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Brice Unland Author

Level 1

5 points

Personal Hotspot cutting in and out

Just upgraded my iPhone 4 to iOS 4.3. When I turn on the personal hotspot feature and connect to the phone via Wifi on my laptop (Macbook) and/or my iPad, they start to connect (accept the password) but then the connections cut in and out. On the iPhone the blue bar at the top continues to appear and disappear, as if it is dropping and starting the connection. Neither iPad or Macbook remain connected to the iPhone, despite it saying 2 connections. The MacBook will say in network settings that is connected (breifly) and has an IP, but will be dropped shortly after as the iPhone goes back to starting and stopping the sharing.

Thoughts? Anyone else have this?

iPhone 4, iOS 4, upgrade to 4.3

Posted on Mar 9, 2011 1:13 PM

Top-ranking reply

BGraceTFaith

Level 1

0 points

Posted on Mar 9, 2011 4:50 PM

Same here. Except I can't connect to my hotspot more than once. Then the connection drops from the iPad but my iPhone tells me it's still connected. Now every time I turn the wifi off and on on both devices, the iPad sees the hotspot, but won't connect, but the iPhone says it's connected. It's really quite frustrating.

View in context

40 replies

Mar 14, 2011 4:59 AM in response to Andrew26

hopefully that works out for you. when I do this, its temporary and the original issue comes back. what a pain in the butt man.

Mar 14, 2011 6:22 AM in response to JohnnyG178

Just to update this, I found that if I use bluetooth to connect I didn't get any push noticiations but the connection was solid. So what I eneded up doing (until something is fixed or another workaround is found) I am connected to the hotspot via BT and wifi... BT keeps my connection and wifi allows for my push notifications. Totally lame solution but its woroking for me right now.

Andrew26

Level 1

8 points

Mar 14, 2011 11:23 PM in response to JohnnyG178

So yah, it's still cutting in and our even after renaming the iPhone and resetting network settings. If I leave the iPad on sleep for more than a minute the iPhone stops broadcasting the wifi connection.

Again, the needs to be fixed in a software update

Mar 15, 2011 6:57 AM in response to Andrew26

I agree. Instead of using BT and wifi, I resorted to making a 5 min blank mp3. it wont cut off while the ipod is in use.

Also, the ipad has zero isues on my home wifi. It can sleep all day and still get push notifications.

pittsaj

Level 1

0 points

Mar 15, 2011 1:40 PM in response to Brice Unland

I had exactly the same problem, would connect over USB, Bluetooth and Personal hotspot and anywhere between 1 minute and 30 minutes, the internet connection would stop sending data and would have to reboot to get it working again. I tried calling up apple support and now one had heard of this issue. After reading through the this forum, someone suggested doing a full restore.

I have been using the internet tethering for a few days now without a problem. I would recommend you try this.

Mar 22, 2011 1:17 PM in response to Brice Unland

I to have been having difficulty with my personal hotspot cutting out every ten minutes or so. I have the iphone 4 with ios 4.3. I had no difficulty tethering my 1 year old macbook pro. It never cut out on me. But since I upgraded my ios, I noticed that it started cutting out. I rely on tethering since I am always on the road and I find this a hassle. Is this just a software thing or is this a way for the carriers to annoy the crap out of us and steer us away from tethering?

Jul 19, 2011 4:46 PM in response to Brice Unland

Hey guys wanted to update those who care with what I found to be my issue. It appears the personal hotspot feature does not work well in areas with high wifi congestion (lots of different wifi networks in range). This is the case in many office buildings. I read somewhere supposedly the hotspot feature is supposed to dynamically adjust the channel on the hotspot broadcast to a channel not in use but I have no way to validate. Perhaps this was not occurring in my case or it was doing a poor job of choosing a channel! When I'm anywhere but my work place, the connection is never dropped. Hope this helps someone.

