Wi-Fi connection shows weak security and will not stay connected

Hey there, and welcome to Apple Support Communities, BoscoHoyte.

We see that you're having some trouble with your iPhone and your home network. The message that you're receiving means that the security on your network is older and does not offer the recommended level of security and protection. You can read about our recommended settings for your network in Recommended settings for Wi-Fi routers and access points.

We hope that helps.

iPhone WiFi scanner is built into the Apple "Airport Utility"

• You can download the iPhone (or iPad) Apple "Airport Utility"
• Then in iPhone -> Settings -> Airport Utility, enable "Wi-Fi Scanner" [X]
• Launch Airport Utility
• In the upper Right corner should be "Wi-Fi Scan". Tap that
• Again in the upper Right corner should be "Scan". Tap that

You should now be seeing local WiFi access points sorted with the strongest first. The list may change order depending on whether it things an other access point has become stronger, or as you move around and signal strengths change based on where you are standing.

RSSI at between -50 and -30 dbm are strong signals with -30 being the strongest.

RSSI from -60 to -90 are weak, with -90 being extremely weak.

This does not give you "Noise" so you cannot tell if there is a lot of interference on that specific WiFi access point.

But you can look at channel numbers, and if there are 2 strong signals both having the same channel number, you know they are interfering with each other.

Channels 1 - 13 (for those outside the U.S.) actually use 5 channels worth of bandwidth, so for example channel 6 actually uses channels 4,5,6,7,8, with the signal strength looking like a bell curve over the channel range. So it is best that you set 2.4GHz channels so that they do not overlap and you pick channels for them not overlapping with strong signals from your neighbors.

The 5GHz channels do not overlap when the WiFi access point is only offering 20MHz of bandwidth. But the 5GHz channels can be aggregated into 40MHz, and 80MHz consuming additional 5GHz channels. The new WiFi 6 and 6e frequencies DO NOT overlap.

The better WiFi access points (aka your router or mesh network) tend to automatically select channels based on what they see as the WiFi landscape and try to avoid having interference.

That’s two issues.

Weak security is mentioned above, and you can either ignore that as nothing has changed and you just now know your security is weak), or you can reconfigure your Wi-Fi router, or (if it’s old enough) replace your router.

How to reconfigure the router is router-specific. Check the Wi-Fi router manual for details. Look for and apply any available Wi-Fi router firmware update, while you’re checking and updating the network security setting, too.

Weak signal on a specific Wi-Fi network usually means either Wi-Fi interference, or a problem with the Wi-Fi router itself.

An iPhone doesn’t have good tooling to check for Wi-Fi signal strength and Wi-Fi interference, though better Wi-Fi troubleshooting tools are available for Mac, Windows, Linux, and other platforms.

I use the Fing app on iPadOS, but Apple really doesn’t allow good access into the Wi-Fi hardware. Much prefer the tooling on Mac or Windows for troubleshooting a Wi-Fi network. Wi-Fi Explorer app for macOS, for instance.

Noise value for the current channel can be gotten from the standard tools using option-click on the Wi-Fi icon in the menu bar.

Better Wi-Fi routers shuffling their channels makes for utterly wonderful and entertaining rolling Wi-Fi network failures too, having watched several cases of herds of uncoordinated Wi-Fi routers independently rolling through an overloaded 2.4 GHz band. Your router checks fail and the router then switches channels, which triggers another nearby router to fail its checks and switch, across the whole local router herd.

If you are going to Option-Click on the menu bar WiFi icon, you might as well Option-click, then select "Open Wireless Diagnostics...", and Wireless Diagnostics -> Window -> Scan, which will give you Name, MAC addresses, Security, Protocol, RSSI, Noise, Channel, Band, Width, Country

Or Wireless Diagnostics -> Window -> Performance, which will give you a nice graphic time-line of bit rate, quality, and signal to noise graphs for the channel your Mac is currently using.