I have been running OH 2.4 something for a while and within the last 4 months I upgraded the RPi to a 3 B+ and things are working great. The other day I tried logging into my wireless network from my laptop only to get the message that I couldn’t connect to the internet. After fooling around with that for about an hour, I thought maybe OH was using too many wireless resources. So I shut down the RPI and now I can log in on my laptop just fine.
My question is, would it be better to run OH on its own network hub separate from my home network? Yes, the Cisco router is older but still working. Yes, I could spend the money and buy a new super-fast modem for $$$ but can I get away with a cheaper wireless modem just for the OH network?
Firstly it is important to understand the “cannot connect to the internet” means that your device connected to your home WiFi just fine. It just couldn’t reach anything on the Internet. You would have to be at near dialup speeds and have miscofigured OH (e.g. configure to expose ALL your Items to myopenhab.org) for OH to use up enough resources to block a normal Internet connection. Besides the fact that the RPi 3 B+ has a max wireless speed of 5.81 MB/s (and OH will need a tiny fraction of that) I find it highly unlikely that it would even be physically possible for it to overwhelm your network with traffic.
You don’t say what your router is and what it’s capable of but what ever is causing the problem, I find it very difficult to believe that OH consuming too many wireless resources is the cause. Something else must be wrong with either the router or the RPi. Are you certain that you set the country in your wifi settings properly? Different countries use different signal strengths and frequencies and channels. If this is missconfigured the RPi could be acting like a jamer. But that seems unlikely since as far as I can tell you have connected to the WiFi, you just can’t connect to the Internet.
I know of some people who do this for security reasons but no one who does so because OH consumes too much bandwidth. Any wireless probably 802.11G, and definitely 802.11 N/AC router will have more than enough resources to support OH and allow other devices connect and access the network.
Last night I think I found out what the problem may have been. My setup is as follows. My Cisco E3000.router connects to our cable company router. As I was on my desktop computer, it started showing the same connection errors. After cycling power to my E3000 and my switch the problem was still there. In checking the cable modem, I noticed it was going on and off line. I disconnected all the cables and power to it. Plugged everything back in and all is back to normal again.
