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Question

IOS 15 WIFI Disconnect

  • December 10, 2021
  • 13 replies
  • 49 views
JesseC1006
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Greetings all,

 

So I'll try and give a quick rundown of what we are doing.  I work for a school district and we have a specific SSID for the students and their iPads.  With that said we have a config profile that has the into to AutoJoin them to said specific SSID.  We've been having students dropping WIFI.  50-75 kids.  Not at all once and basically pretty random.

With that part said we have about 4000 iPads within the district and 99% of those don't have any issues.  What seems to be happening is that if the Ipad was to die (lose power) or the user powers it off for whatever reason it won't reconnect to WIFI when it comes back on.  

What we kinda found out messing around today is that if we disable "Autojoin" with in the WIFI settings in IOS itself, the issue seems to go away.  We were able to power the device off and then back on and it was reconnecting for us.  We have other users on IOS15 that don't have this issue.  But they also don't power down or let the battery die.  Just wanted to run it by all of you to see what you think and maybe get some opinions.  I haven't called Apple yet and I know IOS 15.2 is due out probably next week.  Maybe this is just a bug for now.

I appreciate and info or help with this.  I also have an open ticket with JAMF support.

Jesse

      13 replies

      A
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      • Ayala
      • New Contributor
      • December 10, 2021
      If you continue to have WiFi issues, you should also consider rebooting your device. A fresh start can clear minor glitches that could interfere with the WiFi connection. How to: Turn iPhone Off and power it back On, or use the force restart trick to get the same result in one single step.
       
      JesseC1006
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      • JesseC1006
      • Author
      • Contributor
      • December 10, 2021
      If you continue to have WiFi issues, you should also consider rebooting your device. A fresh start can clear minor glitches that could interfere with the WiFi connection. How to: Turn iPhone Off and power it back On, or use the force restart trick to get the same result in one single step.
       

      Yeah we are past the part of rebooting the device.  I wipe of the device doesn't fix it.  And in fact rebooting or losing power on the device on IOS 15 is what we think is causing this issue.  

      M
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      • mainelysteve
      • Contributor
      • December 10, 2021

      Yeah we are past the part of rebooting the device.  I wipe of the device doesn't fix it.  And in fact rebooting or losing power on the device on IOS 15 is what we think is causing this issue.  


      Are there passcodes on these devices? iOS/iPadOS devices are meant to not reconnect to a network connection after the battery is run flat or it's rebooted if a passcode is present. 

      You mention you've wiped these devices. Have you tried a DFU restore for kicks and giggles?

      JesseC1006
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      • JesseC1006
      • Author
      • Contributor
      • December 10, 2021

      Are there passcodes on these devices? iOS/iPadOS devices are meant to not reconnect to a network connection after the battery is run flat or it's rebooted if a passcode is present. 

      You mention you've wiped these devices. Have you tried a DFU restore for kicks and giggles?


      No passcodes are used on the devices.  We have them locked down pretty good for the most part.  Kids like to mess with devices more and more these days.

      As for the DFU restore.  Yeah we have done it on a few.  I honestly think its an IOS 15 issue.  School just started here this morning and we already had one kid that couldn't reconnect because he shut it off last night.  And he's on IOS 15.  

      D
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      • DanielC19963
      • New Contributor
      • January 26, 2022

      Was there ever a resolution to this. We seem to be experiencing the same issue in our school district.

      JesseC1006
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      • JesseC1006
      • Author
      • Contributor
      • January 26, 2022

      Was there ever a resolution to this. We seem to be experiencing the same issue in our school district.


      We never found one. We had to temporally change our WIFI to WEP just so we can have the students connect.  I've had calls into JAMF and Apple about this and no real help.  I gave up on JAMF.  3 different people were responding to my open ticket and not one of them were on the same page.  After the second time having to explain the issue I just gave up.

      Reach out to me if you wanna collab on this issue.  I'm always available 

      B
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      • bderose
      • New Contributor
      • March 3, 2022

      We're having almost the exact same issues. We added a new WiFi payload to our student device configuration with no more success. And the fact that it's so random is driving me crazy.  Adding this comment to follow. 

       

      Brian

        JesseC1006
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        • JesseC1006
        • Author
        • Contributor
        • March 3, 2022

        We're having almost the exact same issues. We added a new WiFi payload to our student device configuration with no more success. And the fact that it's so random is driving me crazy.  Adding this comment to follow. 

