iOS6 - Wi-Fi on iPad gives error "Unable to join network"

Hi all

I did the firmware downgrade on my WG102 - BUT still having ongoing issues and were curious if others were experiencing the following:

1. My iOS6 devices connect....but after some period of time seem to lose their connectivity - they still appear to be connected (with an IP address) and wifi icon on top of screen - however, if you try to web browse.....nothing loads.

2. My MacBook Air initially connects....but once it goes to sleep, it can't reconnect and gets an ! where the wifi icon is.

Only solution to both these problems is to reboot or powercycle the WG102. Anyone else have similar issues or thoughts?

thx

I have exactly the same issue with my iPhone 4 and my Pirelli PRGAV4202N router. Everything worked fine before updating to iOS 6. After the update I couldnt connect to my WiFi anymore. All I get is a message saying "Unable to join the network"!

This is really annoying!

The manufacturer of my router (LANCOM 1821) traced it down to 802.11r support in iOS, which must have been introduced with iOS 6. 802.11r is indicated by a new capability bit (Bit 12: Radio Measurements) in the association requests that was previously reserved. The old router firmware simply rejected any association requests which had this bit set (e.g. iPad 3 with iOS 6). Luckily I got a patch from them, so that my router now ignores this capability bit:

http://www.lancom-forum.de/topic,11892,-iPad+mit+iOS+6+kommt+nicht+mehr+ins+LANC OM+1821+WLAN.html (German)

Greetings from Germany,

Jens

Had the same issue on an iPad2 and a Netgear WAG102 and I can confirm that downgrading the firmware of the Netgear WAG102 to version 2.0.7 fixes the iOS6 wifi issue!

Just updated to iO6 2 days ago and have not been able to watch Netflix since. wife's older iPad still works fine on our network. IO6 is the problem

I'm seeing this problem too. Ever since upgrading my iPad 3 to iOS6 I have been unable to join a network that worked perfectly when my iPad 3 was running iOS 5.1.1. I keep getting the "unable to join network" error message. By contrast my iPhone 4 still works just fine with the same network.

iPhone 4 with iOS 6 is unable to join the network on my Pirelli PRGAV4202N.

Apple Inc, geht this done!!! Its not the modem manufacturer's fault since everything worked fine before the iOS update! Apart from that its not the first time that there has been wifi issues after an iOS update.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4367399?answerId=19800307022#19800307022

we all know that, there is a bug about wireless connection in ios6,but why no explain from apple till now?

Had to be on with Applecare support last night due to a hardware problem on an iPhone 5, and mentioned this to the tech, including sending him this thread.

He wrote up a ticket for it, and was escalating it over to the engineering folks. He was particularly interested in the fact that the router downgrade fixed it.

Hopefully, they will look into it.

Ok, So my iPhone 4S worked fine on all wireless access points and routers until IOS6. Now my phone will not connect to my Netgear WAG102 even after downgrading to firmware version 2.0.7. (Recommended by Netgear)

This has solved the problem for other iphone/iPad users with the same AP but not for me. I can connect but only get the Internet once until I reboot the Netgear AP each time I want to connect?

Why it works for some and not others? I'm guessing slightly different architecture between different builds iod iPhones and iPads etc?

This issue needs to be sorted on a global scale because even if it works on one router/AP it needs to work on them all via an IOS update to fix the bug properly! I'm an IT professional and I need a general fix for all AP's/routers not just a certain fix for a certain router/AP!

Please sort it soon Apple!

Summary: My network is now stable with all my IOS6 devices including the iPad, iPhone as well as my Apple TV and PC running with no network failures for about 1 hour (im streaming on the Apple TV and running network apps and browser on both the iPhone and iPad and streaming video from the PC.

The 'fix' I have applied is to disallow DHCP assignment of IP addresses to the Ipad2 and assigned it a static IP from the router instead. See discussion of the issue below.

This temporary fix seems to be working - until such time as Apple engineers provide a patch for what is very evidently a major problem given the number of pages being dedicated to wi-fi failures with devices running IOS6.

I dedicated about 8 hours trying to fix the wi-fi drops on my network. I have 3 different Apple devices, an iPhone 4, Ipad 2 and Apple TV on the same network with a Windows 7 PC. Following the upgrade to IOS6, my network connection started to drop, with the logs on my router not really showing anything of interest. I isolated all of the devices individually and found the network failures related to the Ipad 2 (wi-fi and 3G model).

