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Hotel Wi-Fi networks with iPad

I have now loaded my personal and corporate email (Exchange)onto my iPad (bought in Apple store in SFO about 4-5 weeks ago). Ive been travelling and have my iPhone and old PC with me. I have stayed in three different hotels so far. I have not been able to connect to Wi-Fi with the iPad in any of three hotels. The iPhone hops on immediately, the PC has no issues. The iPad sees the networks but flatly refuses to join any Wi-Fi network. At home I have an Apple 802.11n router that the iPad has no issues with and has worked flawlessly. However, I bought the iPad to replace the heavy notebook PC that I have dragged aroun the world for the past few years. Its not working out. I'm pleased I brought the PC along with me or I would have been only able to access email through my iPhone.

I'm now in a hotel in the UK and again, no access to Wi-Fi (having wasted another hour of my life trying everything possible to get it working) So much for being the ideal travelling companion. I'm disappointed.

iMac x 3, iPad and iPhone 3GS, iPhone OS 3.1.3

Posted on May 30, 2010 11:19 AM

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121 replies

Oct 6, 2014 11:31 AM in response to gs.spencer

I have been to so many hotels in the last few months and always had the same issue - it would connect but hang on a blank screen or come up with some error about not being able to get a secure connection.


Having read a few suggestions on this forum I fixed this issue and this is as follows:

iPhone 5S


Turn off Auto-Join and Auto-Login once Wifi is selected. Get to this by clicking on the ℹ next to the connected wifi. Then head to your browser, enter something in the URL (e.g google) then you'll be prompted with the Wifi Access point


Please note I had also done the following:

  1. Closed all applications
  2. Turned off Settings > Safari > Block Pop-ups
  3. Turned off Settings > Safari > Passwords & Autofill > Names & Passwords and deleted any saved passwords (noticed a few hotels in here)


You may find you have to renew the connection once in a while but hope this helps.


Cheers,

Sep 20, 2013 9:29 PM in response to berserker-82

You might need to give me a few to figure this out, and I may need to ask you a few other questions. Try this first, most likely will not work, sorry, but worth a shot, more of a test for me to get familiar as I can with these devices and hotel issue. Go into settings, in wi-fi, set your ask to join networks off, then forget every network on your ipad,that you can, then in settings,safari, turn on pop up blocker, have autofill turned off, then still in safari in settings, clear history and clear cookies and data, power off ipad, wait a min or so, power on, let sit and load, then shutdown all unncecessary network apps that are running. open up settings, wi-fi, search for networks try and connect or at least get to the gateway login page, and see if it will allow you to connect now, and let me know. Thanks:] Well get your issue figured out, never fear. We will get this paltry hotel wi-fi issue figured out:] Note act on this first, open up settings, then wi-fi, then click on the network it says its connected to,then push the arrow over icon on the far right , the first field it will bring up is your dhcp auto settings, ip address, etc, tell me if there is anything there, an ip adress, a subnetmask, router, dns, search domains and client ID, tell me what or if anything is there at all. Also make sure your device is updated with the latest updates out for it, that is in settings under the general tab. do this first please. thank you.

Sep 10, 2015 1:18 PM in response to Maldives Man

Wow! I can't believe this has been an issue for so long.

I have a company issued ipad air 2 (wifi only) and it worked fine for months and now I suddenly have this problem.

The problems started with the ios upgrade to 8.4.0 (now have 8.4.1)


The wifi in some hotels that I had used many times suddenly wouldn't let me log on.

Strangely, I would randomly get "unable to join network" or "incorrect password" during different attempts with the same hotel. The password was correct.

I have tried all the suggestions (except IP and DNS modifications... beyond my skills) that were written over the past 2 years of this post and nothing has worked.


Now it has suddenly stopped working with my home wifi !!!

First I got "incorrect password" and then "unable to join network" and now I randomly get either message during different attempts.

I did all the suggestions... forget network... clear history and data... clear passwords... turn off autofill...3 different browsers... connect through Settings>Wi-Fi... allow Pop-ups

I have rebooted more times than I can count. Still no luck.


Nothing has changed with my network at home and every other device that I own has no problem. This is an ipad issue and it has begun since my last 2 ios upgrades.

It still connects to the "Personal Hotspot" from my iphone (for now)

Sep 20, 2013 11:29 PM in response to wainwrightns

Thats greats! But you see, that is exacctly like the issues I have been hearing and seeing. They just work as intended some of the time, and sometimes you have to do nothing to solve the problem. The mystery continues, my friends. Hopefully apple will get involved and come with some anwsers that are a little easier than constantly changing things, or poof, they work, just after sitting at the network for a long enough time??? Hope. lol.. but that is great and no problem, hope it works great for you from now on:]

May 26, 2014 1:36 AM in response to Maldives Man

I ran into this situation in the Paris hotel. I was given three sets of id/pwd for three devices. While my iPhone and Macbook worked fine, the iPad stopped showing the login screen after some time. I tried all the suggestions in this an other forums - nothing helped. Then I decided to use the id/pwd combo that I was using with iPad on a different device. After that my iPad "recognized" that the old id/pwd was invalid and showed me the hotel's login screen.


Now that it works, I'll also install a couple of other Web browsers on my iPad. If it'll happen again, I'll try to go online from another browser.

Jan 8, 2017 9:37 AM in response to Maldives Man

I'm in Tenerife in a hotel. For the first 24 hours or so wifi worked fine on iPad and iPhone. Then,suddenly,iPad repeatedly refused to work,even though my iPhone 6s is still connecting up fine and showing strong Ping,Download and even Upload values.

I eventually got iPad working by connecting to wifi in the hotel lobby,where my Speedtest app showed a strong connection.

Back in room again,iPad no go but iPhone fine.

There is clearly a technical fault with the iPad. Personally,having forked out a lot of money for the 128 version,I am FURIOUS and will never buy an Apple product again.

Needless to say,I'm sending this by PHONE!

PS. And yet in September I spent time in two hotels in France and encountered no problems whatsoever.

May 31, 2010 4:10 AM in response to Maldives Man

This problem is very likely beyond tech-support at a hotel. BTW, can you get tech support with a 6:30 wake up call?

WiFi on these things is really a problem.

Princeton University is the only unbiased authority on this subject that I can find. By late May more than half of the iPads connecting on their network had this problem..... read for yourself:
http://www.net.princeton.edu/announcements/ipad-iphoneos32-stops-renewing-lease- keeps-using-IP-address.html

Don't let some of the wire heads on these forums convince you otherwise. The product has a problem. I ended up returning mine to the store.

May 31, 2010 6:39 AM in response to Maldives Man

I'm on a 64gb ipad (non 3g) and have exactly this problem. My pc laptop and iPhone can connect no trouble ... The devices are presented with a login screen and after entering the credentials are able to connect to the Internet via the wifi connection. When I connect with the ipad to the network it conneCts and is issued a valid ip address but no matter what address is entered or browser used the login panel is not presented... No connection is made to any site. You'd have thought Applewould test their devices in hotels or provide clear guidelines or solutions to working around this issue. I'm dissatisfied and very dissapointed to say the least... Looks like I have a $1000 useless machine until they fix it.... Come on Apple!!!

Hotel Wi-Fi networks with iPad

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