iPhone5 issues with WPA2/AES Wifi

At least Apple has now apparently recognized it officially as a defect. Downgrading security is a dangerous workaround, not a solution. Being an early adopter is often painful. Good luck and hope you have a smooth time getting a replacement.

mccosha wrote:

Apple Support - ask for Greg (engineer) so you may be escalated 2x to get to him. Reference case #

356928723.

He KNOWS there are issues and mentioned 2 internal docs on WAP2/AES specifically.

Thanks, this is at least something we can ask them to look up. One more thing for folks to arm themselves with when they first contact Apple.

After reading the ZD net article there's more information on what's going on under the hood. Remember when I asked you why your phone kept renogiating? It looks like the iPhone5 is in fact re-negotiating with some routers for a reason. And it appears also to be about caching WPA2-AES keys. Here's my theory.

According to the article, the iPhone 5 is sending out a BSS Transition capabilities code. This code is apparently compliant with the 2012 version of 802.11n

However, most routers use the 2009 version of the specification, which reports back that the code that Apple is sending is incorrect. Hence it fails to negotiate and "stick', even if various "fixes" change the state of the router since the problem re-appears.

So there is a change to the specification, and Apple is using the most current version.

They are using this version to support 802.11r which allows one to easily roam between routers by how it deals with the encryption key.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11r-2008

As a network engineer you know you have to support regression testing. So obviously they did that.

So, yes I agree it should not break anything currently to be able to bring in the new features. And I do find it odd that it's limited to only a set of people, and works fine for others since whatever routers were out there would be equally as random. The "fixes" that people did made little sense like using google DNS instead of your normal DNS.

Some of the those phones are broken, and some are not. Some routers are incompatible, and some are not.

One router manufacturer has apparently shipped a firmware upgrade to make it compatible with the iPhone 5.

The thing is that the iPhone 5 passed WIFI certification testing so it should work with any other WIFI certified current equipment to connect, and stay connected. Unless of course it is a problem with the router sending out some management request and getting back a reply it does not accept.

It is after all connected 24/7. But not authorized to transmit data on that connection unless the whole WPA-2 AES process completes successfully. So it can still be "connected", and not transmit data which seems counter-intuititive. And that brings us back to the WPA-AES key caching and renegotiation theory.

Or sticking it in the freezer.

SABSAB1 wrote:

This is the second phone I have had with issue and charred off with it, Apple need to pull their fingers out, I can confirm mine is 68 96 wifi address and thus Apple Chip ............... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz Im not going for a 3rd replacement will return and say adios!

That's disheartening. I'll be testing my replacement on the secured "breakroom" network before leaving the store.

On the question of routers, I'll just say these words of Phil's are very important: "Some of the those phones are broken, and some are not. Some routers are incompatible, and some are not." My phone for example, won't work at home on the lastest model Airport Express (bought just a couple months ago), won't work at my office, on whatever that is, and won't work on the Apple Store's secured network.

From a consumer standpoint, if you've got other iOS devices, running iOS 6 running fine on your network, it's reasonable to expect the iPhone 5 to "just work" too,

If you can get your phone to connect to any router running AES encryption, you have a different problem, maybe related, but not what the OP started this forum about.

After my 3rd phone call with Apple they are sending me a replacement. Mine is an AES issue however it is not my router since a friends Iphone 5 works just fine on my home network along with all my other Apple devices with IOS6. It was my iphone 5 that had the issue. The Apple rep was friendly and helpful but cryptic in his answers. He admits there is an issue and Apple is working on it. He made it sound like they don't know if it is a software or harware issue. I had to send them some files and they want my phone for testing. He also said there is no guarantee that my replacement will work. It sounds like a lottery if you get a good phone or not.

Same here... tested everything. BT on/off, deleted profiles, full reset of the iPhone, and so on and on and on.... it still don't work with AES. 10-15 seconds with heavenly speed (almost maxing my broadband with 60mbps down/15mbps up), but then full stop... and I have to reconnect to the network for 10-15 seconds of more "fun"... 😟 😟 😟
I'm going for a replament on monday.

Reset All Settings -- quick follow up.

