Fordpass always connecting via cellular and not wifi

[bub]

Seems fordpass is always slow and appears to be talking over cellular instead of wifi even though the truck is connected to my home wifi network.
The same wifi network my phone is paired with.

I lost power today and was watching the propower screen and it says its on cellular.

Does any one have experience with this problem?
Truck says its on the same wifi network that my phone is.

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[TaxmanHog]

For the purposes of Fordpass, it's generally passing data and commands through the Ford cloud servers and back to your truck, which have been horrendously slow ever since the release of FP 4.30.2 this data transits the telematics At&T cell device in your truck.

It seems that when we connect our trucks to our home network, it's mostly to benefit downloading data files to update /patch systems in the truck and to facilitate the entertainment / media services (YouTube, NBC MSNBC services), I do not think PPOB uses our wifi for status updates, hence you're accurately seeing that the updates are coming in via the telematics cell connection.

 

[bub]

Thanks. I understand the telemetrics goes up to cloud servers. But shouldn't that be happening over wifi when a working wifi network is available? Or does the truck not do that?

It would be nice if...

• Telemetrics went over wifi when wifi was available. That should speed things up a little.
• Fordpass could negotiate a local direct wifi connection to the truck when the truck is powered on, connected to wifi, and your fordpass device is on the same network.

The propower screen is great to see if my 2 120v split phase legs are balanced when I'm powering appliances around my house. But its pretty useless in its current state with how abysmal the update time is.

 

[TaxmanHog]

Thanks. I understand the telemetrics goes up to cloud servers. But shouldn't that be happening over wifi when a working wifi network is available? Or does the truck not do that?

It would be nice if...

• Telemetrics went over wifi when wifi was available. That should speed things up a little.
• Fordpass could negotiate a local direct wifi connection to the truck when the truck is powered on, connected to wifi, and your fordpass device is on the same network.

The propower screen is great to see if my 2 120v split phase legs are balanced when I'm powering appliances around my house. But its pretty useless in its current state with how abysmal the update time is.

I suppose when engineered properly anything is possible, but my experiences are that the truck continues with the cellular telematics for certain activities.

 

[Mike G]

If you want to watch YT videos it will use your home Wi-Fi or the built in hotspot subscription if you signed up for that...for anything technically related it uses the trucks TCU...and that includes downloading OTAs.

 

[lakeguy55]

I've seen many references to the use of the AT&T cellular network for updates. This may explain why I have not received any yet. Where I live, and where the truck is parked 99% of the time, there is virtually no cell coverage. Our cell plan is through AT&T which we access using one of their Cell Boosters, which communicate over the internet. https://www.att.com/support/article/wireless/KM1452148/

I realize this may be a weird corner case, but for those who understand the details of how the Ford servers use the AT&T network, would my truck see the Cell Booster the same as a standard cell tower? If not, do I need to park at a family members house who has real AT&T coverage for a few months in the hope that the random, magic, Update Genie will fly over and update my truck?

 

[Mike G]

I've seen many references to the use of the AT&T cellular network for updates. This may explain why I have not received any yet. Where I live, and where the truck is parked 99% of the time, there is virtually no cell coverage. Our cell plan is through AT&T which we access using one of their Cell Boosters, which communicate over the internet. https://www.att.com/support/article/wireless/KM1452148/

I realize this may be a weird corner case, but for those who understand the details of how the Ford servers use the AT&T network, would my truck see the Cell Booster the same as a standard cell tower? If not, do I need to park at a family members house who has real AT&T coverage for a few months in the hope that the random, magic, Update Genie will fly over and update my truck?

I live out in the country and for the first year and a half owning my '21 Mach-e I got bupkis for OTAs. AT&T was only two bars maximum if you were lucky. So now I have a Lightning and a '23 Mach-E and right off the bat both of them were able to pull down OTAs easier than my first car. Could be that AT&T got a bit better as well. You can see the car's signal strength on the Sync page for the hotspot connection if I remember correctly.

Overall the most success I've had is having the car or truck check for updates while I'm on a drive. Most highways have good cell coverage and after a few minutes of driving your 12V battery is recharged back up above 80% which helps with the download logic.

 

[GoodSam]

If you want to watch YT videos it will use your home Wi-Fi or the built in hotspot subscription if you signed up for that

I have AT&T Hotspot and it will not work for Android Auto data. I think that is crazy. I wanted that AT&T unlimited data at $20/mo for AA instead of using my Google Fi cell account data at a higher price. I do not get what is happening that way.

