Cellular data to wifi handoff

Hardware Librem 5
1

Hello. I am traveling. I ran out of data on AweSIM. Which is a bummer, but, not that big of a deal. However, I noticed that there was difficulty in the cellular to wifi handoff in my location. (I have also noticed this in the past at home, in “normal” use). I believe I was using cellular data when I would have preferred to be using the available wifi.

Does anyone have any suggestions to monitor or “choose” whether I am using wifi or cellular data. I suspect that the phone does not “prefer” to utilize wifi when it really should, sometimes.

Edit: I found this thread with similar complaints: Cellular connection anomalies - #14 by tomoqv

Is there a command to always check what is being used for priority and, if not used as priority, how to tell the Librem 5 to only use wifi?

Any thoughts?

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Go to show all Apps and click on the advance Network manager and change the priority of the wifi to be higher than the mobile. So I put my wifi priority 0 and I put my mobile priority 1.The issue you are having is that both your wifi and mobile are set to the same priority so it is up in the air which one will get priority.

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Thank you. I figured there was a way to set the priority but I was too lazy to look into it.

Have you ever had issues missing phone calls or SMS messages when WiFi is set to he highest priority?

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Hi. Thank you. I tried that but it keeps reseting to Wifi = priority -999 and Cellular priority = 0. Do I need to be super user or something?

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No there is a save button, but in order to see it you have to put the screen resolution to 100%

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Hmm. Now I notice that particular apps want cellular first for some reason? For example, I could not open a particular webapp I use until I turned off cellular. That is bizarre.

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Yes, I did notice that. However, my cellular problems persist.

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The priority is set per wifi alias are you sure you set it for the right one. The lower the number the higher the priority.

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Not that I know of. I did have the thing where the SMS buffer fills up and you can’t receive mms/sms messages anymore Chatty not recieving SMS at all, how do I reset it, what files should be deleted? (#873) · Issues · World / Chatty · GitLab

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You rock! I haven’t opened ADM for so long that I had forgotten about it. I’m sure it will do the trick.

For me, some months it would drain my 5GB Mint Mobile plan, others it wouldn’t touch it. Should be good now.

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Nope. The device insist on using cellular until I turn cellular off. Cellular is set above the wifi number.

Your solution should work but it appears to only work for some apps but not all.

Edit: to access the internet, I have to turn cellular off completely which tells me the priority in advanced network manager is not being recognized.

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12

I made the changes and when I tested it in GNOME Podcasts, which always used cellular data before, continues to do so. I have to either use software or hardware switch to disable the cell modem to get it to use WiFi :pensive:

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13

Yes, I do the same.

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I opened advanced networking but I am not seeing any option to set priorities?

What am I missing?

Edit: nevermind. I see it now. my L5 was just slow in responding.

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So I guess the other things that I’ve done is I set the mobile connection to metered connection and I disabled IPV6 on the mobile. I understand IPv4 better and I know IPv6 will take priority over IPv4 since I was having difficulty in my house since I only setup IPv4 and the mobiles IPv6 was taking priority. If you want to see which DNS server is taking precedence run in the terminal cat /etc/resolv.conf and it should show what every you have set for your dns server. I use 9.9.9.9 when I’m on mobile, but at home it would most likely be what your router is and the default ips are normally 192.168.1.1 or 192.168.0.1. An IPv6 address looks something like this: 2620:fe::9 and you will have the “:” in between the hexadecimal numbers.

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Yes, this is why I figured this out because I pay as I use data and I got a huge bill and I knew I was on the wifi whenever I was using data so I knew there was an issue.

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I will test this. However, it is difficult because I am out of cellular data. I will report back.

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You should just see what your DNS sever is by running cat /etc/resolv.conf with you mobile off and then with it on and see if they are the same. If they aren’t the same you mobile is still taking priority.

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19

route

The “metric” gives the priority - lower metric is higher priority.

However one complication is that regardless of the “handover” from cellular to WiFi, and regardless of the metrics, some badly behaved applications may bind to a specific interface (specific local IP address) e.g. while only cellular is available, and then that will be unaffected if the WiFi suddenly comes up.

It may be more complicated than this. For example, on some of my computers, that will always just show 127.0.0.53 regardless of what interfaces are up and what interfaces are down.

In that case, you want resolvectl status

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Thanks for the clarification @irvinewade I’m not a linux admin so thanks for pointing to the more correct why of determining your DNS server.

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