Keeping 4g active when connected to wifi with no internet

[jcummins]

I did away with my home internet. Cost and wayyy under performance. Not many options in rural southern Illinois. At the same time changed my Verizon to unlimited...that is now my internet.

Generally it's worked better (cheaper too), but it has some limitations that I don't like. As the name of the thread implies, if I connect my phone to my home network, my phone cuts the 4G signal and looks to the wifi for the internet.

Anyone know if/how I can change that.

 

[k0ua]

I did away with my home internet. Cost and wayyy under performance. Not many options in rural southern Illinois. At the same time changed my Verizon to unlimited...that is now my internet.

Generally it's worked better (cheaper too), but it has some limitations that I don't like. As the name of the thread implies, if I connect my phone to my home network, my phone cuts the 4G signal and looks to the wifi for the internet.

Anyone know if/how I can change that.

Sure just shut off the wifi access on your phone, and you can either turn it back on when you leave your house if you want to connect to other wifi's out in the world or not. In android it is just a simple "slide switch" under settings, wifi. You can also tell it to "forget" this wifi signal.

Another question, is why on your router are you still broadcasting an SSID if you don't want to connect to it? Or do you want other devices to still connect for networking purposes? While you are at it turn off automatic connection to WiFi and you can be prompted to connect or not. But that may be more bother than you want.

 

[jcummins]

I didn't explain well enough. I want to be connected to my home network, but at the same time keep my 4G active. I normally don't connect to my wifi any more. One purpose is for printing.

 

[jcummins]

And I have turned off auto connect.

 

[jcummins]

I killed the config in the router for internet access, so there is no path to it. I thought doing that...it would use 4G...but it's not that smart.

 

[k0ua]

I didn't explain well enough. I want to be connected to my home network, but at the same time keep my 4G active. I normally don't connect to my wifi any more. One purpose is for printing.

OK, let me get this straight, You wish to still connect to your WIFI so you can print to network printers or retrieve or store files on networked "servers", BUT you dont want your phone to attempt to send out internet traffic thru your WIFI connection, because there is NO actual internet connection on the WAN port of your router and you want your internet traffic to go out your normal 4g radio connection. Does that sound about right?

How about this. You will need to go into your router and in your DHCP setup, you need to get rid of the default gateway and DNS address so the phone will not have a default gateway and try to shove out port 80 traffic over the wireless router.

 

[jcummins]

You got it right. And basically that's what I did in the router.

Now with services such as Verizon's unlimited, I think a design trait in the phones won't enable what I want to do.

 

[k0ua]

Well, I guess I am out of ideas...

 

[EarPlug]

If you are using your phone as a "hotspot" then the phone becomes the wifi router. The wifi on your network router cannot connect to the hotspot.

 

[jcummins]

No not using phone as a hotspot.

I found under developer options on the phone an option to keep mobile data on AT all times, even if Wi-Fi is on. It sounds like what I want....but it appears it simply does not work. Grrrr.

 

[rustydollar]

Research network pings to understand why this will not work for ya out of the box.

if your able to find an app to install that will send out network pings I would install it on one of the other pc's nearby that is using the smart phone as a hot spot. This way your creating third party traffice through the phones network, it has to do with MAC address's and cpu serial numbers.

One computer with keep alive should do the trick also the short read better explains what I'm failing to communicate.

How To: Change the operating system's 'keepalive' settings

 

[k0ua]

Well, as you know everything about a smartphone is geared to what the rest of the world wants to do, and that is to minimize mobile data usage. Always wants to send data over wifi instead of mobile data. The only thing I can think to do is turn off your wifi connection on the phone when you have web traffic, and then turn it back on when you need to connect to something on your network. Not a very elegant solution is it...

 

[norman311]

Use a wireless AP in client mode to connect to phone hotspot, or a wireless travel router with client mode. Plug the wired connection on of your AP or travel router into wan port on your home router. Home router will grab dhcp from hotspot. Client mode just acts as a bridge. Keep phone on 4g and everything else communicates thru the router.

 

[k0ua]

Install the keep alive WiFi app on your smart phone Wi-Fi Keep Alive - Android Apps on Google Play

I don't understand how that is going to help. He wants to push port 80 traffic (web traffic) out the mobile data connection, and he wants to network everything else on his local lan with the wifi as his connection to that local lan. For example he needs the lan to print photos on his printer from his cell phone. This is just the opposite that everyone else in the world wants to do. Everyone wants web traffic to go out over wifi whenever possible so that they can save money on the mobile data contract.

It would be nice if a smartphone had a setting where you could select where you wanted to send web traffic (port 80), but it always defaults to wifi unless it is turned off or the signal strength is not capable of supporting it. But I can't find it.

 

[rustydollar]

I have no need for such knowledge, but here's the direction you need to follow. Your phone is tethered to a usb router to feed the LAN.

android connected to router to use as lan - Google Search

 

[jcummins]

I have no need for such knowledge, but here's the direction you need to follow. Your phone is tethered to a usb router to feed the LAN.

android connected to router to use as lan - Google Search

That's not what I'm trying to do, since I could and have turned on the hotspot on the phone and attach my pc as an example to the hotspot. That has limitations since Verizon will throttle it after 10gb use. I do use that, but limitedly.

I simply want to access stuff on my network without having to kill my 4G, activate Wi-Fi, then deactivate it, every time I do it.

The option in the developer area should have done it, but simply doesn't work as documented.

 

[crazyal]

I have a jetpack. It has it's own 4g connection but also a built in router. It cost something like an extra $20/ month but I get around the limitations of using my phone as a hot spot.

 

[kcflhrc]

I don't think this is possible. Possible on a laptop? Yes. Where in the BIOS you can have the wireless NIC and the Wired NIC active at the same time. However, even in this configuration, you have to turn off the Gateway on one NIC. Otherwise the machine doesn't know where to look for internet. I think that is the issue with the phone.

 

[k0ua]

I don't think this is possible. Possible on a laptop? Yes. Where in the BIOS you can have the wireless NIC and the Wired NIC active at the same time. However, even in this configuration, you have to turn off the Gateway on one NIC. Otherwise the machine doesn't know where to look for internet. I think that is the issue with the phone.

Yes, pretty much. Obviously the phone has to know where its default gateway is and shove port 80 traffic out that port. That is a routing function. But I cant figure out how to get the phone to do what its firmware doesn't want to do. It will always shove out port 80 traffic on a working wifi connection in favor of the mobile data network. That is what the 99.99 percent of the world wants it to do. But this is now what he wants it to do, and I can't figure out how to make it work like he wants it to work. Maybe if the phone was rooted and you could get down to its routing "guts" you could make it happen. But I don't know how to do that. If this was a Cisco 2600 router, I could fix you right up.

 

[Ford850]

If you have to go the on/off route, does your phone have a shortcut to wifi controls? My IPhone does, and even when locked I can swipe/tap to turn wifi on/off. It's a one second procedure easy to do, and always accessible.