Troubleshooting Connectivity

No Internet Connectivity

• Check if this is only affecting you or your whole office. If only you reboot your computer. You can also check if other devices using the same network have issues too.
• Contact your IT or network department or IT contractor. For small operations, reboot you cable modem and routers, wait 5 minutes and try again. If problem persist, contact you internet service provider.
• See also Advanced troubleshooting below

Slow access

Internet speed test sites

• OOKLA http://www.speedtest.net/
• Speakeasy http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/
• Comcast http://speedtest.comcast.net/
• Verizon http://my.verizon.com/services/speedtest

Only TrackAbout access is slow

• All pages or specific page is slow?
• Affects all computers?
• Affects all locations?

Internet access but no TrackAbout Access

• Check the TrackAbout System Status url: http://status.trackabout.com. While at this site, please subscribe to notifications and updates on exactly when our system is being updated. If a system is doing, our engineers are likely already working on restoring the service. Feel free to contact the Support team.
• Use this web site to check if the issue might be just your location or geographical region, or affecting everyone http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/app.trackabout.com
  • Check other web sites: http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/

• Check Internet access using TrackAbout TAMobile
  • Launch TAMobile 6 (TrackAbout on the handheld)
  • Select Utilities then select CONFIG
  • From the drop-down list, select Save Mode and select Wireless Mode

• Ping test: Open a command prompt and type:

  >ping ping.trackabout.com

• Trace Route: Open a command prompt and type:

  >tracert ping.trackabout.com

Mobile device

No Connectivity

• Using the mobile browser, open the Google search page www.google.com
• Still no access? If device has Wifi and Cellular turned on, turn off the Wifi and try again. (Sometime Wifi are not reliable)
• In the TAMobile 6 app, use the wireless Lookup feature , entering '111' for serial number or barcode, you should be able to confirm Internet access as well as reacing the TrackAbout servers.

Connecting a Rugged Handheld to a Wireless Network

If you are having problem connecting to your wireless network, contact your IT or network department or IT contractor. See also Advanced troubleshooting below

Testing WIFI

Using a smartphone, several Apps exist to test Wifi signal strength and coverage

Android Free Apps

• WIFI Analyser

iOS Free Apps

• Network Analyzer Lite

Advanced troubleshooting

Miscelaneous Tools

• Link to page Troubleshooting with Ping and Trace Route

Unable to connect to WIFI network from Rugged Handheld

If you are unable to get Internet access but you connect to the Wifi networks, follow the steps below. This is related to the IEEE 802.11d, a specification that adds support for "additional regulatory domains" such as country information element to beacons, probe requests, and probe responses.

Config Editor

1. Make sure the Wifi Radio is turned on.
2. Make sure to uncradle your device. Depending on your PC settings, the WIFI will not connect if the handheld is in the cradle.
3. Select the config Editor in the Wireless companion (can be different based on you OS). Choose Options:
   1. From the drop-down list, select Regulatory
   2. Settings = USA
   3. Enable 802.11d = UN-check this box!
   4. Save and Click the 'X' in the upper right to close the app
   5. Back in the Config Editor, click the X in the upper right
4. Enable Internet
   1. Access the Settings - Connections - WIFI. There select Connect to Internet

Questions To Ask To Identify Mobile Connectivity Issues

• Is mobile device traffic VPNed through another connection? Can it be sent directly as a test?

• Has any significant performance testing been performed using the Desktop Simulator? Does it perform same/better/worse than handheld? If the desktop performs well, then it might be an issue with the speed or age of the handheld devices.

• Can you test with any other brand of device? Could it be something specific to handheld? (perhaps bad interaction with the wireless APs chosen).

• How old are the handheld devices? What year were they manufactured, what is the model #?

• Do ALL transactions from handheld take a long time or only some. Are there ever fast, sub-1-second transactions? Does TrackAbout ever perform well or is it always bad?

• Have long-duration (all day) ping tests been performed to ping.trackabout.com? Can long-duration tests be run to see if there is any correlation between failure to ping and long handheld transaction times? It would be worth doing parallel all-day performance tests to a number of locations on the Internet to see if all slow down or fail at the same time that users are experiencing problems.

• If there is a time when ping begins returning slowly, have traceroutes been run to determine the node that is failing?

• Is performance variable based on time of day? Could it be congestion on the local network?

• Are there any known “bad actors” or abusers of the local network? Can you detect them?

• Is your network configured to blacklist sites that are known to consume a lot of bandwidth (video streaming in particular)?

• Is it possible to dedicate a VLAN with QoS to TrackAbout to ensure adequate bandwidth is maintained? Does the local network support QoS features?

• Do all devices have problems at the same time? Or is it only some devices that suffer performance problems?

• Is there a redundant internet service provider or only a single provider? How reliable is the internet in general?

• Are there local tools available to monitor the health of the local network and connectivity to the Internet?

• Can TrackAbout get remote access to a laptop on the same wifi network that the handhelds are using to run remote troubleshooting steps? Can we get a handheld cradled on the laptop using something like PocketController Pro so we can remote control the handheld as well?
  • If TrackAbout had a device it could control on the network, what would we do?
    • We would run all-day ping tests to a variety of sites.
    • We would run periodic small download tests against a small image file on TrackAbout to see if bandwidth slows at some point during the day.
    • We would test throughout the day using the Desktop Simulator to gauge performance over time.
    • We would choose a handful of API endpoints and script repeated transactions against TrackAbout to prove end-to-end connectivity and performance. Gather statistics and analyze at end of day.
    • We would correlate our local SA tests with transaction performance as seen in our web logs. We can tell when downloads are slow by looking at the total time taken per transaction from time the server sees the first byte of the request from the client until the last byte is sent to the client.