BlackBerry® PlayBook™

[gumnutninja]

Hi - am still away from my normal wifi situation and here longer than planned so trying again to connect PB to network.

Can't get to the underside of the router to see the make/model but it is fairly new and am connected on PC and iPhone just fine. Prefer not to change settings on router (even if I can get the info necessary to access it because I'm here temporarily).

The encryption is set up as wpa2 - aes according to the working connection on the laptop. When I try to connect the Playbook it says wpa2 - psk and it gets stuck on the trying to connect attempt 1 of 3 screen.

Any clues about aes vs psk?

Thanks.

[TexTucker]

Its not so much psk vs aes. They can exist together .

Choices are usually:-

Psk vs enterprise 

Aes vs tkip

Wpa vs wpa2, or wep, or nothing.

Generally avoid wep, avoid tkip.

Typical setup might be WPA2-PSK, AES.

[knottyrope]

Agreed, WPA2 with AES is better. 

Look at my tips on wifi

Speed-up-BlackBerry-Wi-Fi-connections-a-knottyrope-tip

[gumnutninja]

Ok - sorry for flood of too much info about to happen but.. am on top of a mountain in a Canadian winter taking care of an Alzheimer's parent for a couple of weeks and patience, sanity, and anything else resembling normal adult human is running thin,..

I've leapt over more wifi hurdles than most and survived to love my PB, but really really really don't feel like climbing onto a ladder in the garage to pry the router that is bouncing cellurlar wifi signals off of remote area rooftops from the wall to figure out what the bleep model it is and dig the manual out of the internet and sort out what the blleep is going on and try to hack into the router to change its settings.

I was ok to be without wifi on the Playbook until it started bricking itself because it can't figure out its accounts and now consistently freezes/fails. Now I mostly just want an iPad.

Much of the frustration is because everybody kept telling me that my wifi horrors were because the PB had superior encryption and my router was too old to cope. I dealt with it and started to enjoy the PB. Now I come to a place where the router is new and the encryption supposedly advanced, and the PB is (again) the only one that can't cope.

• Computer (win7 laptop) says it is WPA2-Personal AES and connects..
• iPhone doesn't give a toss; it just connects.
• PB says the network is WPA2-Personal PSK and won't connect, and then bricks the entire tablet because it can't figure out what email accounts it can no longer find and blah blah blah vent vent vent

If best course is to give up and just leave it plugged in and turned off until I get back to a know-it-works router environment then ok. But is there an explanation as to why the PB might not be connecting and anything in the PB settings that might get around it?

[TexTucker]

WP2 Personal and AES is fine for g or n wifi  But why would you need to go to the physical router to change settings? It's done via wifi just as easily, if you needed to change them, which you probably don't. 

Delete the saved connection in Playbook for that router and try again.  Also it may be simply too far from the router if it's in the loft space. 

[gumnutninja]

Thanks, Tex. I'll try deleting the profile.

The bigger problem is that the PB has become almost impossible to turn on even when fully charged and, if it does finally get past the boot screen, it is likely to freeze up when I open an app. Seems I can't try to fix it unless/until I can give it a wifi connection.

Getting to the router would be to find out what it is - or do wifi routers all use the same url to access settings through a browser?? If so, could you tell me the address to type in, please? I do usually connect directly to the router by cable whenever I change wifi settings, though.

Thanks again - apologies if frustration is getting to me.

[TexTucker]

Usually 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.1 for 90% of routers.  192.168.1.254 for the British BT homehubs. Trouble is you need the admin username and password and if they are not written down they will be on the router label too. 

[knottyrope]

on a PC

goto start run and type in CMD then press enter

in black dos window type in

IPCONFIG /ALL

and press enter

the default gateway IP addres in the list of info will be your router IP address to type in the web Browser

[gumnutninja]

Thanks, TexTucker and knottyrope - this helped me identity the router but, unfortunately, the login name and password have been changed from the default. This is the router at any rate - a Ubiquiti AirRouter..

http://www.ubnt.com/airrouter / http://dl.ubnt.com/guides/AirRouter/AirRouter_User_Guide.pdf

Alas I can't get the PB past the bootscreen again. I got in on by surprise yesterday (the pasword screen lit up when I went to unplug it) but I turned it off later because it felt like it was getting warm (assumed it was still trying to figure out its accounts in the backgfround). The desktop software doesn't detect it while its trying to boot either. It's fully charged, so I don't know what the startup problem is.

I may give up until I get back to my home network. But am feeling reluctant to travel with it again even though I know others do so with no trouble.

[gumnutninja · Accepted solution]

After 2 weeks of being mostly bricked, Playbook got back to a known network and is working as if nothing was ever wrong.

No clue why it planted so badly without a wifi connection. I will definitely be backing up before I travel again next week and am mildly uncertain how it's going to perform at the hotel but fingers crossed.

Any travel tips appreciated. And many thanks for encouragement and suggestions over last 2 weeks.