Mcell requires power cycle every day to regain connection to iPhones

Had to do another Airplane Mode toggle last night to reconnect again.  Both phones had dropped the connection. That was after doing a hard reset and power cycling of the Mcell.

I'll PM Customer Care and see what they have to offer. 

Do me a favor. PM me with a detailed summary of what the issue is and what you've done so far and I'll pass this along to my contact in Support. Do follow up with CustomerCare as well (as that is the "official" way to get help).

Hi Avedis53,

We received your private message and one of our managers will be reaching out to you shortly so we can look into this further.

Thanks!

Nicole K.

Thanks Nicole 

Sigh....update since my last post.

My dropped connection issue is still occurring just about every night in the wee hours of the morning and I am still able to reconnect by toggling the Airplane Mode on our iPhones when I wake up in the morning and find them disconnected.

I have been in contact with Customer Care throughout this problem and have traded a few phone calls with a technical support person.

They seemed to think that it is a competing signal issue between the Mcell and the local cell towers.  They indicated that AT&T has been doing tower upgrade work in my area for the last three months and that it might be possible the changes have had an influence on what I'm experiencing.  I do not see any increase in cell tower signal strength based on my iPhone's signal bars.  Regardless, they decided to disable the hand-off feature to see if that would help.  It did not.  (Item of note: When I access the Manage Mcell website, it still indicates that the hand-off is enabled but tech support said that there is a problem with the website and have put in a ticket on it.)

I disagree with their assessment that this is a competing signals problem.  My wife leaves her iPhone charging overnight at a location 20 feet from the Mcell while I take mine to our bedroom at night.  Both drop the connection and have to be toggled to reconnect.  If I've moved my phone to a location where the cell tower strength is greater and my phone switches to the tower, why does her phone switch and it hasn't been moved to possibly change the signal strength from the tower?

Why does this only happen at night?  Our phones maintain connection with the Mcell throughout the daylight hours as they are moved around the house quite a bit.  AT&T doesn't have an answer to this. 

In talking to the tech support person, it is interesting that they have the capability to access logs for my Mcell and see various error codes.  It would sure be nice if I could do that.  You would think that if I can access logs on a $80 router to see what's going on that a $200 Microcell would have similiar capabilities.  I guess they don't want customers to have that information.

Speaking of logs, I have just started monitoring my router logs to see what is going on regarding the Mcell.  I assigned a static IP address to the Mcell months ago, so it makes it easy to look at interactions between the router and my Mcell.

I get two types of log entries associated with the Mcell.  First, there is this kind:

[DHCP IP: (192.168.1.20)] to MAC

address 48:44:87:xx:xx:xx, Saturday,

Jul 06,2013 03:59:15

192.168.1.20 is the static IP address for my Mcell.  I've blanked out most of the MAC address for security reasons but it is the Mcell's MAC.  I'm not versed on router networks and DHCP, so I'm not sure what this log entry means or what is prompting it to occur.

The other kind is a lot more disturbing:

[LAN access from remote] from

182.140.241.10:51264 to

192.168.1.20:443 Saturday, Jul

06,2013 09:12:39

Again, the 192.168.1.20 is my Mcell and port 443 is for the HTTPS TLS/SSL.  Again, I'm not sure what this log entry means.  I would interpret it to mean that someone from the listed IP address is accessing the Mcell.  I seen 3 of these in the last day.  The IP addresses are from interesting places like Australia, China and Portugal.  This worries me.

At any rate, I'm going to continue to monitor the router log to see if I can correlate a router/Mcell problem.  AT&T said they were going to look at a few more things before sending me another Mcell.

To be continued....

I feel like we're old friends....

With my iPhone, I leave it in the family room when we go to bed. There's no reason for me to take it into the bedroom at night because we have a land line. It's about 35' from the router and indicates MicroCell connection when I turn it "off" at night and turn it back "on" when I leave for the day. If there is a disconnect at night, I never know it because M-CELL is always displayed. The same holds true for my wife's old Samsung, which she leaves in her purse so god knows where it ends up at night. Both LTE and WiFi are always enabled on my phone as well as handing off. I wouldn't totally disregard a tower issue because fluctuating tower output can affect the MicroCell and the iPhone (other phones as well). Houses can be funny in respect to signal quality and I don't think the signal bars on the phones are a real accurate indicator of signal strength/quality.

I too wish there was some sort of way to access the inner-workings of the MicroCell but Cisco/AT&T designed these so that it was near impossible to gain access to the AT&T network from the MicroCell without strict security protocols in place. If your MicroCell is behind your router then it should be safe but foreign addresses are a concern. It could be some sort of robo-dialing trying to find an open connection (of which your MicroCell is not) and "daytime" dialing from those countries would be nighttime over hear. Just a guess on my part though.

I forget but have you tried port forwarding? Does your ISP do any sort of maintenance at night which would cause you to briefly lose connectivity?

I've never looked at my router logs so maybe I should take a looksee and see if anything odd is there as well.

I've forwarded all the ports that are listed for the Mcell.  I'm not showing any loss of connection to the internet in the router logs.

As I told the tech support guy, the only way to determine if there is a problem with the Mcell is to replace it.  If the problem goes away, then it was indeed the Mcell.  If the problem remains, then my problem resides elsewhere. 

This is basic troubleshooting.....swap equipment, cables, parts....etc and see what happens.  Given the Mcell's track record, it should be about at the top of the list but that would be a substantial cost to AT&T so we jump through hoops trying all the other stuff first before they have to pay to replace the Mcell.

While I'm typing this, my phones are off the Mcell again but this time I've got a flashing 3G light.  This also  happened yesterday about an hour before the ATT tech called me.  He asked if I power cycled the Mcell to clear the 3G light.  I said no, that this has happened before and it will reconnect with the phones on its own.  He was surprised at my comment and said that it usually requires a power cycle to clear that.  When he looked at my Mcell on his end he said there was an error code that said the Mcell had lost connection to the internet.  After concluding our conversation, it eventually re-established connections to our iPhones.

I just hope they quit dicking around and send me a new Mcell so we can determine if it is the problem....

If the flasing 3G light was green, then you did lose connection. Whether it was the MicroCell, your router, ISP, or whatever is difficult to determine. I did forward your pm to me to one of the Forum Admins who in turn gave it so Support. I never get a response back because that's between the customer and Support but we did "hit" them twice with your issue. I would hope that they replace your MicroCell but that decision comes from someone higher the support ladder than the folks you are dealing with. Let us know what happens. Maybe I can push for a replacement from here. Can't hurt.

Pfffft...things are going from bad to worse.

Yesterday, the Mcell went to a flashing green 3G light and it would not complete to solid green.  I tried a few power cyclings and a hard reset with a power cycling and still had the flashing 3G light, even after the Mcell sitting overnight.  This morning, I deactivated/reactivated the Mcell.  Finally, I was able to get a solid green 3G light.  Toggled the Airplane Mode on the iPhones and I am connected......for now.

Concerning this competing signal strength issue, at what cell tower signal strength does a cellphone switch to the Mcell? On the lower levels of my house my iPhone shows one bar, which at that strength I have dropped calls or am unable to call at all.  When I toggle the Airplane Mode and reconnect to the Mcell, I show 4 bars in the same location.  I would think that if the Mcell signal strength is greater than the cell tower signal strength, it should switch the iPhone to the Mcell.  It certainly should if the cell tower signal strength drops to one bar.

Again, the Mcell worked fine for three months and now this.  I believe that the Mcell is defective and when the tech support guy calls me again (hopefully today), I am going to insist on a replacement.

What a pain....