (which has been versions of WPA and PSK. I'm taking an access point with me to the service center on Tuesday to see if they can figure this out and get it working.

 

[Plugsuvohio]

Well at this point Tesla people are stumped and I've escalating the trouble with my router manufacturer (Draytek). I have learned that the present Tesla WiFi does not work with anything other than 802,11 g or n. And it is recommended that you enable security with WPA/PSK not other variations of that method. The service center had no trouble getting my Model X connecting at their site indoors or outdoors. Unfortunately nobody there knows their wifi system nor has access to manage it. So they could not verify any particular setting they are using (that work) nor their router manufacturer or model. I'm still working on this, it is annoying to run a 2nd wifi router, just to connect my Tesla. My home wifi has never failed to connect to any other device or visitor's device before; and I can connect my phone or laptop, while sitting INSIDE the car to the same router and SSID seen by the Tesla where it will not connect.

 

[trmmcd]

From your description it sounds like you are connecting but with poor signal reception. I had the same issue - did lots of detective work - but gave up. I added a wired AP near the car and I now get a strong signal. While this is not the most elegant solution - it seems to work very reliably now.

 

[chillaban]

It is definitely related to sensitivity. I can wrap my phone with tinfoil and it still can connect to an AP better than my phone.

And I've got a full blown Ruckus Wireless enterprise class deployment at my place with full AP packet logging. You need an AP much closer to your Tesla compared to even crappy thermostats and eBook readers. For whatever reason, wifi antenna performance was not a priority for Tesla.

 

[K-MTG]

My Wi-Fi is a hit and miss even though the access point is in the garage, it always connects and I can browse the web and access maps on the car, etc.... However, the App loads sometimes on Wi-Fi and doesn't on other times.

 

[markn455]

My MS had been connecting flawlessly for months. I started having problems after the SC replaced my driver side mirror and the 2.34.100 firmware was installed (both happened at the SC on the same day). When I saw that I was having problems connecting, I "forgot" the connection and tried to authenticate again. No luck. I tired changing from WPA2-PSK to WPA-PSK nothing seemed to work. I put everything back like it was and called Tesla. They said they needed to do some research and call me back. I guessed it was a signal strength issue ( just my gut) so I decide to set my phone up as a hotspot and give it the same ESSID and WPA2-PSK as my home WiFi. The Tesla connected to my phone almost immediately and saved the connection. Then I shut the phone off and went and checked the logs on my WiFi in the house and the car was once again connecting to the home WiFi. However, I can still go a couple of days here and there without it connecting. There is an access point within 30' of the car so I don't think I am having signal problems. In fact I am running three Ubiquiti UAP-PROs. Two are in the main residence and one is our guest house which is about 300 feet away. The crazy thing is before the mirror & 2.34.100 update the MS would often connect to the AP in the guest house which is farther away than either of the two in the main house.

I will continue trying different things and post if I figure out what is happening here. In any case, my workaround was making my phone a hotspot and giving it the same ESSID and PSK which made it connect and save the connection. Then I turned the phone hotspot off and the car connected to the home WIFI.

 

[Plugsuvohio]

WiFi problem solved! While I had both Tesla technical and my router company Draytek working on this wierd thing, sent logs and took it in for service; I found a clue yesterday somewhere in these forums I had not seen previously. For reasons I do not know, and ought not to work this way, you MUST NOT use an IP in your network in the 192.168.20.XXX range. As soon as I switched my router gateway and DHCP settings, bingo instant connection and data flows. I simply switched to 192.168.21.XXX

Once connected I tested both http, https and ping none of which are answered by the Tesla computer interface in the car. This TCP/IP issue explains why I could set up my iPhone as a hotspot and connect; pick up my neighbor's system 50+ yards or more away and connect; hook up an old cheapo wifi router I had, put in the same location within my home as my current business class unit and connect fine there too. My router's syslog showed the tesla's mac # connecting, being assigned an IP from my router, then immediately disconnecting.

I'm hoping Tesla IP tech people and engineers read the forums, or have robots on key words to notice this posting. There is no good reason the Tesla interface should not accept DHCP assignments by any router to which its radio can connect. Just saying. I spent several weeks on this since I got my MX and took it home to my own garage.

