Why so many Apex connection issues

[Aaronhome27]

I just got my Apex. Was excited as it started out working great. Wifi worked well after initially hard wiring it for set up. Then installed after testing wifi. Then slowly here it goes. Fusion disconnected.. Reboot. Run disconnected. Slowly but surely got worse.

So I email Apex. Apex cs has been pretty poor so far for me. I've been emailing back and forth for going on 5 hours then no more responses. Mine ran fine but would say unable to connect once in a while. Then it did it more often. Today it wouldn't reconnect. My router is brand new and works fine. I let my son test it on his Xbox playing fortnite and it ran fine for hours. Hooked back up to Apex and no connection. Went through the reset procedure etc. Still no go. My tank is 15 feet from my home router and my phone shows full bars on wifi for the Apex router. My son is upstairs and was able to game using it. The Apex rep kept having me do the obvious things which I do understand but after every test I was told my router was no good. To have a wire run to it. I live in a 2 story home so tearing out my ceilings to install the wire is not an option. But when I connect directly with a 20ft wire and restart it works fine. Then I can plug the router back in and then it works fine for a good while till again it just disconnects.

Hate to say it but definitely regretting this purchase. If there is a setting or some type of port I can change to fix this any help would be greatly appreciated Sadly that help hasn't come from Neptune

 

[AcanthurusRex]

I use an access point, Netgear, such as you might connect to a printer. I disabled the radio in the Apex. Never an issue again.
In my case, I suspect the issue is interference with the Ecotech products.

 

[Aaronhome27]

I'm running a classic on a similar wifi as you. I picked up a iogear gwu627. In hind sight I might have gone with the newer wifi Apex but also since this experience I don't think I would have even considered it either. It worked great when it was first set up other than updates to outlets occasionally not going through. That was just a second tap to upload and it was done. Hopefully there is a fix. It's a lot of money (and beatings from the wife) for a high tech piece of gear that doesn't work as intended right out the gate.

 

[Hack]

"I've been emailing back and forth for going on 5 hours then no more responses."
Wow. So you opened a ticket, they responded back and forth for 5 hours trying to get your Classic up and running on wifi, and then stopped responding after business hours - and your disappointed? I would really like to hear what your expectations for support are.

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

I just got my Apex. Was excited as it started out working great. Wifi worked well after initially hard wiring it for set up. Then installed after testing wifi. Then slowly here it goes. Fusion disconnected.. Reboot. Run disconnected. Slowly but surely got worse.

So I email Apex. Apex cs has been pretty poor so far for me. I've been emailing back and forth for going on 5 hours then no more responses. Mine ran fine but would say unable to connect once in a while. Then it did it more often. Today it wouldn't reconnect. My router is brand new and works fine. I let my son test it on his Xbox playing fortnite and it ran fine for hours. Hooked back up to Apex and no connection. Went through the reset procedure etc. Still no go. My tank is 15 feet from my home router and my phone shows full bars on wifi for the Apex router. My son is upstairs and was able to game using it. The Apex rep kept having me do the obvious things which I do understand but after every test I was told my router was no good. To have a wire run to it. I live in a 2 story home so tearing out my ceilings to install the wire is not an option. But when I connect directly with a 20ft wire and restart it works fine. Then I can plug the router back in and then it works fine for a good while till again it just disconnects.

Hate to say it but definitely regretting this purchase. If there is a setting or some type of port I can change to fix this any help would be greatly appreciated Sadly that help hasn't come from Neptune

If you paid by CC. Then you have the upper hand

 

[Aaronhome27]

Wow. . Yes. It was after business hours and the only thing they continued to tell me for 6 hours was that the router was bad. Then no more responses. So yes. Your exactly right

 

[Aaronhome27]

And the router is now working with no help from them. After I hard wired it in then just plugged it in it is working. That wasn't a CS suggestion. But next time it fails hopefully that is how I can fix it since CS told me I had to hard wire since my router was no good.

 

[Rakie]

Some people just have problem after problem with their Apex. More than a few friends just couldn't solve it, and deal with issues daily. I think there may just be some lemons out there, or there's a black hole in the heart of some unfortunate units.

