Steam won't connect to one WiFi network fully. Store loads, online games won't

[Boekon]

TLDR I have two phones with two Google Fi phone services. One's hotspot works perfectly. The other, newer phone's hotspot works okay in general, except for with Steam and Battle.net and I'd assume other game stores/launchers. These applications' stores will load like normal, but the application will generally say I'm not connected to the internet, making game downloads and connecting to online games impossible

If there's a more relevant forum to post this query too, please let me know.

I'm using Google Fi(Google's phone service)'s hotspot to connect to the internet because I live in a trailer park with crap WiFi available.

On my first phone and Google Fi account, a Samsung Note 10+ with their Unlimited Plus plan, the hotspot worked like a freaking charm. 5G connection in a low density area, minimum of 50MB/s down through Steam, no lag or packet loss in game.

I ran through the first 100GB of high speed service within about two weeks though, because I needed to download my active library of games on my new computer. I also needed to upgrade my phone, so I figured at least for a month or two, I'd just add a second line to my Fi account and have the leeway of 200GB total high speed.

My second phone(Moto G Stylus 5G)'s hotspot, however, will not connect to Steam, Battle.net, or other game stores/launchers I assume. It will, however however, connect to these applications' store pages, infuriatingly. I have a screenshot of the live Steam store homepage with the wonderful words of "NO CONNECTION" directly underneath. Also, the connection experiences excessive periods of packet loss while using a browser (between 20 and 30 seconds of no discernible connection, maybe every 2 or 3 minutes; times are squidgy as this is the least of my concerns).

I've tried everything I can think to troubleshoot this issue, including submitting a help ticket. The help ticket was basically what I got from googling the issue plus some polite accompanying verbiage.

Reinstalling Steam multiple times, checking firewall ports, adding firewall ports, disabling the firewall altogether, trying the SIM card from one phone on the other (somehow Fi seems to have tied each account to each phone, so as far as I can tell the SIMs are functionally interchangeable), formatting the brand new phone, formatting the two-month-old desktop, buying an upgraded WiFi adapter for the desktop, and working with Fi's support team. And restarting each device probably two or three dozen times.

I'm stumped. Google Fi hasn't given up on the issue, and the problem has been "escalated to their engineering team," so at least they have that on Steam, but I'm not gonna hold my breath that this is their issue. The connection is amazing. Between 200-300MB/s down on speed test. I imagine the problem is something to do with the ports and firewall. I did my best to ensure those weren't the cause, but I'm only semi-confident it's not because I fully disabled the firewall and still had the issue. I'm a layman strictly speaking, so that porting screen is pretty Greek to me.

The only thing I can think of otherwise is it's some kind of hardware issue with the phone, but I find it hard to believe there's hardware on a phone that governs so specific an aspect of its hotspot connections.

I'm desperate for anything else I can troubleshoot. If anyone has any ideas, please help. Fi charges $10/GB of high speed service past the first 100, and my park's WiFi gets between 1MB/s and 50KB/s down depending on the day of week and time of day. Please please help :^(

[Brujeira]

The folks in Hardware and OS might be worth a try - some of them do post in this forum though so you might grab their attention.

I don't know Google Fi, but I know Google-Fu and mine turned up one possibility. There's a post on Google's community pages from someone who couldn't connect and it seems it was the VPN blocking it. That kind of thing would explain why you get different behaviour from the two phones - they've got different settings - but I would really expect Google's support team to have checked that possibility early in the process, certainly before escalating it to the engineers.

https://support.google.com/fi/thread/206216082/i-can-t-connect-to-steam-on-my-computer-when-using-my-phone-as-a-hotspot?hl=en

[Satoru]

Note with mobile providers its difficult to determine whats blocking it because phone generally have poor visibility into the networking stack. Especially with Android phone being loaded with so much bloatware

STores are generally over HTTPS so any network blocks almost never affect this. However logins or other services it depends on like matchmaking might use other ports which might be blocked on the phone.

As per above, using a VPN on your Motorola phone may expose the fact that the phone itself may be blocking things. ProtonVPN is free and will likely expose any issues.

Its also possible the DNS entries on your Motorola device might also be impacting things. Also is the time on your phone 100% accurate? As that can also impact things like certificate checking.

[Boekon]

Originally posted by Brujeira:

The folks in Hardware and OS might be worth a try - some of them do post in this forum though so you might grab their attention.

I don't know Google Fi, but I know Google-Fu and mine turned up one possibility. There's a post on Google's community pages from someone who couldn't connect and it seems it was the VPN blocking it. That kind of thing would explain why you get different behaviour from the two phones - they've got different settings - but I would really expect Google's support team to have checked that possibility early in the process, certainly before escalating it to the engineers.

https://support.google.com/fi/thread/206216082/i-can-t-connect-to-steam-on-my-computer-when-using-my-phone-as-a-hotspot?hl=en

Surprisingly, even through multiple hours-long phone calls with them, I can't remember them asking to check. I did however see and check that in my searching as well. It seems to me that the VPN used to be on by default and now is off by default, so maybe that's why they didn't check it.