 

[K-MTG]

WiFi problem solved! While I had both Tesla technical and my router company Draytek working on this wierd thing, sent logs and took it in for service; I found a clue yesterday somewhere in these forums I had not seen previously. For reasons I do not know, and ought not to work this way, you MUST NOT use an IP in your network in the 192.168.20.XXX range. As soon as I switched my router gateway and DHCP settings, bingo instant connection and data flows. I simply switched to 192.168.21.XXX

Once connected I tested both http, https and ping none of which are answered by the Tesla computer interface in the car. This TCP/IP issue explains why I could set up my iPhone as a hotspot and connect; pick up my neighbor's system 50+ yards or more away and connect; hook up an old cheapo wifi router I had, put in the same location within my home as my current business class unit and connect fine there too. My router's syslog showed the tesla's mac # connecting, being assigned an IP from my router, then immediately disconnecting.

I'm hoping Tesla IP tech people and engineers read the forums, or have robots on key words to notice this posting. There is no good reason the Tesla interface should not accept DHCP assignments by any router to which its radio can connect. Just saying. I spent several weeks on this since I got my MX and took it home to my own garage.

My Wifi always connect but the app functionality is intermitten when the car is on wifi. Maps, web, and music don't have any issues with it and I tried everything to troubleshoot

 

[chillaban]

WiFi problem solved! While I had both Tesla technical and my router company Draytek working on this wierd thing, sent logs and took it in for service; I found a clue yesterday somewhere in these forums I had not seen previously. For reasons I do not know, and ought not to work this way, you MUST NOT use an IP in your network in the 192.168.20.XXX range. As soon as I switched my router gateway and DHCP settings, bingo instant connection and data flows. I simply switched to 192.168.21.XXX

Once connected I tested both http, https and ping none of which are answered by the Tesla computer interface in the car. This TCP/IP issue explains why I could set up my iPhone as a hotspot and connect; pick up my neighbor's system 50+ yards or more away and connect; hook up an old cheapo wifi router I had, put in the same location within my home as my current business class unit and connect fine there too. My router's syslog showed the tesla's mac # connecting, being assigned an IP from my router, then immediately disconnecting.

I'm hoping Tesla IP tech people and engineers read the forums, or have robots on key words to notice this posting. There is no good reason the Tesla interface should not accept DHCP assignments by any router to which its radio can connect. Just saying. I spent several weeks on this since I got my MX and took it home to my own garage.

OMG wow. I wonder if this is because Tesla's OpenVPN system uses IP's in the same 192.168.20.x range….

 

[vandacca]

WiFi problem solved! While I had both Tesla technical and my router company Draytek working on this wierd thing, sent logs and took it in for service; I found a clue yesterday somewhere in these forums I had not seen previously. For reasons I do not know, and ought not to work this way, you MUST NOT use an IP in your network in the 192.168.20.XXX range. As soon as I switched my router gateway and DHCP settings, bingo instant connection and data flows. I simply switched to 192.168.21.XXX

Once connected I tested both http, https and ping none of which are answered by the Tesla computer interface in the car. This TCP/IP issue explains why I could set up my iPhone as a hotspot and connect; pick up my neighbor's system 50+ yards or more away and connect; hook up an old cheapo wifi router I had, put in the same location within my home as my current business class unit and connect fine there too. My router's syslog showed the tesla's mac # connecting, being assigned an IP from my router, then immediately disconnecting.

I'm hoping Tesla IP tech people and engineers read the forums, or have robots on key words to notice this posting. There is no good reason the Tesla interface should not accept DHCP assignments by any router to which its radio can connect. Just saying. I spent several weeks on this since I got my MX and took it home to my own garage.

I thought I read somewhere in this forum that 192.168.20.xxx was the DHCP range reserved at all Service Stations. I don't know why they chose this range, but I suspect that every vehicle expects to get provided special features from Tesla when connecting in this range. If it realizes it's not a Tesla-provided IP, then it will disconnect.

 

[Joer293]

I stumbled on that back in 2013, I figured they would have fixed it by now. My car also supports B & G 2.4ghz only.
I switched from 192.x.x.x to 10.0.1.x to fix my apple routers' issue with Tesla.

If you can disable 802.11B on your home network, And eliminate any devices from using B, your whole network will speed up, and slightly improve usable range for anything on G and N. Having just one 802.11B only device on your network can slow things down. I had a smart TV, that I never used with B enabled. Unplugged that dongle, and magic happened.

 

[sc123]

New Model X here, 2 days old. Having similar WiFi issues - originally I was thinking low signal levels (only had 1 bar). Then I moved one of my access points closer, now the car shows high WiFi signal strength (N-1 bars). Music works, internet browser works, but the app will not connect to the car when the car is on my WiFi network.

I'm using Ubiquiti UniFi AP-PRO access points, and the Tesla is on my standard internal 192.168.186.0/24 subnet. Are there issues with other subnets than the 192.168.20.0/24 subnet mentioned above? Next step may be to try and create a new SSID/subnet for the car ... seems like I shouldn't have to do that ..... anything else I should try here?

