WiFi disconnect problem in 16.5

Yes. This isn’t a router issue. It’s an iOS issue. Everyone with an Android has no issues. Everyone with an iPhone has the issue (regardless of the iPhone model).

apple has no idea, talked to their support team and have no answers.. just ridiculous, your company is worth a trillion dollars and u cant get ur flagship product to stay connected to wifi, but sure add 6 more security steps so it takes me 30 minutes to login to this forum. tech is so overcomplicated at this point the people who make it dont even know whats going on or dont care enough to address issues.

I too have had this start a couple weeks ago. It constantly disconnects from WiFi and reconnects about every 5-10 seconds. Absolutely infuriating.

I think there’s something up with the last iOS update. Everyone who has entered my house with an iPhone has issues connecting to Wi-Fi but the android phones work fine. We’ve tried everything and we still lose Wi-Fi connection randomly. It’s not just when we set the phones down. We’ll be searching something and then the Wi-Fi will drop out. We’ve even tried to mess with settings on the router but it doesn’t change.

For your edification: Wi-Fi normally connects to a router, which assigns an IP address using a protocol called DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol). But it’s possible to also use Wi-Fi to connect a group of devices to each other rather than to the Internet in what is called an ad-hoc network. Ad-hoc networks use IP addresses in the range that starts with 169.254.0.0. Each device in the ad-hoc network creates its own IP address in this range. When you connect a device to a network it will "ask" the router for an IP address using DHCP. If it doesn’t get an IP address assigned within 30 seconds it assumes that it is an ad-hoc network and assigns itself a random address in the range 169.254.x.y.

There is a common failure mode in many routers where the DHCP “daemon” process in the router fails, and it stops assigning IP addresses, so a new device connecting to the network will self-assign. But any device connected to the router that already has an IP address will continue to work. This makes it look like the problem is the phone, because everything else connected still works, but it’s actually the fact that the router is no longer assigning IP addresses. While it can happen to any device using the router the problem is more common with phones that disconnect when they go out of range, and reconnect when you get “home” and thus get a new IP address assigned. Rebooting the router restarts the DHCP daemon and resolves the problem.

The reason it happens with many different routers is that most routers have the same underlying open source operating system. It’s primarily a problem with routers more that a few years old; newer ones from top tier manufacturers rarely have this problem.

Bumping this, having same issue with iphone 14 plus just got it, old iphone 11 never did this. Phone has to lock/idle for few min or more and then when i start using again the wifi may or may not work. If i toggle wifi on/off it will work but its annoying to do that and not know if i need to or not bc it doesnt always happen.

I found the solution to my problem. The Motorola modem offers WPS as one of the security modes. It states that Apple stopped supporting this in March of 21. I left it enabled in case one of my other devices was using it. Today I disabled the use of WPS and the iPhone now behaves as it should. After months of chasing this, all I had to do was turn off WPS. I hope this helps someone else out there.

Same issue with my 13-mini. I often have to turn off the WiFi on the phone and then turn it back on. I have made all the listed changes but no luck. It’s only my Apple devices that do this. My phone just did it but my laptop kept working fine on the same modem.

What worked for me:

I had an intermittent WiFi connection. When I looked at the VPN control [General Settings: VPN & Device Management] I found that the current VPN config. was shutting off, and then restarting itself several times each minute. I could manually click the VPN to OFF; but within a few seconds the switch would turn itself back ON. Then within another few seconds, the VPN would turn itself back OFF. This behavior would continue -- effectively gating the WiFi connection ON and OFF every 15 seconds or so. (And that's what my apps were doing--Weather would initially report No Internet, then after a wait it would update and report current conditions.)