 

[Amoo]

"I've been emailing back and forth for going on 5 hours then no more responses."
Wow. So you opened a ticket, they responded back and forth for 5 hours trying to get your Classic up and running on wifi, and then stopped responding after business hours - and your disappointed? I would really like to hear what your expectations for support are. I must be missing something...

@Hack I see you have a platinum sponsorship here, but I've only seen you post on a few Neptune threads. Which company are you with?

 

[Rakie]

@Hack I see you have a platinum sponsorship here, but I've only seen you post on a few Neptune threads. Which company are you with?

you know tough questions are frowned upon

 

[Aaronhome27]

And I know I too have come off pretty strong in my post for being new, but I did my research and this seems to be a known issue. Post after post on the Neptune forums. And no real answers. I posted here because this is a large community. And if someone searches Hopefully they end up with an answer from my post if it gets resolved. I will update it if I get a real answer. But a copy paste response for what ended up being 6 hours out of my life is typically frowned upon. Then no direct response other than what I had stated that I needed to just hard wire it because the router was bad. Atleast tell me to buy another router.. .. Lol. But in the end it is working on that bad router but for how long. Something is causing it to boot the router connection in which a hard line and a reboot reset something that allowed the router to work. What is it? When I would reboot using the router it would fix the issue. And early in it would but over time the connection was temporary Could it be changes I'd made or equipment I added that most users will also use. I don't know because I don't have the experience that CS would have. As for the basic stuff like I ly use numerical and alphabetic characters I know and I did. I seriously went through all of the stuff for hours before I spent nearly 6 hours with CS telling me the same stuff with copy paste responses. I was looking for a person in the other end. I told them I had gone through all of the steps they recommend for these issues.

 

[Fritzhamer]

I'm running a classic on a similar wifi as you. I picked up a iogear gwu627. In hind sight I might have gone with the newer wifi Apex but also since this experience I don't think I would have even considered it either. It worked great when it was first set up other than updates to outlets occasionally not going through. That was just a second tap to upload and it was done. Hopefully there is a fix. It's a lot of money (and beatings from the wife) for a high tech piece of gear that doesn't work as intended right out the gate.

As someone with an IT background, this is crazy talk.

When you hardwire the apex to your router the apex works perfect. = Apex works perfectly

When you use the Iogear WiFi device the WiFi cuts out on you. Did you try Iogear tech support? How is this an Apex issue? The Apex classic doesn’t offer WiFi. I’m completely lost how this is an Apex bashing thread.

Also WiFi adapter products are shoddy at best. I absolute hate them. You loose a ton of throughput and even expensive ones aren’t that reliable. I have the 2016 apex and I’ve used it both wired and wireless without issue.

 

[Aaronhome27]

As someone with an IT background, this is crazy talk.

When you hardwire the apex to your router the apex works perfect. = Apex works perfectly

When you use the Iogear WiFi device the WiFi cuts out on you. Did you try Iogear tech support? How is this an Apex issue? The Apex classic doesn’t offer WiFi. I’m completely lost how this is an Apex bashing thread.

Also WiFi adapter products are shoddy at best. I absolute hate them. You loose a ton of throughput and even expensive ones aren’t that reliable. I have the 2016 apex and I’ve used it both wired and wireless without issue.

Once hardwired and working correctly I removed the hardwire. Poof now the iogear is working. This same router I let my son use for a day on fortnite on his Xbox. No lag, no issues. Then when I had the hardwire set up I again let him use it on his Xbox. No issues at all.

There is something in fusion / wifi control that is kicking out the port or some other issue on the router. Again, since I had reset the Apex with a reboot and hardwired it now let's the router function This is all in fusion, nothing to do with the router. Head over to the Neptune forums, this is aan ongoing issues with little to no answers. I was hoping they had a fix is why I contacted CS. Some have issues and some don't. The router I'm using was a recommended router by several in this forum.

 

[Aaronhome27]

And yes it does say right on the description that it is wifi compatible using a wifi adapter (they recommend a netgear) only thing you can't do is firmware update over wifi. It's right in the sales pitch.

