Mac disconnects from 802.1X WiFi if I leave it alone for too long

Good day Apple Community,


Device: 2020 13-inch M1 MacBook Pro running macOS Ventura 13.2.1


I reside in an apartment that has shared Wi-Fi with authentication among its tenants (not the safest I know but it's free/baked into the cost).


When connecting, your computer asks you for a username and password (provided to you by the landlord). The Mac connects and everything works as expected.


However, I've noticed that when I leave it alone for a few hours (I have not actually measured it but I know I've come back to it 2 hours later to have it happen) it disconnects from the WiFi, and I have to manually reconnect in the WiFi menu. This has led to some large downloads and cloud backups failing throughout the night (so I know it's not due to a lack of network usage).


Now Internet Sharing does not work either with this connection.

It keeps bringing up the error "Your internet connection cannot be shared because it is protected by 802.1X."

Both of the above issues have been occurring ever since I own this Mac, and it's not a Ventura-specific issue because it has happened on macOS Monterey as well.


I assume at least this is some Apple security feature as I have noticed that I do not have these issues on my Android phone, or Windows laptop. Both of them are able to use their hotspot functionality to share the 802.1X WiFi connection with other devices and stay connected throughout the night!


And it only happens on this WiFi connection since I have never had these issues in my previous residence where I had my own internet connection routed through a standard off-the-shelf router.


Is there any way I can remedy this issue on macOS?


Thanks for reading,

William

Posted on Mar 30, 2023 4:10 PM

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4 replies

Mar 30, 2023 4:46 PM in response to WilliamPyke

when I was on an older DSL service, it was set up as if it were dial-up. There were some settings on the Mac in PPPoE that would allow you to enter an account-name and password, and auto-log you in whenever needed. This gave the impression of an Always-on connection, when the computer was doing the login for you when needed.


I don't know whether that applies for you situation, but here is an Apple article on the feature:


Connect your Mac to the internet using PPPoE - Apple Support


some indications in the article (step 4) suggest it can be used for Wi-Fi as well. (May be limited to Monterey and later.)


Mar 30, 2023 7:02 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

I tried setting it up this way, and looking at this video (although on an old version of macOS), https://youtu.be/diSQxHcDoKM, it does say radius username and the WiFi name does include radius, so I assume it's a Radius network.


However, following the steps in the Apple Support doc (I do not have a PPPoE service name, but I've tried it with no name and with the Wi-Fi name as the name) but in both cases it keeps giving an unable to find PPPoE server error.

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Mac disconnects from 802.1X WiFi if I leave it alone for too long

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