Nothing Is Broken: Why Your WiFi Keeps Disconnecting, and the Radar Rule Behind It
If your connection dies for about a minute, several times a day, on every device at once, and comes back on its own, nothing is broken. Your router is obeying the law. On the shared 5GHz channels a router must stop transmitting the moment it thinks it hears radar, disconnect everyone, and move. The outage lasts at least a minute, because the router has to listen to the new channel for 60 seconds before it may use it.
Find your situation:
- Everything drops at once, then returnsThat is the radar rule, and the fix is one router setting. How to check
- Only one device dropsThen it is that device's power saving, not your router. The setting to change
- It is a ChromebookChromeOS has a power-save mode that Google's help page never mentions. What to do
- It is a phoneStart with the private address setting your phone turned on for you. Here
- It is an iPhoneSame cause, different menu. The iPhone version
- Everything, all the timeWhen it really is the router
Work out first whether one device drops or all of them. That single observation splits this problem in two, and almost every guide online skips it.
- Why does my wifi keep disconnecting
- The radar rule that drops your whole network
- Why does my chromebook keep disconnecting from wifi
- Why does my laptop keep disconnecting from wifi
- Why does my phone keep disconnecting from wifi
- Wifi keeps disconnecting on iphone
- Wireless internet keeps disconnecting on everything
- Quick answers
Why does my wifi keep disconnecting
Before you change a single setting, answer one question: when it drops, does it drop on one device or on all of them at the same time?
That single observation splits the problem cleanly, and it is the step almost every forum thread skips.
- All devices drop together, for roughly a minute, then come back. The router changed channel. Usually that is the radar rule below, and it is not a fault.
- One device keeps disconnecting from wifi while the others stay online. The router is fine. That device is turning its own wifi radio down to save power, or it is being handed a new address every time it reconnects.
- Everything is slow and unstable all the time rather than dropping cleanly. That is interference or range, not disconnection, and it is a different job.
Keep that answer in mind, because the rest of this page is organised around it. If you want the sections that come before this problem, we have separate guides to choosing a router and to fixing dead zones across a whole home.
The radar rule that drops your whole network
This is the part that is missing from the search results, and it explains the most frustrating version of the problem: a connection that dies for about a minute, several times a day, on every device at once, with nothing wrong at either end.
A large part of the 5GHz band is not really yours. The channels in the middle of it are shared with weather radar, military radar, air traffic control and maritime navigation, and radio regulators require wifi to give way. The mechanism is called Dynamic Frequency Selection, and it is part of the 802.11h standard.
Cisco’s documentation describes exactly what a router must do the moment it believes it has detected radar. It:
- “Stops transmission of data frames on that channel”
- “Broadcasts an 802.11h channel-switch announcement”
- “Disassociates clients”
- “Selects a different channel”
Read the third one again. Disassociating clients means kicking every device off, by design.
Then comes the part that makes it feel so long. Before any device may transmit on one of these channels, Cisco states, it “must validate (listen for 60 seconds) that there is no radar activity on it”, and if the router’s new channel also requires this, “it scans the new channel for radar signals for 60 seconds”. Cisco puts the effect on you as “at least a one-minute outage”.
Why it happens when there is no radar anywhere near you
Detection does not have to be correct to be acted on. A false positive carries the same obligation as a genuine radar return, so a router near a road with vehicle radar, or in range of a distant weather installation, can be pushed off its channel repeatedly.
What to do about it
- Open your router’s admin page and find the 5GHz channel setting.
- If it is set to Auto, note which channel it has chosen.
- Set it manually to a channel in the lower group, below the shared range, or to the top group. Routers often label the shared ones as DFS channels.
- Leave 2.4GHz alone. The rule does not apply there, which is why the 2.4GHz network often stays up while 5GHz drops.
If your router offers no channel control at all, which is common on ISP-supplied boxes, this is the strongest argument there is for putting your own networking hardware behind it.
Why does my chromebook keep disconnecting from wifi
Why does my chromebook keep disconnecting from wifi is one of the most asked questions in this whole subject, and the official answer is thin. Google’s Chromebook connection help page offers, in order: check you are connected, run the network diagnostic, and restart the Chromebook. That is the entire wifi section.
So here is what is actually worth trying, in the order that resolves most cases.
1. Decide whether it is only the Chromebook
If a phone on the same network stays connected while the Chromebook drops, skip the router entirely. If everything drops together, go back to the radar rule.
2. Power saving on the wifi radio
ChromeOS runs its wifi adapter in a power-saving mode. It exists to make the battery last, and on a weak signal it can be the difference between a connection that holds and one that keeps dropping. ChromeOS exposes a wifi_power_save command in its developer shell, and the setting does not survive a restart, so treat it as a diagnostic rather than a fix: if disconnections stop while power saving is off, you have found the cause and the real answer is better signal where the Chromebook sits.
