Working similarly to Amazon’s Fire TV Stick or the TiVo Streaming devices, Roku is another route to go down for a streaming media player. Unfortunately, most of the Roku devices are restricted to connecting to Wi-Fi to stream which is not the best for streaming TV shows and movies in 1080, 2K, or 4K quality.
In this article, we’ll describe how to fix Roku Wi-Fi connectivity issues in 5 different ways below.
Causes of Roku Wi-Fi Connection Issues? Ways to Resolve Issues
A majority of the the Wi-Fi connectivity issues occur with the Roku 3810R, 3920R, and 3930R models (all 3 of these models make up the Streaming Stick+, Premier, and Express devices) where there is not an accessible Ethernet port to establish a hard-wire connection to the router.
Just like a Wi-Fi router, a Roku device can only work if other wireless devices are not taking up available network bandwidth and there is simple communication without any interference.
In other cases, the Roku device may not connect due to simple misconfigurations of the wireless router that prevent the connection.
Move Roku out of “Deadspots”
One of the first ways to resolving Roku connectivity issues particularly any intermittent connections is to simply move the Roku device to another room in the household where the signal strength is likely higher than the previous room location.
For multi-story homes particularly devices located on the 2nd floor…even if you’re watching in the basement, it would be advisable to use a Wi-Fi signal booster or Wi-Fi range extender device to allow a Wi-Fi signal from the 1st floor to other floors and extensions in the house to eliminate deadspots even if Wi-Fi power is set to 100% on the router.
The most recommended option here is to move the Roku closer to the router to achieve improvements in performance and to reduce further buffering from occurring.
Disable/Re-enable Network Pings
Another way to resolve Roku connectivity issues not connecting to Wireless networks is by disabling network pings since the network pings the local router/server in a home’s local area network.
In many ways, the Roku device may overwhelm the home router with a number of ping packets that may cause the sudden drop in wireless connectivity if the network pings feature in the “secret systems menu” is left enabled.
Also, by disabling network pings on the Roku device it would eliminate many false reply pings coming from the router if there is say a minor DoS attack overwhelming the network.
This troubleshooting step can resolve connections issues when running through initial setup steps when all else fails.
To disable network pings, please go through the following steps below on your Roku device:
- Press Home button 5 times on your remote
- Press Fast Forward, Play, Rewind, Play, Fast Forward (in this order) just once on the remote. The system secret settings screen will appear. If the system settings screen doesn’t appear, repeat step 1 & step 2.
- Open “Systems Operations” setting
- Select “Disable Network Pings” and hit Ok on remote. Disable network pings will change to enable network pings.
Enable DHCP Server in Router Settings
The next troubleshooting step to resolving Roku connection problems is a simple step in the instance if the Wi-Fi connection is “refused” when attempting to connect the Roku for the first time to the router.
This step involves making sure the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) server within the router (as seen within the TP-Link Archer A9 router settings in the picture above) is enabled to ensuring the Roku does get a leased IP address.
When leaving the DHCP server disabled from the router, the connection to the Roku device will be refused since the router will assume the connection to the wireless device is going to be configured as a “static” connection.
In other scenarios, if the Roku IP address is outside of the DHCP server range then the router will also assume the device’s IP address and netmask are manually configured without DHCP intervention.
Since the Roku device does not have a way to manually configure an IP and netmask, it is extremely important to making sure DHCP is enabled within the router otherwise you’ll be stuck in the initial Roku setup screens.
Related Article: How to Prevent DDoS attacks while Gaming Online?
Restart Wireless Router
In some situations, the Roku device itself is not the main cause of the intermittent and no network connectivity issues meaning that it could be a problem traced to the Wi-Fi router.
If a wireless router has a long uptime (usually more than 14 days), then it will be a matter of time when the network communication will get hung up on a random day to cause every wireless device to drop in and out.
To solve this problem, set the router up on a set schedule to restart weekly (only if the router supports such a function) or pull the power from the router to allow it to reset then plug back in after 1-2 minutes passes.
This may solve the problems to every wireless device being used.
Perform a Factory Reset
When all the troubleshooting steps above fails to fix connectivity issues with the Roku device, the “last resort” option to try would be to perform a factory default reset of the device in order to reset the wireless settings back to default as well as any other customized system settings.
Also, a factory reset would likely fix any issues, misconfigurations, and corrupt firmware/updates that may have been caused by unexpected shutdowns (overheating and power issues) or other fatal errors caused by Roku’s services.
To perform a Factory Reset of the Roku device, refer to the following steps below:
- From the Home screen, select “Settings“
- Select “System“
- Select “Advanced System Settings“
- Select “Factory Reset“
- Enter in 4 digit code that will display on the screen below the number pad to start the reset