Okay, two days after doing a Reset All Settings, I'm getting much better wifi performance. Had it been at this level from the beginning, I would not have suspected any problems. I was able to stream music through Airplay for ~ 2 hours with only a single interruption and WPA personal networks now download websites without hanging (about 9/10 times...). Speed tests are at the level expected. I doubt that this is a solution for all, but if you don't mind experimenting with redoing all of your settings (see previous post -- it is a pain), it might be worth a try.

One shouldn't have to screw around with all of this stuff -- resets are a pain. As apple likes to advertize -- "it just works." Well, apparently not for the many who have posted here. Fingers crossed that a OS update puts this to rest.

Ok...some more info to share.

My iPhone 5 could not join a wifi network using WAP2, but it works when security is downgraded to WEP and no security. This is on an old Netgear router (at least 7 years old) that does not support IPv6.

This morning I tried a different wifi WAP2 network that uses a current model router that supports IPv6. My iPhone 5 connected with no issue and I have not experienced any network degradation over time since connecting.

Curiouser and curiouser...

Serious wifi problems using WPA2 with mine. Even using an Asus RT56U router. Even after getting an AirPort Express. Even using 5GHz. Even on 2.4 GHz. Various different channels. The problem is it drops data flow. Even with Google DNS.

I set it back to WEP and no issues though my thoroughput caps out at 12 MBps downstream intead of 50. This is even after 6.01 which was supposed to fix the WPA2 issues.

This is the only device that has wifi issues on my network. I also have an iPad, DSi XL and 2008 Unibody MacBook.

WPA2/AES remains broken in 6.01. A weekly RESET NETWORK SETTINGS is not feasible.

Is Apple working on this?

I was having this same issue and was very unhappy, but assumed Apple would roll out an update that would solve this problem. I would be able to use Safari to browse websites on wifi decently, but downloading any music, videos or apps would be so slow that I would just switch back to cellular and suck up the data usage because it annoyed me so much.

Anyway, I finally decided that I was going to work on troubleshooting this issue today and tried a few things here. I basically reset all my network connections on my iPhone and then reset my router and waiting for it to reboot itself. I tried downloading an app prior to this and it wouldn't move beyond the loading stage at all. After the reset and reboot I tried again and within 15-20 seconds it was downloaded and installed on my iPhone. So thankfully this worked for me 🙂 So much happier now!

I'm glade I found this thread. I can say with absolute certainty that iOS 6.0.1 has not sorted my WPA2/AES issues. I have changed my router to WPA-PSK for now and that's sorted it. My wife's iPhone 4S and my 4th generation iPad have been unaffected on both 6.0 and 6.0.1.

This is such a shame that dedicated apple customers have to deal with this. We were able to solve the wifi issues with my iphone 5. Hope this offers a bit of help. My original phone would connect to my router, but speed was really questionable. Sometimes okay, other times really slow. Running a typical speedtest app would give download speeds of 20 mb/s for just a bit, but then would slow to a crawl. I replaced the phone and it got a bit better. My router was a previous model airport express, purchased probably back in 2008. For reasons I won't go into, I needed to replace the router and ended up getting a new express, 2012 model (the one that looks like a white apple TV). This completely solved the problem. I can now stream to my iphone at a consistent rate at the maximum speed of my cable modem. If you haven't replaced your router in a while, it might be worth a try. I have no idea why some phones work with suspect routers, and others don't. But I do suspect that apple is not fully concerned with maintaining compatibility with older equipment, even their own. Good luck!

Geobound - What type of wireless router(s) are you using? There are a bunch of us discussing the same issue on another forum. https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4322714?start=3780&tstart=0

This does seem to be an iOS issue, but we're not sure of the reason. My WiFi is all Apple (Time Capsule with an Airport Express extending the network) and I have the same issue that you're describing. All my other devices work, including other iOS devices that have not been updated.

At the suggestion of others on a related thread, I have found that switching to wirelessN - 5.0 GHz mode gets my iPhone working again. Signal strength goes back to "Excellent". No distance problems, etc. All other modes still create the problem. The MAC address filtering and choice of password security do not impact at all. Of course, I can't stay in that mode because then other devices I have do not work.

APPLE - PLEASE TAKE NOTICE AND GIVE SOME ACKNOWLEDGEMENT!