When you're using a mobile hotspot to connect your devices to the internet you might notice that your wired or wireless connections drop frequently. This is often due to router conflicts with mobile tethers. These conflicts happen because your phone and router are both acting as DHCP servers. Sometimes they end up using identical subnet ranges, which causes IP address conflicts.

Begin troubleshooting by inspecting your LAN settings. Look at the LAN network segment your router is using. Most home routers default to 192.168.1.x. Now check the IP range your phone is assigning when it acts as a hotspot. Many mobile carriers use common private subnets, which causes network confusion. If both devices are using the overlapping IP scope, your devices can't tell where to send traffic, leading to dropped connections.

Next, try disconnecting your mobile tether and see if your home router works normally. If it does, the problem is due to IP overlap. Now reconnect the tether and check if any devices on your home network can no longer connect. Sometimes your phone will assign itself an overlapping default route, causing network loop. You can check this by checking the IP configuration in your OS. Look for messages about IP conflicts.

A frequent problem is dual routing. This occurs when your phone performs routing functions and your home router also acts as a router. This double layer can slow down performance and disable port forwarding that rely on UPnP. To fix this, you can try flashing firmware to bypass routing. This turns your router into a simple network switch and lets your phone handle DHCP duties. Alternatively, you can use the phone as your primary access point, though this may limit device capacity.

Tweak your phone’s network sharing options. Some phones allow you to modify the subnet mask. If you're using a dual-band Wi-Fi on your router, and your phone is using a conflicting frequency, throughput drops. Try switching your router to a non-overlapping band. You can use a Wi-Fi analyzer app on your phone to see which bands are overloaded.

Reset your router and mobile hotspot. Sometimes a factory reset of network services clears up kernel-level routing errors. After restarting, reconnect your devices one by one and monitor the connection. If the problem returns after re-enabling tethering, you've confirmed the conflict. The best long term solution is to change your router’s subnet to a non-standard range. Try using 10.0.0.x, so it no longer overlaps with your phone's common hotspot subnet. This way, both networks can coexist without interfering with each other.