 

[Fritzhamer]

The issue sounds to be with the Iogear device, possibly the router. The Xbox and the apex use entirely different ports, different protocols, etc. I’ll give an example. On my 2016 apex I use the IoTa control over my lights. I have an extremely fancy and high tech router with literally every bell and whistle. It will not allow the type of communication that the apex needs to do with my lights to happen over WiFi. This cannot be changed and is not user serviceable.

Neptune has documentation on this and their testing has showed that if you hard wire the apex with this router IoTa control works perfect (and it does). This isn’t an apex issue but rather one with what net gear chose to support in their product. I too can play Xbox and anything else I want to do on this router, those are apples and oranges however.

 

[Aaronhome27]

As someone with an IT background, this is crazy talk.

When you hardwire the apex to your router the apex works perfect. = Apex works perfectly

When you use the Iogear WiFi device the WiFi cuts out on you. Did you try Iogear tech support? How is this an Apex issue? The Apex classic doesn’t offer WiFi. I’m completely lost how this is an Apex bashing thread.

Also WiFi adapter products are shoddy at best. I absolute hate them. You loose a ton of throughput and even expensive ones aren’t that reliable. I have the 2016 apex and I’ve used it both wired and wireless without issue.

 

[Fritzhamer]

And yes it does say right on the description that it is wifi compatible using a wifi adapter (they recommend a netgear) only thing you can't do is firmware update over wifi. It's right in the sales pitch.

Right and you can but they don’t make the adapter. I’ve had issues with just about every adapter I’ve tried at some point. Again, I really really hate them. There also tends to be a ton of interference created by the things we run on our tanks. Couple that with WiFi adapters typically being of super low quality and poor tech to begin with...

Lots of people use them and are happy but you aren’t using the one they recommended. Are there forums of people complaining about the Iogear adapter? Perhaps you’d have better success going with a company known to put out a better product like Cisco/linksys or Netgear for your adapter. Maybe see which brand / model people have had success with, like the one they advertise in the ad.

 

[Aaronhome27]

The issue sounds to be with the Iogear device, possibly the router. The Xbox and the apex use entirely different ports, different protocols, etc. I’ll give an example. On my 2016 apex I use the IoTa control over my lights. I have an extremely fancy and high tech router with literally every bell and whistle. It will not allow the type of communication that the apex needs to do with my lights to happen over WiFi. This cannot be changed and is not user serviceable.

Neptune has documentation on this and their testing has showed that if you hard wire the apex with this router IoTa control works perfect (and it does). This isn’t an apex issue but rather one with what net gear chose to support in their product. I too can play Xbox and anything else I want to do on this router, those are apples and oranges however.

That's the info I'm looking for. I spent about 3 hours looking for answers then 6 hours more with Neptune CS and not a mention with info like that. Had I known this I wouldn't have bought it. I did research here and I bought the router that was highly recommended in many post as having no issues. I'm thinking it might have had something to do with updates I had done. That may have caused it. It's still running with no issues now. Running a hard wire to boot it then switching back to the router seems to have done something to it to allow it to work. I'm thinking for future updates maybe hardwire when doing the updates. But they all went through fine. Then I just lost connection and could get it back till I put a hard wire back on it. For everyday use it looks like it should work now. But time Wil tell. I need to figure out how to save my setting somewhere now. It isn't printed somewhere in black or white how to do a simple save or save as a file to something like a pc in case of an emergency.

Moral of all the back and forth in this thread is 6 hours with CS on an issue that is well known. Nothing but copy paste responses. Simple enough. Thanks for the info, that actually helps myself and anyone else that will likely search this subject. Some of the other responses did nothing to help though other than stir a pot

 

[Amoo]

I Thought the one caveat with running the Classic Apex off of Wifi was that you are supposed to always do updates with it wired. Are you saying you did some without? I may be misunderstanding what you're typing.

 

[Aaronhome27]

The reason for this router (as recommended on a few posts) was size. It's in my Nano setup. This thing is tiny. It fits well inside the cabinet where it is safe