iPhone will not stay on home Wifi network anymore
I've had an iPhone for a few months and have generally had no severe trouble with the Wifi connectivity until the past few days. I've read lots of articles online and none of them seem to fix the problem.
Recently, all of the sudden my iPhone cannot retain a connection to my home Wifi network. Here's the sequence of what happens:
1. Previously, when I woke up the phone, it would reconnect to my home network within 10 or 15 seconds. Now, it generally stays on Edge forever.
2. So I go into Settings - WiFi and try to connect to the network manually.
3. Sometimes I'll see the network SSID immediately, sometimes it will take several minutes before the phone detects it.
4. Once it's there, I'll click on it, enter the password, and it will look as though it's connected. That is, there will be a check next to the network and the Edge icon in the top left of the phone will switch to the WiFi icon, at full strength.
5. At this point, there are various different behaviors, but overall the common symptom is that it cannot stay on the network for more than a few seconds before reverting back to Edge. Sometimes I can see the signal strength go from full down to almost nothing (even though I'm sitting inches from the router), and then it will switch to Edge by itself. Other times it looks full-strength until I actually try to use it (Safari, weather, etc), and then it will switch back to Edge within a few seconds. Sometimes in very rare circumstances it seems to hold on to the connection for 30 seconds or so before dropping it.
I've spent about four or five hours on this over the past couple nights but none of the usual solutions seem to work in my case. Here's the background.
A. The router is a Buffalo WHR-HP-G54, which is a 11g/11b high-power router. Unfortunately they haven't updated their firmware in a long time but I am definitely running the latest code.
B. My iPhone is also running 1.1.2.
C. Other devices in the house work fine (2 different Windows XP laptops, an iMac) and the iPhone used to work just fine also.
D. In the past, one of the laptops would lose connectivity and it would be solved be restarting the router and cable modem. This hasn't been a problem this week for that machine. I've rebooted the router and cable modem countless times today anyway to no avail.
E. I have ensured that the router does not have MAC filtering enabled. But just in case I added the iPhone's MAC address to my list of recognized clients. No help.
F. I have disabled mix-mode on the router so that it only supports 11g (and no 11b). No help.
G. I have ensured that DHCP is enabled and allows up to 25 devices, so there's no shortage of IP addresses available.
H. I thought it might be a conflict with another nearby network (although there is only one in range) and so I tried various other WiFi channels (11, 9, 6, 1), none helped.
I. I have used AES security with a 13-character (non-hex) password for a long time and it's worked fine. But tonight I reverted back to many other approaches, such as using WEP-128, etc... no luck.
J. After trying a new configuration on the router, I would "Forget this network" on the iPhone and try again. No help.
K. Towards the end of my experimentation I would also enter Airport mode for a while to reset the radio in the phone, no help.
L. In many cases I also performed a full-reboot of the phone (hold down the power key for 10 seconds, slide, reboot). No help.
M. A few times, I also tried resetting the network settings to defaults (Settings - General - Reset - Network) and it would reboot afterwards. Still no luck.
I haven't been this frustrated with a device in a long, long time. Unfortunately I won't have the opportunity to try it with other Wifi networks for another day or so.
I'm considering trying the DD-WRT open-source firmware as a last resort before buying a new router.
Is there anything I've forgotten?
- Jim
Recently, all of the sudden my iPhone cannot retain a connection to my home Wifi network. Here's the sequence of what happens:
1. Previously, when I woke up the phone, it would reconnect to my home network within 10 or 15 seconds. Now, it generally stays on Edge forever.
2. So I go into Settings - WiFi and try to connect to the network manually.
3. Sometimes I'll see the network SSID immediately, sometimes it will take several minutes before the phone detects it.
4. Once it's there, I'll click on it, enter the password, and it will look as though it's connected. That is, there will be a check next to the network and the Edge icon in the top left of the phone will switch to the WiFi icon, at full strength.
5. At this point, there are various different behaviors, but overall the common symptom is that it cannot stay on the network for more than a few seconds before reverting back to Edge. Sometimes I can see the signal strength go from full down to almost nothing (even though I'm sitting inches from the router), and then it will switch to Edge by itself. Other times it looks full-strength until I actually try to use it (Safari, weather, etc), and then it will switch back to Edge within a few seconds. Sometimes in very rare circumstances it seems to hold on to the connection for 30 seconds or so before dropping it.
I've spent about four or five hours on this over the past couple nights but none of the usual solutions seem to work in my case. Here's the background.
A. The router is a Buffalo WHR-HP-G54, which is a 11g/11b high-power router. Unfortunately they haven't updated their firmware in a long time but I am definitely running the latest code.
B. My iPhone is also running 1.1.2.
C. Other devices in the house work fine (2 different Windows XP laptops, an iMac) and the iPhone used to work just fine also.
D. In the past, one of the laptops would lose connectivity and it would be solved be restarting the router and cable modem. This hasn't been a problem this week for that machine. I've rebooted the router and cable modem countless times today anyway to no avail.
E. I have ensured that the router does not have MAC filtering enabled. But just in case I added the iPhone's MAC address to my list of recognized clients. No help.
F. I have disabled mix-mode on the router so that it only supports 11g (and no 11b). No help.
G. I have ensured that DHCP is enabled and allows up to 25 devices, so there's no shortage of IP addresses available.
H. I thought it might be a conflict with another nearby network (although there is only one in range) and so I tried various other WiFi channels (11, 9, 6, 1), none helped.
I. I have used AES security with a 13-character (non-hex) password for a long time and it's worked fine. But tonight I reverted back to many other approaches, such as using WEP-128, etc... no luck.
J. After trying a new configuration on the router, I would "Forget this network" on the iPhone and try again. No help.
K. Towards the end of my experimentation I would also enter Airport mode for a while to reset the radio in the phone, no help.
L. In many cases I also performed a full-reboot of the phone (hold down the power key for 10 seconds, slide, reboot). No help.
M. A few times, I also tried resetting the network settings to defaults (Settings - General - Reset - Network) and it would reboot afterwards. Still no luck.
I haven't been this frustrated with a device in a long, long time. Unfortunately I won't have the opportunity to try it with other Wifi networks for another day or so.
I'm considering trying the DD-WRT open-source firmware as a last resort before buying a new router.
Is there anything I've forgotten?
- Jim
iMac, iPhone, Windows XP machines, Mac OS X (10.5.1)
