I have tried everything from restarting the router to doing a hard reboot of the router and modem. For the last few days my WiFi keeps dropping randomly.
Ethernet works fine. No issues there.
But on WiFi, FaceTime will connect for a minute or two, then drop. Sometimes my phone switches to cellular data. My laptop also randomly says it is connected but pages stop loading for a bit.
I checked the router logs and keep seeing something like:
DoS Attack: ACK Scan from source 53.121.XX.XX
Is this the reason? Am I being attacked? Any advice would be appreciated.
Don’t panic over the “DoS Attack” log yet. A lot of consumer routers label random internet noise as “DoS attack” because scary words make the firewall page look useful. If Ethernet is working fine while WiFi drops, I’d look at the wireless side first. Are all WiFi devices dropping, or just one phone/laptop?
@Fair-Algae-3150 It happens mostly on my phone during FaceTime, but my laptop also gets weird sometimes. Ethernet desktop is totally fine. That’s why I thought maybe the router is under attack but only WiFi shows it somehow.
If the router was actually getting knocked offline, Ethernet would usually suffer too. This sounds more like WiFi instability: bad channel, band steering being dumb, weak 5 GHz in that room, crowded 2.4 GHz, or the router’s WiFi radio starting to flake out. First test: separate your 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz names temporarily. Connect the phone only to 5 GHz and test FaceTime. Then try 2.4 GHz. See if one band is the problem.
Also check if your 5 GHz is using DFS channels. Some routers pick DFS automatically. If radar detection kicks in, the router has to move channels, and clients can disconnect for a bit. It’s not super common for everyone, but when it happens it looks exactly like “WiFi randomly drops but wired is fine.” Try setting 5 GHz to a normal non-DFS channel and see if it stops.
The DoS log is probably a red herring. I had a Netgear that screamed “ACK scan attack” every day for years. Somehow the hackers were polite enough to only attack when my microwave was on, apparently. Look at boring stuff first: firmware update, router overheating, channel width, crowded channels, band steering, smart connect.
Drop Wi-Fi analyzer app to see what’s actually happening in your airspace. Forget about checking DoS logs — no basic scanner is going to alert you to an actual “attack”, but a simple channel graph will show you the real story. Open up the inspector or network view and check the signal levels and bands your devices are hitting. If your phone is stuck camping on a congested 2.4 GHz channel, or if the 5 GHz RSSI completely tanks in the room where your FaceTime drops, you finally have concrete data to troubleshoot.If the drops are isolated to one specific room, map out a quick heatmap. Checking the signal level will pinpoint the physical dead zones, while looking at the Signal-to-Interference Ratio (SIR) will tell you if the signal is strong but just drowning in neighbor noise.