Wifi „no internet connection“ issues (iOS16)

I noticed this issue started recently myself. Resolution to these types of issues can be unique to your environment so please continue reading with that understanding.

It appears that the issue may stem from DNS resolution.

To quickly test this set your DNS to manual using the following DNS servers or similar (see image below).

8.8.4.4

8.8.8.8

These are Google's public DNS servers and safe to use. Your router by default will likely use your ISP's DNS servers which is generally fine but in this case we should rule them out. When you do this, if you see a DNS server with an address of something like 192.168.1.1, remove it (note after the third dot you may have a different number, for most installs it will look similar though). This is the default that is allocated from your router. If you leave this local address as your first DNS server address, you won't get a good test. In fact things could stay much the same so this step is important.

If this manual DNS change works you should consider changing your router's DNS settings to either the servers you used in the test or Cloudflare's or something.

You can test for a fast DNS server here > https://www.dnsperf.com/

Restarting the phone requests a new “lease” from the router. Go into router settings and make sure the default lease time is very long. It is in seconds or minutes, so keep that in mind.

When it is not connecting go to Settings/Wi-Fi and tap on the i next to the network name.

• Look at the IP address. If it begins with 169.254 that means the router did not assign an IP address to the phone. That is a router problem. If the IP address begins with 10.0 or 192.168 that should be OK.
• But also look at the rest of the address, and, in particular, if the last 2 triples are the same as any other device on the network then your router has some fixed IP address devices that are connected, and their IP address is in the dynamic IP address range, and the phone is “colliding” with the device.
• Look at the DNS setting. It should either be the same as the router’s base IP address (such as 10.0.0.1, 192.168.1.1, etc) or a public DNS server such as Google (8.8.8.8) or Microsoft (1.1.1.1).
• Go to Settings/[your name]/iCloud. Is private Relay on? If it is try with it off, and turn it on if it is off (assuming you have iCloud+)
• You said you are not using VPN. Do you have a VPN profile in Settings/General/VPN & Device management, even if you are not using it? Delete the profile.

I had the same problem with iOS 16.2 on my child’s iPhone 12 Pro. The no internet connection issue finally resolved immediately after changing “Date & Time to set automatically.

I had the same problem on two different networks. I did not have a VPN. I tried resetting network settings, restarting the phone, turned off Wi-Fi assist. Forgot the network and rejoined. Checked locations services. Checked for ip conflicts on network. NONE of those things worked, just changing the time to set automatically appears to have worked. I hope that helps some.

DNS is the service that changes an Internet address name - say "www.apple.com" - to the numeric IP address needed to open a connection (for apple.com, it's typically 17.254.0.91.)

If this system isn't working, you might have an Internet connection but will never know it because address translation never occurs.

One way to work around DNS being broken or slow on many systems is to set your devices to use Google's DNS service for name resolution - but this can also cause problems on some networks.

Another thing that can cause this issue is running a VPN - your device may have a connection but your VPN does not.

One thing to check when connected to a Wi-Fi network is to look at:

Settings -> Wi-Fi -> (Network Name) -> Configure DNS

and check to see whether it is set to "Automatic" or "Manual;" in most cases "Automatic" is what you want.

Note that Network profiles issued by some employers also may modify these settings, and in some cases, improperly.

I stumbled across this thread after my iphone 12 on iOS 16 started having issues with wifi connectivity. I had the same issue as some of the others in this thread and every network I connected to would always display "No internet connection" underneath the SSID.

This wasnt a problem with my router or modem nor the network infrastructure of my workplace. VPN was not the issue either since there were no VPN profiles installed on my phone. I went through several troubleshooting steps on my device and my router at home (Unifi UDM-P) and kept getting the same results. Every other device connected just fine except mine. I reset network settings, tried manual DNS servers, tried static IP addressing to no avail. I did not want to factory reset and restore the phone since that solution was not a permanent fix.

What did end up correcting the issue for now, was turning off the WiFi assist feature. Settings > Cellular > Scroll to the bottom and turn the Wi-fi Assist toggle off.

Hope this helps anyone else running into this problem.

My iPhone wasn’t connecting to any of my networks after I updated my iPhone to 16.3.1. I use a wireless access list and I discovered that if I turned off my wireless access list, then I was able to join all of my networks. I noticed that my wireless access list contained 3 entries for my iPhone. One was for the main Wi-Fi address on the About screen of the phone. The other two entries were for the private Wi-Fi addresses of each of my networks (2.4 GHz and 5 GHz). However, the addresses were not the same as the addresses that were now assigned to my phone (go to Settings, Wi-Fi, and click on the “i” for each network to view the private Wi-Fi addresses). I updated the private Wi-Fi addresses in my wireless access list to be the same as the addresses for the networks in my phone and the problem was solved. I was able to turn on my wireless access list and still connect to my networks with my iPhone. I think the update to iOS 16.3.1 caused the private Wi-Fi addresses to be changed. I hope this helps someone.

Sorry for the delay but I'm still working through a few things that are still sketchy.

Ultimately, I have solved a good deal of my issues (it appears atm) through... Sigh... My router. Need some salt if anyone has any.

Settings I came across that I knew I had different for various reasons:

1) due to a crap alarm panel, my 2.4 and 5ghz bands were being run on different SSIDs. I recombined them since I no longer use that service.

2) prior troubleshooting for smart home devices had my channel settings different from recommended. 2.4ghz moved to 20 and all channels for 5ghz

3) upgraded firmware

4) had Charter check signal integrity from modem

I didn't do this in stages - all at once.. since these changes, both iPhone 12s have improved greatly with stability. If I had to hazard a guess, perhaps a problem jumping SSIDs or something.

