Apple devices not able to use wifi

December 13, 2021 7:21 PM

Here's our internet situation: the wifi is working as usual on the connected PCs and smart devices, but not on the iOS devices. Why? What should we try next?

This happened in a staggered way: one iPad stopped being able to connect last night, one iPhone late at night (then gaining it back, then losing it again), one iPad today.

The iOS devices all appear to be connected normally, showing the expected signal strength, except that data will not load. Cellular data works as usual.

Resetting the network settings failed to do anything on the iPad, as have restarts and turning the wifi setting off and on. The modem and router have been turned off and on again, to no effect. I thought of completely wiping and restoring the iPad from backup until I saw it appeared to be a systemic problem. (Note that these are older iThings and have not been able to auto-install the newest system software.)

What is going on? Do you recognize this? Thanks in advance for your help. I may or may not be able to add much info, because of the obvious, or implement a big solution till tomorrow, but I really, really appreciate it --

posted by Countess Elena to Technology (8 answers total)

Apple has a long history of fucking up its wifi implementation. To be fair, so does Android.

I ran into this kind of thing several times in the decade I worked as a school IT technician. The actual fix always just involved waiting for the next update, but one workaround I found quite useful was disabling all the power-saving features in all the school's wireless access points.
posted by flabdablet at 8:22 PM on December 13, 2021

I don't know off-hand, but it would be helpful to know the ISP and wifi hardware you have, the specific models of devices, and the iOS versions they are running. You mention it's older, but how much older? I assume you have only a single wifi router/access point, and that the SSID (network name) and password are unique to you (e.g. you're not using "Xfinity" or something else a neighbor might also have and it could be trying to associate with)?

When you say they can't connect, what is the specific symptom? Do they not even see that the wifi network exists? If so, can they see other wifi networks in the area (assuming you're close enough to have some other ones visible)? Or do they see it but can't associate with the network? If so, what error do they give? Or they associate with the network but can't connect to the internet? Again, what error? Can you see if they're getting an IP address, nameservers, etc.?
posted by primethyme at 8:55 PM on December 13, 2021

Huh. I saw my iPhone 12 mini do that until I power-cycled it yesterday. I wonder if they determine that they're connected to the internet by pinging a server at Apple and that server went down, but that's a very random guess
posted by wotsac at 9:10 PM on December 13, 2021 [1 favorite]

Try Settings > WiFi and turn “Ask to Join Networks” off. Click on your home network and make sure “Auto Join” is on.

Restart your router.

If that doesn’t work, I’ve had good luck with Apple Support chat.
posted by Kriesa at 3:07 AM on December 14, 2021

Something else I've seen fail with Apple devices is connecting to wireless access points that offer the same SSID over both 2.4GHz and 5GHz radios and attempt to band-steer 2.4GHz connection attempts toward 5GHz.

This is why I've set up my own house's WAPs with three SSIDs: one with a name based on our street address that's available on both bands, another with a -2.4GHz suffix attached to that same name that's available only over 2.4Ghz, and a third with a -5GHz suffix that's available only over 5GHz. All three SSIDs use the same WPA2 secret. Devices that cope when asked to band-steer can connect to the dual-band SSID for best adaption between range and speed; Apple and other picky devices get restricted to an appropriate single-band SSID. This also comes in handy when I want to force a device either to connect to a high speed 5GHz link or fail altogether, rather than have an unplanned auto-fallback blow download times out from tens of minutes to hours.

Forcing little ms flabdablet's iPhones to 5GHz has certainly reduced, but not eliminated, the shouting about the Internet being out again.
posted by flabdablet at 4:01 AM on December 14, 2021

Response by poster: primethyme: for myself, I know I have an iPad Air from like 2013 running 12.5.5 and an iPhone 6S (old when I got it in '17) running 14.8.1. They appear to connect to the wifi successfully and show the signal strength, and you only see the problem when it says "Safari cannot open the page because it could not connect to the server," or whatever the particular app uses to say that it's not connected to the internet. The names and passwords are unique to us; there are three different named networks on the same ISP connection (Suddenlink), and they do share a password. When I look up the IP address online, it says "unable to connect." I don't know what that means. I'm not sure what nameserver means in this context, I'm sorry.

Kriesa: I will try that as soon as I get a chance!
posted by Countess Elena at 5:56 AM on December 14, 2021

Response by poster: Kreisa: thank you so much! That worked! I will keep this in mind in the future --
posted by Countess Elena at 10:20 AM on December 14, 2021

I had this once and it turned out to be a DNS issue. I had "platinum level" support with my ISP at the time for reasons, and even at elevated levels, it took a while to figure out. I had switched my DNS to some alternate version, but returning it to the ISPs standard server solved the problem. Even if you haven't changed it, you could try a couple of different servers to see if it makes a difference. Try changing it at the router. You'll likely have to google how to do it for your specific model of router, but it's usually easy to do and takes just a few seconds.
posted by Rock Steady at 9:52 AM on December 17, 2021