         

        Brian


        Yeah Brian.....We've been working on this issue for months now.  We're resorted to using WEP right now.  Not sure why we didn't do WPA the first time.  We were overthinking it.  LOL

        We have way to many devices to make a change right now.  We are a k-12 school so the little kids might not know how to reconnect to WIFI if our change was to disconnect them.  Reach out to me if you wanna chat more about it.  I'll lend a hand where I can.

         

        Jesse

        B
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        • bderose
        • New Contributor
        • March 8, 2022

        Yeah Brian.....We've been working on this issue for months now.  We're resorted to using WEP right now.  Not sure why we didn't do WPA the first time.  We were overthinking it.  LOL

        We have way to many devices to make a change right now.  We are a k-12 school so the little kids might not know how to reconnect to WIFI if our change was to disconnect them.  Reach out to me if you wanna chat more about it.  I'll lend a hand where I can.

         

        Jesse


        I think we found the issue.

        In Georgia, the State DOE provided each system an outdoor AP for community use in response to COVID. We had these installed (2x/school). After looking at the device connections it appeared that devices (iPads and teacher LTs MacBook Airs) -for whatever reason- wanted to connect to the outdoor AP instead of the AP in the classroom. So the pods/classrooms in the immediate vicinity to the outdoor AP were the ones having the most issues. We turned the ports off to these APs and -so far- the situation has improved greatly. 

        JesseC1006
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        • JesseC1006
        • Author
        • Contributor
        • March 8, 2022

        I think we found the issue.

        In Georgia, the State DOE provided each system an outdoor AP for community use in response to COVID. We had these installed (2x/school). After looking at the device connections it appeared that devices (iPads and teacher LTs MacBook Airs) -for whatever reason- wanted to connect to the outdoor AP instead of the AP in the classroom. So the pods/classrooms in the immediate vicinity to the outdoor AP were the ones having the most issues. We turned the ports off to these APs and -so far- the situation has improved greatly. 


        We have two of those here at our District but our building is big enough where if you are on the other end of the school there is no way they would reach.  So that can't be the issue for us.  Unless having them in the same "Site" has something to do with it?

        M
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        • mainelysteve
        • Contributor
        • March 8, 2022

        I think we found the issue.

        In Georgia, the State DOE provided each system an outdoor AP for community use in response to COVID. We had these installed (2x/school). After looking at the device connections it appeared that devices (iPads and teacher LTs MacBook Airs) -for whatever reason- wanted to connect to the outdoor AP instead of the AP in the classroom. So the pods/classrooms in the immediate vicinity to the outdoor AP were the ones having the most issues. We turned the ports off to these APs and -so far- the situation has improved greatly. 


        Ohio provided something similar in grant form that needed to be accessible to the community not the just school itself which sort of limited our choices on what to do with those dollars. We used Meraki outdoor APs' that have an external omni-directional antenna. Our buildings aren't huge and the APs are on the exterior walls shared with classrooms so there is a chance a client will pick it over the AP in the interior of the classroom. We don't see much traffic on these, so it's a case of either tagging these APs to only broadcast a guest network your districts' devices won't be on, or turn the radio down enough so that they're still useful, but won't cause the classroom AP to turn it's radio down enough that it's no longer useful.

        B
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        • bderose
        • New Contributor
        • March 9, 2022

        Ohio provided something similar in grant form that needed to be accessible to the community not the just school itself which sort of limited our choices on what to do with those dollars. We used Meraki outdoor APs' that have an external omni-directional antenna. Our buildings aren't huge and the APs are on the exterior walls shared with classrooms so there is a chance a client will pick it over the AP in the interior of the classroom. We don't see much traffic on these, so it's a case of either tagging these APs to only broadcast a guest network your districts' devices won't be on, or turn the radio down enough so that they're still useful, but won't cause the classroom AP to turn it's radio down enough that it's no longer useful.


        Yes, we are going to experiment with the radio power after testing. The interesting thing is the randomness of the devices that are choosing to connect to the outdoor AP. 

        Also interesting to note that after shutting down the outside APs, the situation did improve, but we still received reports of a  few devices that were momentarily dropping connections. We found that these student devices were traveling to different rooms around the building. So once a connection drops from one AP, and reconnects to another the user is logged out of their certain (app) processes.  

        D
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        • DrJohnSmtih
        • New Contributor
        • April 21, 2022

        I believe I have similar issues to this. iPads don't automatically reconnect to wifi, and there are crashes or the entire device hangs while using the dropdown menu or settings app to connecting manually. Disabling "Force Wi-Fi to be on" in the wireless profile caused the issue to go away. Was not an issue on 15.1, but is on 15.2.1 and later. I reported it to Apple about 3 months ago but haven't heard anything back. 

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