Unable to connect to xfinitywifi

OK, enlighten me further please. I can find no such setting as Auto Login. Is this a reference to the "*Ask to Join Networks*" toggle?

Further testing showed me that the state of the *Ask to Join Networks* toggle makes absolutely no difference because regardless of ON or OFF, "Known networks will be joined automatically." and once you have joined network xfinitywifi, it becomes "known" until you Reset Network Selections of Forget it.

With open networks like xfinitywifi, that is no WEP/WPA/WPA2 encryption hence no password required, but which DO have an authentication procedure in which you have to login with a userID and password, there are two additional toggles presented for each such network: Auto-Join and Auto-Login and they only seem to appear as part of the Login process.

Neither of these are explained in the iPodTouch_IOS4_UserGuide.pdf and I have not been able to find a technical bulletin about it either. The Auto-Join toggle seems to simply be specific to a particular network so you could specifically NOT join certain known networks. I don't know why you might decide to defeat the Auto-Login feature by turning it OFF.

I had forgotten about the Auto-Login feature buried under Settings when you Join such a network and I was in the habit of waiting for the iPod's WiFi icon to appear, then start Safari manually to do the login myself. If the Auto-Login under Settings had failed, then I would not be authenticated and would not be able to connect to anything in spite of having an IP address.

In spite of this procedural error, re-authenticating manually under Safari clearly works (as proven by entering either the userID or password incorrectly and you get another chance to get it right), but I was still being killed by the "Page Expired" error.

Yesterday I did a Reset Network Settings and today or tomorrow I will go back and see if anything is different.

Thanks for that reference on Auto-Join. I note it was dated August 2010 which, I think, is prior to the release of IOS 4.2.1.

Anyway, the picture displaying the Auto-Join option would seem to be out of date as in addition to Auto-Join, Auto-Login displays on my iPod Touch for networks that you have to login to.

I have not found any explanations for Auto-Login on IOS, have you?

It occurs to me that for open WiFi networks such as the SSID=xfinitywifi hot spots, the IOS functions of Auto-Join and Auto-Login are probably defined as:

Auto-Join : iPod automatically establishes a wireless connection to this known network if ON, otherwise does not automatically join this known network. This does not have anything to do with authentication, just establishment of a wireless link and assignment of an IP address, subnet mask, router IP, DNS information for the connection.

Auto-Login : Automatically, after the first successful Login authentication, perform the Login operation without user intervention if ON, otherwise user must take action to Login.

Any comments?

Message was edited by: Bruce Thomson

Update on the status of this problem:

On Monday afternoon this week, 01/24/2011, I successfully connected to the xfinitywifi hot spot that I had never previously been able to connect to. It worked as expected, the Auto-Join and Auto-Login functions under Settings worked fine and I was online and able to use Safari and any other app with no issues.

I had been working with a Comcast network engineer who saw my post on a Comcast forum and reached out to me a few days prior to this successful connection. I provided him times and dates of attempts, he inspected logs, answered questions, shot down some of my theories about the problem, and was generally very helpful. He indicted that they had not changed anything at their end, but my guess is that at the very least, some server somewhere was rebooted between my weekend attempts and Monday.

Once I was able to easily connect to xfinitywifi, I tried any number of things in an attempt to force the original error I had been seeing but was never again able to make it fail.

Last night I performed a Reset Network Settings operation in conjunction with trying to determine why my iPod Touch never drops its WiFi connection when sleeping. It made no difference with that issue, but I then went back to the xfinitywifi hot spot with my freshly Reset Network Settings fully expecting it to fail on me as before.

Surprise, it worked beautifully the first time. The Login screen came up and, since that is handled by Safari, it was still properly filled out so I just had to touch the Login button. The authentication worked and I was online.

I disconnected and reconnected several times without issues, however Comcast/Xfinity remembers your MAC address and assigned IP for some period of time (couple of hours?), so if you reconnect within that window of time, the authentication step is not required the second and subsequent time.

So, for me, this issue is closed. Thank you for your comments.