3. Forget the network and rejoin
Old saved credentials and a stale address assignment cause exactly this symptom. Open the wifi settings, forget the network, and connect again from scratch.
4. Move the Chromebook, not the router
Chromebooks are thin, and thin machines have small antennas. A laptop that holds a connection on a desk and drops it on a sofa two rooms away is telling you about its antenna, not about your broadband.
5. Check it is not the school or work network
Managed Chromebooks are common, and a managed device on a captive portal or a certificate-based network behaves very differently. If yours was supplied by a school or an employer, the disconnection is theirs to fix.
Why does my laptop keep disconnecting from wifi
Why does my laptop keep disconnecting from wifi usually has one answer on Windows, and it is buried three menus deep.
Windows is allowed to switch your wifi adapter off to save power. On a laptop that sits idle for a few minutes, this produces a connection that drops, reconnects when you touch the keyboard, and looks for all the world like a router fault.
Turn off adapter power saving
- Right click the Start button and open Device Manager.
- Expand Network adapters and double click your wireless adapter.
- Open the Power Management tab.
- Clear Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power.
- Click OK and restart.
⚠️ If there is no Power Management tab, you have not done anything wrong. Microsoft notes that it can be absent on machines using modern standby, and on some adapters it depends on the driver. In that case open PowerShell as administrator and run Disable-NetAdapterPowerManagement with your adapter’s name, which does the same job without the dialog.
There is a second, separate setting worth checking in the same breath. In Control Panel, Power Options, Change plan settings, Change advanced power settings, open Wireless Adapter Settings and then Power Saving Mode. Set it to Maximum Performance on mains power. Left on a saving mode it reduces how hard the adapter works, which shortens your effective range and produces the same symptom.
Then update the driver properly
Not through Windows Update, which often keeps an older driver. Go to the laptop maker’s support page, enter the model, and take the wireless driver from there. A wifi driver that is two years old on a machine that has since had several Windows feature updates is a genuine and common cause.
If it started after an update
Note the date it began. Windows feature and cumulative updates do break network drivers, and if the timing lines up, rolling the driver back in Device Manager is faster than trying settings at random.
Why does my phone keep disconnecting from wifi
Why does my wifi keep disconnecting on my phone, or why does my phone keep disconnecting from wifi, has a different first suspect from a laptop, because your phone is doing something on your behalf that it did not ask about.
Private or randomised MAC addresses
Modern Android and iOS use a randomised hardware address for each network, to stop you being tracked between venues. It is a good default. It also means that if your router hands out addresses based on hardware identity, or your network uses access control, your phone can look like a new device and be pushed off.
On Android, open your home network in the wifi settings and look for a Privacy or MAC address option. The wording moves around between manufacturers and Android versions, but the choice is always between a randomised address and the device’s own. Use the device address for your home network only, and leave it randomised everywhere else.
Battery optimisation and adaptive wifi
Android’s battery saver and features named along the lines of adaptive connectivity will turn wifi down or switch you to mobile data when they judge the signal poor. If your phone drops wifi and quietly carries on over mobile data, that is not a fault, it is the feature working, and you turn it off in wifi settings.
The auto-switch setting
Look for a setting that automatically moves you to mobile data when wifi is weak. It is on by default on many phones and it is the reason a phone appears to disconnect while the tablet beside it does not.
Wifi keeps disconnecting on iphone
When wifi keeps disconnecting on iphone, or an iphone keeps disconnecting from wifi at the same spot every time, the causes are the same as Android’s in different menus, plus one that is specific to Apple.
- Private Wi-Fi Address. Settings, Wi-Fi, tap the More Info button beside your network, then tap Private Wi-Fi Address. On iOS 18 and later this is not a simple switch: Apple gives you Off, Fixed and Rotating. Fixed is the setting you want at home, because the phone keeps one private address for that network instead of changing it. Leave it on Rotating for public networks.
- Connectivity Assist. This is the one people look for in the wrong place. It used to be called Wi-Fi Assist and lived in Cellular settings. Apple has renamed it and moved it: it is now in Settings, Wi-Fi, near the bottom. It moves you to mobile data when wifi is poor, which makes wifi look unreliable when it is merely weak, and it spends your data allowance.
- Low Data Mode and Low Power Mode both change how aggressively the phone holds a connection.
- Forget and rejoin. Tap More Info, Forget This Network, then reconnect. This clears a stale address assignment, which is the most common single fix.
If several Apple devices drop at once and nothing else does, look at the 5GHz channel first. Apple hardware is more willing than most to sit on the shared channels that the radar rule governs.
Wireless internet keeps disconnecting on everything
When wireless internet keeps disconnecting across every device and the radar rule is not the answer, work outwards from the wall.
