Elias Smith

I have an older reader that did this and it turned out the issue was compatibility with newer router settings honestly not the reader dying. Phones are way more forgiving so they keep working and it makes you think the device is at fault. Quick isolation test first. Try connecting the reader to a phone hotspot. If it connects and downloads and your router setup is the likely problem. Worth a shot. If the hotspot works, zero in on the 2.4 GHz band. Many readers only speak 2.4 and they dislike newer security mixes. Temporarily split your Wi Fi so 2.4 and 5 have different names, then point the reader at the 2.4 one. Set security to WPA2 with AES only, turn off WPA3 and TKIP, use 20 MHz channel width, and pick channel 1 or 6 or 11. Disable band steering or smart connect during testing and try again, if it still fails flip it back and move on. Simplify the network name and password for a test with only letters and numbers, and make sure the network is visible. Turn off MAC filtering if you have it. Hidden SSIDs and special characters can trip up older firmware. On the reader check date and time. If they are wrong by a lot, secure connections can fail without a clear error. Toggle airplane mode, do a full power off then back on, and make sure there is no proxy configured. Try a network settings reset on the reader, then a full factory reset only after backing up your books and notes. A corrupted Wi Fi profile can survive normal restarts. If the hotspot fails too, the Wi Fi radio could be failing. Before calling it, try a basic access point set to 2.4 with WPA2 only, maybe a borrowed router. If it cannot see networks at all or drops them instantly, that points to hardware. One last angle is DHCP and DNS. Make sure the router has free addresses to hand out and consider switching DNS to a public resolver. I have seen flaky DNS make an e reader say connection failed even though the Wi Fi link was up.

Even with reservations a short DHCP lease can trip a whole fleet at night when they all renew while the radio does a quick reset. Give them a long lease window and avoid nightly maintenance windows on the router so yeah fixed 2.4 channel, 20 MHz, WPA2 only, PMF optional, and no band steering is the safe recipe. After that, most plugs hum along. Set and forget.