My wi-fi is configured through a Netgear N900 Dual Band WNDR4500 with a Rogers SMCD3GN Cable Modem (wi-fi is not turned on on the Rogers Cable Modem). I also tried using my spare D-Link DIR-655 with the same results as part of isolation testing (wi-fi would simply fail when connecting the iPad).

All of my other devices ran rock solid - including the Apple TV which streams for an hour + without any issues. No problems with the iPhone either on IOS6.

When testing the iPad I finally did log an error - WLAN access rejected from the iPad2 (see log clip below from the Netgear router). Please note I have blanked out my MAC addresses.

[Internet disconnected] Sunday, Sep 30,2012 10:22:37

[DHCP IP: (192.168.1.2)] to MAC address **:**:***.**:**:ED, Sunday, Sep 30,2012 10:18:43

[WLAN access rejected: incorrect security] from MAC **:**:**:**:**:ED, Sunday, Sep 30,2012 10:18:10

I had tried all of the suggested fixes for this problem in this thread and the discussion thread on wi-fi freezes https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4310121?start=1500&tstart=0 including:

1. Changing wi-fi router (no success)

2. Activating IPV6 (no success)

3. De-activating WMA (no success)

4. Turning off auto-channel switching on the wireless (no success)

5. Resetting network on iPad (settings-general-reset-reset network settings) (no success)

6. Changing iPad wi-fi HTTP Proxy to Auto (no success)

7. Upadting Router firmware (no success)

8. Removing network security (temporarily for testing only) (no success)

9. Turning off DHCP assignment for the iPad from the router and assign it a static IP (SUCCESSFUL)

My current configuration: IPV6 is off, Auto Channel switching off (picked a channel and assigned), WMA is on, DHCP assignment for the Ipad2 is configured to one static IP address. This last setting is however, the only one that made any difference.

Not sure if this will help others, but I hope it can save you some time in trying to find a temporary solution to this problem.

"The 'fix' I have applied is to disallow DHCP assignment of IP addresses to the Ipad2 and assigned it a static IP from the router instead. See discussion of the issue below."

Thanks a lot!!!! It also worked on my iPhone 4. At least there's a temporary solution!

Ok, I have a fix which may work for all IOS6 users using a Netgear WAG102 Access point/other access points?

The firmware version I mentioned earlier in the post (V2.0.7) DOES WORK! but you must do one simple thing...

Reset the access point back to factory settings (erase option) and then reconfigure all your settings (name, SSID, security etc) and bingo! it works.

If you simply downgrade from the latest firmware keeping your settings as I first did it doesn't seem to work, but if you wipe the access point of all settings after downgrading to V2.0.7 and then set it all up from scratch it will work!

Hope this works for all you other IOS6/WAG102 users and possibly other access point makes/models?

I have reconfigured my Wifi settings on my iPad and router now. I'll test this for a while and see if it's making any differents. Thanks again for the tip! Let's hope for an update from Apple soon that will fix the problem permanently. I must say that I'm a little bit tired of all the suprises Apple brings with any new version or update 😟

Update:

On intermittent wifi issues...I have been posting here for awhile, so my update is that I made an appointment to go see the Genius Bar, after speaking to a rep on the phone - who by the way was quite well aware of the wifi issues. Given how much troubleshooting I had tried on my own, I skipped over any attempts to do anything by phone and went to the store. The Genius Bar guys decided that the best thing to do to fix my intermittent wifi fails was a factory restore...in other words, all my content, apps everything will have to be re-synced from itunes as they told me to delete my old backups and not use them. Their words "the firmware was likely corrupted during the upgrade, we have seen this before", though the tech did indicate that I was the first person to see him regarding this wifi issue with IOS6. I have now brought my now basically out of the box iPad home and its been running without errors on the wifi for 1 day. I will post an update on whether or not the complete reset worked or not. As a note, the type of reinstallation they did can only be done at a store, it's apprently not the same as resetting the device yourself - complete reinstall of the IOS and firmware from their server. Best advice to all if you are going to go see the Genius Bar - offload your photos and make sure you have copies of anything else you want to keep from your device, because it will basically be a new machine that you have to start over with. I have to say that gone are the days when I believed the Apple hype that "it just works". I will be treating IOS upgrades from now on the same way that I do Microsoft - waiting for awhile after release to see what goes wrong before deciding to upgrade...