In any event, what worked for me prob won't work for you since this problem seems widespread and varied, popping up for some people only after certain updates sometime after 15.3-ish based on a few days of reading.

But it is always wise to eliminate the other hardware in between you and the internet first. don't let anyone tell you that your latest update had nothing to do with it, but if there's anything I'm sure of after all this reading, it's that the only person that's going to solve this problem will be you - don't even plan on any update providing assistance and take things into your own hands.

Good luck!

This happened to me almost just like all the others after updating to ios16.2. I tried all basic suggestions…restarting iPhone, restarting router, WiFi on off, airplane mode on off, etc…

The thing that solved my problem was manually disconnecting my TotalAV app and also in my iPhone settings under VPN. Once I manually toggled it back on in the TotalAV app, the problem resolved. The thing that triggered the VPN as the source of my potential issue was that I couldn’t get the VPN to connect in the app until after manually disconnecting in iPhone settings.

Hope this was helpful.

Try general> transfer or reset iPhone> reset> reset all settings. It’s a pain to go back and redo all your settings but this seemed to have fixed my issue. Be sure to choose reset all settings, not reset network settings. I hope this helps!

I can give you a perfect example of how this can happen as I have seen and debugged it before, and that's a DHCP bug in the router.

How?

When your iPhone connects for the first time it will ask for an IP address from the DHCP server to be able to get on the network by sending a DHCPDISCOVER request. If it receives a DHCPOFFER it will continue the DHCP acquisition process, apply it and you're on the network.

However, from that point on the phone has state information and rather than ask for an address it will issue a DHCPREQUEST to renew the address.

If either side - the iPhone or the DHCP server - botches the renewal protocol, it will result in the exact behavior you are seeing.

To put it another way, imagine you are staying at hotel; when you check in you ask for a room for one night and they tell you which room you get and you move in.

But that same night you realize you need to stay an extra night, so you ask the hotel if you can get the same room for another night rather than just ask for "a room." A different sequence of events must occur at that point to get to stay in the same room another night.

If either side screws up, you will have to move out of your room by check out time and come back that afternoon to check back into the hotel.

I have seen both the DHCP server and, on occasion, macOS get it wrong, and frankly sniffing the DHCP packets from another host on the network and tracing through the protocol is the only way to find out who's at fault. Is the device sending an improper renewal? Is the server not responding with a proper DHCPACK?

No one could say without explicitly looking at the network traffic being passed.

Lawrence's response above is how you begin to diagnose what went wrong.

Also, check your router settings for anything labeled “limit address tracking", and disable it.

My particular router is an Asus, running openWRT (that I badly need to firmware update lol) - I'm headed home to try these fixes and if anything sticks I'll let you know.

Another EXTREMELY temporary solution, and not at all ideal in my opinion, is to activate your “guest" network, and connect to it… This also has worked for a few people lol. I would actually suggest setting it up as unprotected initially, and then if it happens to seemingly fix the issue, put a password on it and see if that affects anything.

Good luck! And remember: you are not crazy. It is NOT "your router", even if making adjustments on said router seemingly fixes the issue! Your phone worked fine BEFORE it was updated, and then it did NOT. That's the ONLY relevant matter here. all we are trying to do with the router, is mitigate whatever the issue is, from the other side. So while you MIGHT fix the issue through your router's settings, it is STILL IOS 16.1+ that caused the problem in the first place.

As I mentioned updating to ios 16.1 seemed to have fixed the issue. Havent had this happening ever since the update. The 16.0.1 build seemed to contain the bug for me.

VPN connections will usually make Wi-Fi problems worse. If you can’t get it to work without using VPN don’t switch to VPN, instead troubleshoot the problem until it is resolved. VPN will just mask it and cause problems later if it isn’t resolved at the source.

There is a simple test you can do to isolate the problem: Try it on different Wi-Fi networks. Ideally friends or neighbors, but if not, reliable public sites like hotels, libraries, hospitals, Starbucks, MacDonald’s, etc. Avoid the “public” networks that are provided by cable companies; they are frequently pretty flakey. If the problem is only on your home network there is only one place that needs to be investigated.

If you suspect the DNS service from your ISP you can override it with a reliable public DNS, such as Microsoft (1.1.1.1, 1.0.0.1), Google (8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4), or OpenDNS (208.67.222.222, 208.67.220.220)

Hi Lawrence,

Updated to 16 last night, and found today that I had the issue that is the subject of this conversation. My iPad Air was connected to my router, but had no WiFi connection. My wife did the same with her iPad Air, and everything was fine. Everything else we own that uses our router was also okay, so I figured it was the device not the router. I tried numerous fixes that I found online with no change. I'm not particularly tech savvy, but I checked out the IP address as you recommended and found it began with 169.254, which you said is a router issue. So, in spite of the fact that everything else was working, I decided to reset the router and voila! My iPad IP address now starts with 192.168 and is working as it should. (Of course, based on what others have written, I guess I can't be certain how long this fix will last.)

Thanks for your input, Lawrence.

Laurence David

It is the iOS 16 update, I have been trouble shooting with AppleCare for 3 months now. I have 4 other devices that work just fine on my router and have had my cable company come out and troubleshoot my router, it is fine. With AppleCare, I am to the ”we are waiting for engineering to fix the software bug” part now. Because it can happen intermittently and not on all phones, most people don’t report it. Or they don’t have AppleCare anymore and figure what’s the use in reporting it. I have not gotten a fix for it yet, but AppleCare says it’s a software bug and they are working on it. So I certainly understand frustrating.