 

[GoodSam]

Long, roundabout discussion of how the Hotspot is working, with possible phone variations, over in the ICE forum:
school-me-on-the-built-in-hotspot
I would think that if you are in a place without cell coverage, but had wi-fi available, OTA's could use that. Is there any satellite reception involved, like SiriusXM style?

And it is weird that our cell phone cannot use the Hotspot for Android Auto data, only its cell provider is allowed. What if the cell provider is AT&T? Any coordination with the cell plan and the Hotspot plan?

 

[mr.Magoo]

I have AT&T Hotspot and it will not work for Android Auto data. I think that is crazy. I wanted that AT&T unlimited data at $20/mo for AA instead of using my Google Fi cell account data at a higher price. I do not get what is happening that way.

The best (only) option I've found is to plug in your phone, that way it can connect to another wifi network and use a travel router ($30).
That way you can mirror your hotspot from the truck and the truck thinks it's just another wifi network and will connect to it.

With regards to the truck using cell for "truck stuff" (OTA, telematics, etc.), that would make sense, that way you (Ford) is in control of how it works and who sees what. If you do that over wifi you'll have to deal with people's IT configurations (firewalls etc ) and risk that some run packet sniffers and tries to hack or reverse engineer OTAs. Much easier to skip all that and just leave it to cell data.

 

[RickLightning]

I've seen many references to the use of the AT&T cellular network for updates. This may explain why I have not received any yet. Where I live, and where the truck is parked 99% of the time, there is virtually no cell coverage. Our cell plan is through AT&T which we access using one of their Cell Boosters, which communicate over the internet. https://www.att.com/support/article/wireless/KM1452148/

I realize this may be a weird corner case, but for those who understand the details of how the Ford servers use the AT&T network, would my truck see the Cell Booster the same as a standard cell tower? If not, do I need to park at a family members house who has real AT&T coverage for a few months in the hope that the random, magic, Update Genie will fly over and update my truck?

You need to drive where there is cell coverage.

 

[tls]

Seems fordpass is always slow and appears to be talking over cellular instead of wifi even though the truck is connected to my home wifi network.
The same wifi network my phone is paired with.

I lost power today and was watching the propower screen and it says its on cellular.

Does any one have experience with this problem?
Truck says its on the same wifi network that my phone is.

The truck has two separate computers in it both of which will try to use your WiFi. The DHCP client in the ancient QNX operating system on one of them has serious bugs which make it unable to reliably get a network address from many routers. Since QNX is basically dead it's unlikely Ford will ever fix this. Unfortunately for many app functions and for upgrades to flow over WiFi both computers need to be working on the WiFi network.

Some people have reported that they've been able to reconfigure their routers to work around the big, whatever it is. If your router has a screen of DHCP settings and there's a domain name configured in there, try taking it out - that's one thing several people here seem to have had luck with.

 

[bub]

The truck has two separate computers in it both of which will try to use your WiFi. The DHCP client in the ancient QNX operating system on one of them has serious bugs which make it unable to reliably get a network address from many routers. Since QNX is basically dead it's unlikely Ford will ever fix this. Unfortunately for many app functions and for upgrades to flow over WiFi both computers need to be working on the WiFi network.

Some people have reported that they've been able to reconfigure their routers to work around the big, whatever it is. If your router has a screen of DHCP settings and there's a domain name configured in there, try taking it out - that's one thing several people here seem to have had luck with.

Do you know what I can use to confirm the trucks wifi is working properly? My truck is the Canadian varient and doesn't have youtube, so I can't test with that...
Can the fordpass propower monitor work over wifi like i had assumed?

I'm using pfsense for my firewall/router with default DHCP settings. No domain has been specified in the DHCP server.

 

[tls]

See if pfsense shows two devices pop up (two new MAC addresses) when you turn on WiFi in your truck. If they both get IP addresses and you can ping them you're in good shape. If one of them just sits there sending DHCP DISCOVER over and over again...you have the problem.

 

[TaxmanHog]

See if pfsense shows two devices pop up (two new MAC addresses) when you turn on WiFi in your truck. If they both get IP addresses and you can ping them you're in good shape. If one of them just sits there sending DHCP DISCOVER over and over again...you have the problem.

If we pull/insert fuse 32 does that help resolving a stuck situation??

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