- Separate wifi from broadband. Plug a laptop into the router with a cable and leave it running. If the wired connection drops too, the problem is your line or your router, and no wifi setting will fix it. Our guide to the ONT box on a fibre line covers what sits where.
- Check the router’s own logs. Most admin pages have a system log. Repeated re-synchronisation entries point at the line; repeated channel changes point back at the radar rule.
- Heat. A router in a cupboard, behind books, or on top of a TV box will drop connections when it warms up and hold them when it is cool. It is an unglamorous cause and a very common one.
- Count the devices. Cheap ISP routers have low limits on simultaneous connections, and a house with thirty smart devices can exceed them without anyone noticing.
- Firmware. Update the router. Then, if it is more than four or five years old, accept that its wifi predates most of the devices connecting to it.
When replacing the hardware is the right call
If the router cannot set a channel, cannot separate 2.4GHz from 5GHz, and cannot update its firmware, you have reached the end of what settings can do. A mesh system or a pair of wireless access points solves both the channel problem and the range problem, and it is the point at which this stops being a fault and becomes a purchase.
Quick answers
Check first whether other devices stay online. If they do, the Chromebook is the cause: its wifi radio runs in a power-saving mode, its antenna is small, and a stale saved network is the most common single fix. Forget the network and rejoin it, then move the Chromebook closer and see whether the drops stop. If every device drops together, it is the router changing channel instead.
Because the laptop is switching its own adapter off. In Windows, open Device Manager, expand Network adapters, open your wireless adapter, go to the Power Management tab and clear "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power". If the drops continue, install the wireless driver from the laptop maker's support page rather than relying on Windows Update.
A regular rhythm points at something automatic. A drop of about a minute affecting everything at once is usually the router being forced off a 5GHz channel by radar detection. A drop affecting one idle device is power saving on that device. A drop every time you walk between rooms is range, not disconnection.
Yes, and it is a legal requirement rather than a fault. On the shared 5GHz channels a router that believes it has detected radar must stop transmitting, announce a channel switch and disassociate its clients. Cisco's documentation notes that a device must listen for 60 seconds before using such a channel, which is why the outage lasts at least a minute.
Two features usually explain it. The randomised private address your phone uses for each network can make it look like a new device to a router that manages addresses by hardware identity. And the setting that switches you to mobile data when wifi is weak makes a poor connection look like a dropped one. Turn the private address off for your home network only, and turn the auto-switch off.
On a home network it often does, because the router then recognises the phone as the same device every time and keeps giving it the same address. Keep the setting switched on for public and workplace networks, where it does the privacy job it was designed for. It is a per-network setting for exactly this reason.
If the drops are the radar kind, 2.4GHz will hold while 5GHz does not, because the rule does not apply to that band. The trade is speed for stability. A better answer is to keep 5GHz and move it to a channel outside the shared range, which you set in the router's admin page.
That is not a fault at all. Windows and macOS both drop the wireless connection when the machine sleeps and reconnect on wake. It only becomes a problem if the reconnection is slow or fails, which usually means a driver that needs updating from the manufacturer's site.
Plug a computer into the router with an Ethernet cable and use it normally. If the wired connection is rock solid while wifi drops, the line is fine and the problem is wireless. If the wired connection drops as well, no wifi setting will help and the fault is the router or the line into the building.
They can. A basic extender creates a second network with its own name, and devices cling to whichever one they joined first even after you walk away from it. That produces a connection that is technically alive and practically useless. A mesh system or wired access points sharing one network name avoid the problem by handing devices between points properly.
Look at the system log in the router's admin page. Channel change entries, often mentioning DFS or radar, appear at the times you lost connection. If the log shows those and your drops last about a minute, you have your answer without changing anything else.
Because the update replaced or reset your wireless driver. Open Device Manager, find the adapter, and either roll the driver back or install the current one from your laptop maker's support page. Check the Power Management tab while you are there, since an update can re-enable the power saving option you previously turned off.
Sources
- Cisco: identify radar detection in Dynamic Frequency Selection channels. The source for what a router must do on detection, the 60 second listening requirement, and the at least one minute outage.
- Google: fix connection problems on a Chromebook. Quoted for what it does and does not cover.
- Apple: use private Wi-Fi addresses on Apple devices and Apple: about Connectivity Assist. The Off, Fixed and Rotating options on iOS 18 and later, and the fact that Connectivity Assist replaced Wi-Fi Assist and moved from Cellular settings into Wi-Fi settings.
- Microsoft: power management setting on a network adapter. The Device Manager path, and why the Power Management tab is sometimes missing.
- Best wifi router, whole home wifi and wireless access points, our own guides to the hardware side.
- What the ONT box does, for separating a wifi fault from a line fault.