I went to the current active VPN config. and clicked DELETE, and confirmed that command. Poof went the bad VPN configuration; and WiFi has been solid ever since. In my case, the VPN is done entirely in the TCP/IP connection software; there is no dedicated VPN hardware. So no hardware reset/restart was needed. I deleted one defective VPN config. from my iPhone settings, and the problem vanished. I have not yet tried to configure a replacement VPN. The one I was using was Google's free "1.1.1.1" VPN. But any VPN config. can go bad, any time any participant in that config. sends an update. In my case that was Google (VPN vendor,) and Apple (iPhone and iOS vendor.) Even if Apple were the vendor for the entire configuration, we still couldn't bet that an in-use configuration would survive every update. Hope this helps!

needleman_mark Said:

"WiFi disconnect problem in 16.5: I have a problem that seems to have started in 16.4 but has continued in 16 5. My iPhone 14 pro max disconnects from WiFi once or twice a day and I have to reboot it to get the WiFi back. I have a max ok air and iPad Pro that are on the same WiFi network and they haven’t had this problem "

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Report back if anything here helps...

Troubleshooting iPhone WiFi:

A few thoughts to try:

I. Start Here: If your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch won't Connect to a Wi-Fi Network - Apple Support

II. Clear the Temporary Internet Files:

• Cookies perform remembrance of certain site-entered data.
• Cache keeps a snapshot of the last time you visited a site.
• Go Here: Clear the History and Cookies from Safari on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch - Apple Support

III. Restart your Router:

1. Power: off the router
2. Wait: 30 seconds
3. Power: It back on

IV. Reconnect to your Network:

1. Go to: Settings
2. Tap: Wi-Fi
3. Disable: Wi-Fi
4. Wait: 30 seconds
5. Enable: Wi-Fi

V. Add Back the Network:

1. Go to: Settings
2. Tap: Wi-Fi
3. Remove: the network
4. Wait: 30 seconds
5. Add: the network back

Wow Mr. Finch! Thanks for this info, although it wasn’t intended for me. I still appreciate it! 😊

My iPhone 11 has been disconnecting from WiFi over the past six months. The issue is at home and work (I cannot re-start the router at my work). We have our router at home scheduled to re-start every Saturday night. I have reached out to Apple who said it is not their problem and that it is my service provider's issue. I have reached out to AT&T and they said it isn't a problem on their end but they told me one thing to do that helped temporarily, and that was telling me to do a restore on my iPhone (it helped for a few days). I now turn my cell off and on to get it to reconnect to the WiFi. I have done the "forget this network". The bigger issue is that I try to get into my password app, it says it cannot connect because I am offline. This is ridiculous. I am tempted to get rid of my iPhone and go to Samsung like my adult kids have. I cannot have my passwords held in limbo because my iPhone keeps dropping connectivity. (Note that I have no issues with my Macbook Air.) Also, I did the latest update to 17.3 and I am still having the issue, and I pay $7.99 a month for AppleCare....which they don't care. (Sorry, I am so over this.)

If anyone tells me something to do and it works, I will gladly be humbled to apologize for my rant.

needleman_mark wrote:

I have a problem that seems to have started in 16.4 but has continued in 16 5. My iPhone 14 pro max disconnects from WiFi once or twice a day and I have to reboot it to get the WiFi back. I have a max ok air and iPad Pro that are on the same WiFi network and they haven’t had this problem

If you turn off Wi-Fi (rather than the phone), then turn it back on does it reconnect?

needleman_mark Said:

"WiFi disconnect problem in 16.5": I’ve already tried most of those things: i don’t see how resetting the WiFi router will help (although I’ve tried that) since other devices connected to that router aren’t having any problems"

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Why to Reset the Router:

Two pure examples...

A. New IP Address:

If you are using DHCP for your internet protocol configuration on your router, then you'll get a new IP Address.

B. Power Spike or Power Spur:

Sometimes there may be utility wrk down the street, and the WiFi goes out for a moment or so.

If your router is dual band (2.4Ghz and 5Ghz), try creating only a 5Ghz network. You will have to Forget your current network from all devices, then connect to the current 5Ghz network. The 2.4Ghz network gets congested very easily with multiple devices and also from interference with microwaves, wireless phone, baby monitors, etc.