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iOS 14 & 802.1x authentication

I'm banging my head against the wall on this issue, and I'm afraid it'll only become worse as more devices update to any version of iOS/iPadOS 14. We have an 802.1x network for staff, which is working just fine for MacBooks, Windows devices, and most iPads, but users running iOS/iPadOS 14 are no longer able to connect to the staff network.

Typically, a user will enter their AD credentials, trust a certificate from our domain controller, and be on their way. Now, you just get a 'Unable to join the network "XX-Staff"'. The issue doesn't seem to be server-side, as there aren't even any logs for the user being denied or failing to authenticate.

We have one DC handing out a cert with a 1024-bit RSA key, which works just fine on iOS 12 & 13, but we cannot get any device on 14.0.1, 14.1, or 14.2 to accept the cert. We just get the error that XX-Staff cannot be joined.

We even set up another test network with the same authentication settings, which is using a cert from another domain controller with a 2048-bit RSA key, and we can't get that to work on 14.

I also know that the new private address option isn't an issue; whether that is on or off makes no difference.

Is there something I'm missing?


iPad (5th gen) Wi-Fi

Posted on Nov 9, 2020 12:16 PM

Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Nov 13, 2020 6:37 AM

We were able to solve this issue by updating our wireless controller. After discovering that everything was working fine at our site that is running Aruba gear, we figured it had to be an issue with how our Huawei wireless controller was communicating with our RADIUS servers. Updating to the latest firmware & patch has fixed the issue, and iOS 14 devices are not having any issues connecting to WPA2 Enterprise networks.

Hopefully this works for anyone else having similar issues.

Similar questions

3 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Nov 13, 2020 6:37 AM in response to Community User

We were able to solve this issue by updating our wireless controller. After discovering that everything was working fine at our site that is running Aruba gear, we figured it had to be an issue with how our Huawei wireless controller was communicating with our RADIUS servers. Updating to the latest firmware & patch has fixed the issue, and iOS 14 devices are not having any issues connecting to WPA2 Enterprise networks.

Hopefully this works for anyone else having similar issues.

iOS 14 & 802.1x authentication

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