Glowforge not centering, going offline and flooding network

Community Support
1

Not sure if there was a change last night? But today my Glowforge will not get itself online. It has gotten stuck at the centering stage, then it would get through that and the app would say it is ‘Offline’.

I restarted my WiFi network. I even switched it over to a different connection, but no go.

I was pinging google.com during the reboots wondering if I was losing connection and while the GlowForge is trying to get going my ping times went up to >5000ms (usually ~45ms). I suspect the machine was flooding my network.

It is really odd because everything worked for me yesterday.

2

When you powered off the GF, did the ping time instantly drop? When turned back on, did the pings slow down again? A better measure might be to run a trace route, which will tell you which network hop is the bottleneck.

2 Likes
3

Here’s a link to some wifi troubleshooting steps to help rule out more common causes: WiFi troubleshooting steps

4

Yes, the ping time instantly dropped when I turned the GF off. And it kicked up a few seconds after turning it on.

5

Thanks, I had found a different thread and went through the starting and stopping of everything… I will follow along the rest of the suggestions on the thread you pointed out and see what I get.

2 Likes
6

So, I ran the pings from on top of the GF and to app.glowforge.com as suggested. I ran one test before I turned it on, then a few while the GF was on, a traceroute while it was on and finally one ping test after I turned it off. Here are the results.

— production.d.glowforge.com ping statistics —

50 packets transmitted, 49 packets received, +3 duplicates, 2.0% packet loss

round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 48.864/64.181/119.989/16.481 ms

********************* Turned GF ON *********************

Jesses-MBP:~ jesseb$ ping -c 50 app.glowforge.com

PING production.d.glowforge.com (104.198.205.251): 56 data bytes

— production.d.glowforge.com ping statistics —

50 packets transmitted, 44 packets received, +8 duplicates, 12.0% packet loss

round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 49.155/501.983/4464.949/729.548 ms

Jesses-MBP:~ jesseb$ ping -c 50 app.glowforge.com

PING production.d.glowforge.com (104.198.205.251): 56 data bytes

— production.d.glowforge.com ping statistics —

50 packets transmitted, 50 packets received, +3 duplicates, 0.0% packet loss

round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 193.983/3288.968/7669.114/2219.573 ms

Jesses-MBP:~ jesseb$ ping -c 50 app.glowforge.com

PING production.d.glowforge.com (104.198.205.251): 56 data bytes

— production.d.glowforge.com ping statistics —

50 packets transmitted, 47 packets received, +3 duplicates, 6.0% packet loss

round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 55.033/2665.361/6561.105/2331.576 ms

Jesses-MBP:~ jesseb$ traceroute app.glowforge.com

traceroute to production.d.glowforge.com (104.198.205.251), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets

1 pk5001z.pk5001z (192.168.0.1) 2624.647 ms * 116.509 ms

2 67-4-0-254.sxfl.qwest.net (67.4.0.254) 418.404 ms 50.245 ms 39.531 ms

3 stpl-agw1.inet.qwest.net (207.109.3.137) 42.065 ms 30.634 ms 46.815 ms

4 cer-edge-22.inet.qwest.net (205.171.139.22) 39.821 ms 39.575 ms 41.548 ms

5 208.47.121.146 (208.47.121.146) 43.194 ms 41.655 ms 44.747 ms

6 108.170.243.219 (108.170.243.219) 37.743 ms

108.170.243.197 (108.170.243.197) 43.263 ms

108.170.243.165 (108.170.243.165) 42.729 ms

7 216.239.63.175 (216.239.63.175) 44.379 ms

216.239.57.77 (216.239.57.77) 42.703 ms

209.85.241.123 (209.85.241.123) 41.548 ms

8 209.85.247.5 (209.85.247.5) 57.576 ms

209.85.143.103 (209.85.143.103) 55.947 ms

209.85.247.5 (209.85.247.5) 58.781 ms

9 172.253.64.215 (172.253.64.215) 55.340 ms

172.253.69.199 (172.253.69.199) 53.128 ms

216.239.56.177 (216.239.56.177) 54.763 ms

10 * 108.170.225.203 (108.170.225.203) 63.780 ms

74.125.251.191 (74.125.251.191) 1544.444 ms

11 * * *

12 * * *

13 * * *

14 * * *

15 *^C

Jesses-MBP:~ jesseb$ ping -c 50 app.glowforge.com

PING production.d.glowforge.com (104.198.205.251): 56 data bytes

— production.d.glowforge.com ping statistics —

50 packets transmitted, 44 packets received, +3 duplicates, 12.0% packet loss

round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 52.980/4832.955/15523.443/4758.961 ms

************ TURNED OFF GF ***********************

Jesses-MBP:~ jesseb$ ping -c 50 app.glowforge.com

PING production.d.glowforge.com (104.198.205.251): 56 data bytes

— production.d.glowforge.com ping statistics —

50 packets transmitted, 49 packets received, +4 duplicates, 2.0% packet loss

round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 47.497/84.198/617.086/84.638 ms

7

Would be interesting once you have it functioning again, to repeat your test to determine if that condition is “normal” for the GF unit. There were server issues yesterday, so maybe it’s not fully resolved?

2 Likes
8

I’m sorry for the trouble, and thanks for providing these details. I took a look at the logs from your Glowforge and the connection activity is consistent with a slow or unstable Wi-Fi connection. Though network-specific Wi-Fi challenges may occur for a number of different reasons, I have a few suggestions that may help:

  • If your Wi-Fi network includes several access points, it’s possible that your Glowforge needs to re-establish its connection whenever it ‘hops’ from one access point to another. As a test, you could try creating a dedicated access point for the Glowforge to see if that helps.
  • Since Glowforge only uses the 2.4GHz frequency, a connection will be harder to establish and maintain on a crowded 2.4GHz network. Other devices using 2.4GHz, like cordless phones and microwaves, can cause interference and an unstable connection. You can consult your router settings to check the performance and traffic on your 2.4GHz network.
  • In your network settings, check the channel you’re using for the 2.4GHz band. Trying a different channel may provide a more consistent connection.
  • Though less common, DNS or name resolution conflicts may also cause intermittent connectivity problems. You may want to try changing the DNS server in your router settings.

If you’re still having trouble, there’s a test you can try that will help us narrow down the problem. If possible, could you please create a Wi-Fi hotspot with a cell phone and use that network to connect your Glowforge to Wi-Fi?

You can find instructions online to help you create a Wi-Fi hotspot using a cell phone. Make sure that you set it up to be a 2.4 GHz hotspot, since that is the frequency your Glowforge uses.

Once the Wi-Fi hotspot is broadcasting, you can connect to it by following these steps:

  1. Turn on your Glowforge.
  2. Wait 30 seconds. Then hold down the button for ten seconds until it glows teal.
  3. Navigate to setup.glowforge.com and follow the instructions on-screen. When prompted to connect your Glowforge to Wi-Fi, choose the hotspot you created.
  4. Once Wi-Fi setup is complete, go to app.glowforge.com and try a few prints.

Let us know how it goes.

9

I was able to print through my mobile hotspot. I have a technician coming out from my internet service provider tomorrow.

I think the packet loss is due to a loose line outside the house and though most of my devices deal with it ok (though it slows everything down) the GF just will not handle it.

I will let you know if everything resolves itself once they have fixed that problem.

Thank you for all the help.

10

Thanks for the update. Please let me know how it goes!

11

You can close the ticket. My provider ended up replacing my wireless router and things are working again. Thank you all for all the troubleshooting help.

1 Like
12

That’s great news - though I am sorry for all the trouble in the meantime! Thanks for updating us here. I’ll go ahead and close this out, but please let us know if you run into any other issues. We’re here to help!