When on LTE outside the house it's been fine. When on LTE in the garage it seems to also have some connection issues, possibly just slower, though I also believe that it's failed to connect a few times. LTE shows 1-bar in the garage, so maybe that's just poor signal?

Thanks in advance....

 

[FlatSix911]

I stumbled on that back in 2013, I figured they would have fixed it by now. My car also supports B & G 2.4ghz only.
I switched from 192.x.x.x to 10.0.1.x to fix my apple routers' issue with Tesla.

If you can disable 802.11B on your home network, And eliminate any devices from using B, your whole network will speed up, and slightly improve usable range for anything on G and N. Having just one 802.11B only device on your network can slow things down. I had a smart TV, that I never used with B enabled. Unplugged that dongle, and magic happened.

Interesting ... how do you determine if any devices are using B on the network?

 

[Joer293]

Interesting ... how do you determine if any devices are using B on the network?

Different methods for different routers. Apple routers have the airport utility for iOS and OS X. Open the app, click the router, click "wireless clients", then select each one, and click "connection". Under the label 'mode', you will see the devices modes b, g,a, n or ac. If it shows b only, and no other letters, you know. With hawking access points, they have a web interface. "Wireless" -> 'associated clients' you have to sort of guess here. If the connection is 11mb or less and rssi signal is good, the device might be a B, or it could just be sleeping. So wake the device up and do something with it, to see if it bumps up to a higher rate than 11mb.

The hard way is to look each devices model specs up on google. Or if you have a router that allows you to disable B, you can just see what stops working. Older apple airports allowed this, newer ones are "dummy proof" and do not allow it.

 

[Joer293]

New Model X here, 2 days old. Having similar WiFi issues - originally I was thinking low signal levels (only had 1 bar). Then I moved one of my access points closer, now the car shows high WiFi signal strength (N-1 bars). Music works, internet browser works, but the app will not connect to the car when the car is on my WiFi network.

I'm using Ubiquiti UniFi AP-PRO access points, and the Tesla is on my standard internal 192.168.186.0/24 subnet. Are there issues with other subnets than the 192.168.20.0/24 subnet mentioned above? Next step may be to try and create a new SSID/subnet for the car ... seems like I shouldn't have to do that ..... anything else I should try here?

When on LTE outside the house it's been fine. When on LTE in the garage it seems to also have some connection issues, possibly just slower, though I also believe that it's failed to connect a few times. LTE shows 1-bar in the garage, so maybe that's just poor signal?

Thanks in advance....

If your music, nav and browser work, it's probably not a subnet issue. Although you could try the standard 192.168.0.x range. Most likely you don't have the security option for mobile access enabled, or it didn't take effect. If you haven't tried it, reboot the screens with the steering wheel press. The reboot reinitailizes the wifi and LTE modules, reading your settings again. If that doesn't work, you could have a firewall or NAT rule preventing OpenVPN from connecting to Tesla corporate. You may already know this, but the app does not connect directly to the vehicle. The vehicle connects back to a server at Tesla, and your phone connects back to that server as well. So if the Internet is down it won't work.

In some cases, Tesla may not have fully processed your vehicle being added to your account. Even though it appears to be there. Email your service center to look at the logs. They can verify if it's talking to the server the right way, or fix it if need be.

 

[K-MTG]

If your music, nav and browser work, it's probably not a subnet issue. Although you could try the standard 192.168.0.x range. Most likely you don't have the security option for mobile access enabled, or it didn't take effect. If you haven't tried it, reboot the screens with the steering wheel press. The reboot reinitailizes the wifi and LTE modules, reading your settings again. If that doesn't work, you could have a firewall or NAT rule preventing OpenVPN from connecting to Tesla corporate. You may already know this, but the app does not connect directly to the vehicle. The vehicle connects back to a server at Tesla, and your phone connects back to that server as well. So if the Internet is down it won't work.

In some cases, Tesla may not have fully processed your vehicle being added to your account. Even though it appears to be there. Email your service center to look at the logs. They can verify if it's talking to the server the right way, or fix it if need be.

I have the same issue but sometimes the Tesla App works on wifi, other times it doesn't

 

[tokuro]

I got my WiFi to work, finally, only if I enable "gf-brcm" mode on 2.4G band on AP.

 

[chillaban]

I got my WiFi to work, finally, only if I enable "gf-brcm" mode on 2.4G band on AP.

What was it on before?

Seems unusual since Teslas don't use Broadcom wifi chipsets and probably wouldn't be subjected to the bug that requires this specific Greenfield preamble.