How to fix Xfinity Wi-Fi issues with iPhone 16 Pro Max?

Oh wait! I remember what I did that may have fixed it for me!

I logged into the router at 10.0.0.1

Then selected Connection in the left bar

Then found the Wireless Network (Wi-Fi 6 GHz) and hit edit

Set 6GHz to be inactive.

Ever since then, my phone happily migrates between the Router and Pods probably because it isn't switching from 6GHz connection on the router to 5GHz on the pod.

Just reporting back that disabling the WiFi 6Ghz band in the router has kept my iPhone happily migrating between the router and pod. Maybe not an ideal fix but much better than the previous issue of being disconnected all the time.

While this is an Apple forum, so we shouldn’t be asking Xfinity for a fix, I think the trouble may lie with the newer Apple devices. My older gen iPad seamlessly connects to my Xfinity pod. However, my iPhone 16 will not. I think that the Xfinity XB8 and gen2 pod combo creates a certain situation that the newer Apple devices can’t negotiate correctly.

I think the next thing I will try is to disable WIFI6 for my WiFi network on the iPhone. From settings->wifi, select the info button next to name of home network, then change wifi6e mode to off. Will report back if that does anything

Thank you Pieterw for these instructions!! I just disabled 6Ghz in our router and my iPhone connectivity issues appear to have been fixed.

By chance do you use a VPN on your iPhone? If yes, they are completely not needed and often cause connectivity with WIFI issues. Unless absolutely required by your employer or school, don't just turn it off, remove the VPN profile completely in Settings > General > VPN & Device Managment.

Do you experience the same problem on other wireless networks?

Have you tried resetting the network settings after removing the VPN?

If all else fails, back up the phone, put it into recovery mode, restore iOS (but not your backup) and set it up from scratch. If the problem persists, I would have to assume that the problem lies in the Xfinity hardware.

If it does work at the point, I'd say re-sync your iCloud data and re-load your apps from the App Store rather than restoring the backup. Do NOT re-install the VPN at all.

I have been trying to solve this issue for months with no luck. What I can tell you for certain is there is an incompatibility with my iPhone 16 pro max and the new Xfinity router/pods. Everything was working fine for me with my previous Xfinity router and then they sent me the new one. I re-added the pod and even went a bought another pod to test that and the same issue happens every day. When I am near the router, my wifi connection on the phone is strong. As soon as I head downstairs and lose connection to the router, the phone fails to connect to the pod that is down here (and shows as strong connection in the xfinity app). If I try to manually join the wifi SSD I get an "unable to join" message. I have to manually remove the wifi connection on the iphone and rejoin. Then everything is fine until I go back upstairs and come back down - and then rinse and repeat.

I spent hours with xfinity support to no avail. I will prob end up getting a mesh router again and see if that works as expected as this is such a waste of time. I have tried switching WPA settings on the router from 2 to 3 and 3 transition. no difference so far. I have tried turning off that iphone setting that switches to Cell data when the wifi signal gets low(Wifi-assist). For a minute I thought that was it! But no. It has been off for a while and issue still happens every day.

It seems there is a protocol issue somewhere that doesn't like iphone 15/16 and the new Xfinity router as far as Wifi transition (mesh hand-off) goes. I don't know the correct terms as I am not a network engineer.

I solved it for our house. It's that dastardly 'E'

some model iPhone 15s have WiFI 6, some have 6E

some model iPhone 16s have WiFi 6 some have 7

my phone has a WiFi 6 antenna which can't connect to Xfinitys 6E home network, though both 6 and 6E are 802.11 ax (I think this leads to a lot of confusion, it did for me)

my laptop has a WiFi 6E antenna and has literally no problem connecting to the Xfinity gateway. Speed tests at over 1100 Mbps wirelessly.

It's the devices, and sadly it looks like a lot of us missed the boat by very little.

I don't think this solves it for all of you, but may for some!

Cheers

Unless you have at least a 2GB internet backbone connection, 6, 6E and 7 offer no benefit at all and have the downside of very short range. And even if you do have a high speed fiber connection it really doesn’t matter, because there are practically no internet sources that can send data fast enough to take advantage of the higher speeds. So the simplest solution is to disable 6/6E/7.

There is another post I read about making sure the Xfinity router is set to WPA3 personal transition mode in the WiFi settings. Mine was already set to that. I toggled it to WPA3 (without the transition) just to see if that helps and I don’t think it has.

i also read something about the pods not supporting wifi6 which could be the issue? If my iPhone is using wifi6 when connecting to the router but then can’t transition to WiFi 5 when trying to connect to the pod. That seems like maybe the iPhone should see that the WiFi has been lost and then try multiple methods to reconnect? I get the feeling newer Apple devices are trying to always use the same protocol on the same SSID and since the router and pod are using different protocols, the iPhone won’t connect to the pod unless you forget the connection and reconnect to force the iPhone to try using wifi5. So either the pods need to support wifi6 of iPhones need to have a better method to transition to access points using different protocols. Also I could have the details wrong and it could be WPA3 vs WPA2 on the routers and pods…

Try downloading the Xfinity app and restart your gateway modem

Flatfoot6150 wrote:

And no issues on WiFi with my phone outside of my home when connected to Xfinity.

Well, that just about guarantees that the problem is with your home router or its internet connection.

https://forums.xfinity.com/conversations/your-home-network/wifi6e/65da06f8afe75b042e47c552

Gen2 pods are Wifi5. XB8 is Wifi6E.

I really feel like the issue with the newer iPhones is that it can't properly transition between the two protocols unless there is a setting I am missing somewhere.

I'm absolutely having the same problem. Just got the Xfinity XB8. Same problem.

As soon as I got the gateway home and hooked up I, of course, start playing with settings. Just on the mobile app at first. I see the option to split bands or "Let Xfinity's super duper gateway decide for you how to connect to your devices" yeah. . . PASS! so I turn it off, and notice that the 2.4G and 5G security settings are the same but the 6G isn't. Furthermore the 6G cannot be changed. While at the same time only my M2 MacBook could even see the 6G network. I do my due diligence.

🧐 "Does my iphone 14 pro max have a WiFi 6 antenna?" ✅ Sure does!

As a test, I turned all of the security setting s for the three networks to WPA3- Personal to be the same as the 6G. Still nothing form the 6G to my phone

VPN is definitely not the problem either, wife and I have the exact same phone, hers has never had a VPN, mine does. Still nothing.

Also, changed security settings in the phone manually setting up the connection to include IPv4 and IPv6 addresses, adding DNS information. Nope.

Going into the router and manually adding my phones MAC address to try and initiate a connection from the router side. Absolutely nothing works.

The only thing I can see, that I am unable to change but may (*just may) have something to do with it is that when you get to the Edit screen in the router for the settings of each individual network it has a locked "Channel" each one (2.4, 5, 6) being different.

If you go into Gateway > Connection > Xfinity Network and scroll down the only bonded channel is 44, which I think must be the channel for when you let them bridge all the networks together and decide for you what you can use.

If the default Channels could be changed in that page and the channels in each network bonded to match, it would possibly be smooth.

IDK, I'm trying to figure it out too.

Also, I have no wifi pods, just the gateway and client devices.