Giles

Level 4

1,745 points

Jul 31, 2011 2:53 PM in response to mcoleyase

To anyone else using the Intel 2200BG mini-PCI wireless card on a laptop (mine is a Dell Inspiron 5100 running XP SP3): the Intel ProSet adapter utility can cause problems. After updating to a new version of the Proset utility and driver I found I couldn't tether over wifi to the iPhone 4. Didn't make any difference if I used Windows or the Intel utility to manage the network connection.

So I uninstalled the Intel utility, downloaded a fresh driver from intel.com since I found that the driver got removed during the uninstall (BTW if you look for driver downloads for 2200BG it doesn't list the plain driver for XP, only the complete utility package. Hunt around though and you will find it. You just want the standard Pro Wireless driver that supports the 2200BG as well as others), and hey presto, everything worked.

Can I believe it? Windows actually does the job better than the special Intel software. Which I only downloaded in the first place because Windows was so hopeless (that was probably back in SP1 or SP2 days...).

Kazafog

Level 1

5 points

Aug 1, 2011 9:48 PM in response to Brice Unland

I had the same problem on 4.3.3 and found that turning my bluetooth off fixed it. I also have a more consistent connection to my router with the bluetooth off, it may help.

Oct 12, 2011 3:23 AM in response to Brice Unland

http://www.intel.com/support/wireless/sb/CS-030710.htm?wapkw=%282200+bg+windows+ xp+driver%29

Wireless Networking

Using WPA2 with Windows XP Service Pack 2*

Knowledgebase Article

If Windows XP Service Pack 2* is installed, Wireless Zero Configuration (WZC) will not allow the Wi-Fi Protected Access 2 (WPA2) encryption type.

Microsoft* provides instructions* on using WPA2 wireless security with Windows XP Service Pack 2.

Windows XP Service Pack 3* allows the use of WPA2 under WZC.

Disclaimer

Operating System:

Windows XP Professional x64 Edition*, Windows XP*, Windows XP 64-Bit Edition*, Windows XP Professional*, Windows XP Home Edition*, Windows XP Tablet PC Edition*, Windows XP Media Center Edition*

Interesting....

lloyd116

Level 1

0 points

Oct 19, 2011 1:25 PM in response to Brice Unland

I have had the same frustration as others on this issue. Reading a post from another thred I have tested and found if you leave your iPhone 4 on the Hotspot screen in settings that the connection remains up & quickly reestablishes even after you wake the iPad from sleep mode. Both my iPhone 4 and iPad 2 are running iOS 5.

Kazafog

Level 1

5 points

Oct 20, 2011 2:24 PM in response to Brice Unland

again turning bluetooth off has fixed my problem and some others see here.

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1728159&p=-1&#bottom

Oct 26, 2011 3:22 AM in response to Brice Unland

hi, I'm a crazy Apple fanboy and experienced Apple user, and can definitely help to your problem.

this problem occurs only if you are idle and not connecting to internet for very long,i.e. about 15min.

Apps running in background do NOT count, so you must be on Safari(or other web browsers) for the connection not to be lost.

but if you play those kind of virtual world games, like blackshot, your connection will be steady.(though its VERY FREAKIN' SLOW, I'm just telling you for your info)

its sort of stupid to have this, but it sort of makes sense too. if you connect to personal hotspot with your pc/mac, then you must be using the internet...Apple is smarter than it APPEARS to be. in this way, you save your iphone from overheating and running out of juice.

on a final note, just open google, then every 10min or so, refresh it. it will not take long to do this and it makes your connection steady.

hope it works for you, like it did for me (:

(PS: I hope you will be as crazy as me about Apple too)

Kazafog

Level 1

5 points

Oct 26, 2011 5:45 AM in response to iAmcrazyaboutApple

That's not the way my iphone4 4.3.3 works. See the link below for explanation, but mine definitely does not require an active Internet connection.

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/1742490

Nov 16, 2011 4:24 PM in response to Brice Unland

Not sure if this was ever resolved, but I had the original issue with iOS5, iphone4 and ipad2. I resolved it by setting a static IP address on the iPad for the Wifi connection. Hope this helps.

Personal Hotspot cutting in and out