Another thing I forgot to mention I checked is using a third-party VPN (Surfshark) has no effect on the issue, neither their normal or static servers, and on both ends (connecting my phone to the VPN before turning the hotspot on, and on my PCs after connecting to the hotspot).

Thank you for the subforum recommendation and the attempt at help troubleshooting, I'll update and post this there as well

[Boekon]

Originally posted by Satoru:

Note with mobile providers its difficult to determine whats blocking it because phone generally have poor visibility into the networking stack. Especially with Android phone being loaded with so much bloatware

STores are generally over HTTPS so any network blocks almost never affect this. However logins or other services it depends on like matchmaking might use other ports which might be blocked on the phone.

As per above, using a VPN on your Motorola phone may expose the fact that the phone itself may be blocking things. ProtonVPN is free and will likely expose any issues.

Its also possible the DNS entries on your Motorola device might also be impacting things. Also is the time on your phone 100% accurate? As that can also impact things like certificate checking.

As above, I haven't been able to find any difference in the issue connecting with Surfshark from either end.

As best I can tell, both phone's and my computer's times are synced within a second of each other. If anything, the Samsung has a slight delay between the agreeing Motorola and PC.

I'll look into checking DNS entries on the Motorola, thank you for the lead!

[Boekon]

Originally posted by Satoru:

Note with mobile providers its difficult to determine whats blocking it because phone generally have poor visibility into the networking stack. Especially with Android phone being loaded with so much bloatware

STores are generally over HTTPS so any network blocks almost never affect this. However logins or other services it depends on like matchmaking might use other ports which might be blocked on the phone.

As per above, using a VPN on your Motorola phone may expose the fact that the phone itself may be blocking things. ProtonVPN is free and will likely expose any issues.

Its also possible the DNS entries on your Motorola device might also be impacting things. Also is the time on your phone 100% accurate? As that can also impact things like certificate checking.

Apologies for the quick and ignorant double reply, but could you tell me a little more specifically what I should be doing with regards to DNS entries on the Motorola? Having just checked, having the "Select Private DNS Mode" setting set to either "Automatic" (defualt) or "Off" results in the issue persisting. Should I try a specific third-party DNS server, or any I find online, or is the issue persisting through it being off enough information?

Minor update, packet loss (idk if that's the correct terminology, but random bouts of connectivity loss while using Firefox) on this hotspot seems to be closer to 20-30 seconds

[Satoru]

If you can choose you can try using google's DNS for 8.8.8.8 or cloudflare 1.1.1.1

[no154370]

i know one thing which i went to look

1) google Fi uses VPN

even for mobile devices also.

kindly disable it.

2) chances of google Fi losing connection is very high

as a result, your other mobile phone hotspot is most likely using either 3G or 4G as its Internet Connection signal strength is extremely weak to non-existent.

-----------------------------------------------------

i found an article where someone comment about the google Fi in 2024

https://clark.com/cell-phones/google-fi-review/

in it, it turns out that there is a huge drawback for Google Fi depending on the plan you subscribe

i) Flexible plan, Data slowed after 15GB

ii) Simply Unlimited plan, Data slowed after 35GB

iii) Unlimited Plus plan, Data slowed after 50GB

out of all 3 plans, Simply Unlimited Plan is the worst.

Simply Unlimited Plan don't have "free data and Free text and calls outside of US, Canada and Mexico".

[no154370]

i actually recommend that you go get a Router.

not only is the Internet Connection for Wifi Consistent

it also doesn't cause Data to be slowed after X amount of GB used at all.

[Boekon]

Originally posted by Satoru:

If you can choose you can try using google's DNS for 8.8.8.8 or cloudflare 1.1.1.1

No change in the issue

[Boekon]

Originally posted by no154370:

i know one thing which i went to look

1) google Fi uses VPN

even for mobile devices also.

kindly disable it.

2) chances of google Fi losing connection is very high

as a result, your other mobile phone hotspot is most likely using either 3G or 4G as its Internet Connection signal strength is extremely weak to non-existent.

-----------------------------------------------------

i found an article where someone comment about the google Fi in 2024

https://clark.com/cell-phones/google-fi-review/

in it, it turns out that there is a huge drawback for Google Fi depending on the plan you subscribe

i) Flexible plan, Data slowed after 15GB

ii) Simply Unlimited plan, Data slowed after 35GB

iii) Unlimited Plus plan, Data slowed after 50GB

out of all 3 plans, Simply Unlimited Plan is the worst.

Simply Unlimited Plan don't have "free data and Free text and calls outside of US, Canada and Mexico".

The google VPN has no effect on the issue, and neither does a third-party VPN
My Fi connection itself has been incredibly consistent and fast, upwards of 200MB/s down and always 5G.

Yes, the overall data limitations on the plan are annoying, but I'd like to reduce my youtube consumption anyways. But more importantly, I'm able to use those 50GB of high speed data on my hotspot. Most phone plans cap high speed hotspot data use at 5-15GB

Yes, I should get a router and traditional internet plan. This was only ever intended to be a patchwork and temporary solution.