How do I fix my iPhone 5 wifi problems with Airport Extreme?

Question

Level 1

8 points

How do I fix my iPhone 5 wifi problems with Airport Extreme?

I have a 5th Gen Airport Extreme (AE) and an all Mac household. We have iPhones, iPads and MacBooks. Ever since I got the Extreme, my iPhone 5 will stop responding on the internet. It still shows as connected, but nothing on the internet responds. The immediate solution is to turn wifi on and off on the phone and everything immediately starts working again.

I believe it's started happening on the iPad 3 as well, but it's hard to tell if I'm just resetting it due to paranoia on unresponsive sites. The AE is set to WPA2 Personal only, and both the 2 & 5ghz radios are set to automatic. Also it's a/b/g/n (Automatic).

I've tried restarting everything multiple times, reset the AE from scratch, and done "Reset Network Settings" on the phone. Nothing has been able to fix it permanently.

The irony is that I switched to the AE after a number of cheap wifi routers that didn't keep a signal. Now I never lose the signal but it refuses to actually show evidence of routing the packets.

Any and all help is much appreciated!

iPhone 5, iOS 6.1.4

Posted on May 13, 2013 4:08 PM

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Answer 1

norm123

Community Specialist

May 15, 2013 11:09 AM in response to fairwitness

Hello fairwitness,

Welcome to the Apple Support Communities. If you needs some troubleshooting steps, the following article will assist with getting down to the issues for Wi-Fi issues.

iOS: Troubleshooting Wi-Fi networks and connections

http://support.apple.com/kb/ts1398

Regards,

-Norm G.

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Answer 2

fairwitness Author

Level 1

8 points

May 30, 2013 5:09 AM in response to norm123

I tried all the suggestions in the article above multiple times and unfortunately the problem persists. It's actually worse than I thought. My girlfriend's iPhone 4S apparently has the same problem, and she needs to toggle wifi on and off multiple times a day, she just never mentioned it.

Is there any logging on either the phone or the Airport that can help pinpoint the cause? At this point I'm going to have to start looking at other solutions. However, without any details, I'm not sure another Airport would solve the problem. I don't want to buy another substandard router though, and I love the integration with Time Machine etc. that the Airport provides.

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Answer 3

Jun 4, 2013 3:12 PM in response to fairwitness

I have had this same problem with my 4s and iphone 5. Apple hasn't been able to solve it for me either, in fact they brush it off. I was just going to buy a new ipad, I had bought a macbook pro w/retina display in January, but after being ignored and Apple not fixing this issue I won't be buying any more of their products and my macbook pro is already on ebay. For a company with such a reputation for great products and service I am surprised as I have experienced many problems and some of the worst customer support since I used to buy Dell. Hopefully they find a fix for this in the new ios7, there is no reason the wifi should be so poor, especially using an Apple router and Apple product ( iphone or ipad ). Best of luck solving this, I will keep an eye on the thread in hopes you find a solution where I have not and post it.

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Answer 4

fairwitness Author

Level 1

8 points

Jun 5, 2013 5:30 PM in response to grat3fulh3ad

Thanks for the words of encouragement. I think I'm going to get an appointment at an Apple store as my last resort. Although I guess I need to bring the whole setup of phones, iPads and the Airport itself.

It's actually been getting steadily worse, with wifi toggling all night long while I'm home.

My second to last was to "Reset All Network Settings." This seems to have stopped it for the last hour at least.

It definitely seems to be related to specifically to iOS as it happens on the iPhones and iPad, but never with my MacBook.

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Answer 5

Old Macs

Level 2

180 points

Jun 5, 2013 10:26 PM in response to fairwitness

I have gone through 5 iPhone 5 replacements and nothing has helped with this issue. I just keep taking it back hoping for a good replacement. I finally got the attention of a district manager because of the amount of replacements I have had. Also, don't believe the Geniuses. They tried to say I had my AE 5th Gen setup wrong when I followed Apple's recommended settings. Then when I showed them the page, they said I was showing them a fake website. It was the Apple Support page. ***?!?

Check out the link below for the 200 and some page Apple Support Discusion on this issue:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4322714?start=4365&tstart=0

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Answer 6

fairwitness Author

Level 1

8 points

Jun 6, 2013 10:35 AM in response to Old Macs

Wow. Good thread, which I'll have to read through to see if there's anything I haven't tried. However it looks like it's happening with my girlfirend's 4S too. I *think* I've seen it on my iPad 3 as well, but it's hard to tell if I'm just resetting on slow connections due to paranoia.

I'll take a look through that massive thread and see if there's anything else. Thanks for linking me to it though.

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Answer 7

fairwitness Author

Level 1

8 points

Jun 10, 2013 8:32 PM in response to fairwitness

So I reset all the network settings and that worked great. For.a few days at least. So far I've only had to toggle once in 4 days. Maybe that was another issue. Here's to hoping that was the solution.

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Answer 8

fairwitness Author

Level 1

8 points

Jun 11, 2013 3:53 PM in response to fairwitness

I'm updating this thread in the hopes someone finds this useful.

The wifi died again today. Completely connected at full strength to the AirPort Extreme. Can't get to any site via apps or Safari. Turned off cellular data, renewed the dhcp lease and set the http proxy to auto. Tried again after each of those steps and no change. Toggled airplane mode off, waited a few seconds and back on. Everything working again after that.

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Answer 9

fairwitness Author

Level 1

8 points

Jun 12, 2013 8:21 PM in response to fairwitness

Latest update, we're back to intolerable again. I've had to toggle wifi about 10 times today. I did "forget this network" but it didn't seem to help. I don't want to reset all networks again and have to re-enter all those passwords again.

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Answer 10

filmsec

Level 1

0 points

Jun 13, 2013 2:09 AM in response to fairwitness

Same problem with iPhone 5. No other phone/computer/console/kindle in my house has this problem, so putting it down to software/hardware problem with the iphone5. 4s working fine.

I noticed apple responded above then went very quiet, why are they not acknowledging that this is a problem?

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Answer 11

markwmsn

Level 6

14,987 points

Jun 13, 2013 9:19 AM in response to filmsec

filmsec wrote:

I noticed apple responded above then went very quiet, why are they not acknowledging that this is a problem?

The newly appeared Apple "Community Specialists" only seem to be providing links to existing Apple documents. This is still primarily a user-to-user support forum.

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Answer 12

Joel S

Level 2

189 points

Jun 14, 2013 7:24 PM in response to fairwitness

Just stumbled on to this thread. Same exact situation. Use to think it was the phone (only), but now think the 5th Gen Airport Extreme is part of the problem.

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Answer 13

fairwitness Author

Level 1

8 points

Jun 15, 2013 5:20 AM in response to Joel S

Yeah, I initially thought it was the phone until my girlfriend told me about her 4S. I just wish there were logs on the AE I could review for problems.

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Answer 14

Joel S

Level 2

189 points

Jun 15, 2013 10:03 AM in response to fairwitness

After my last post I switched to an Airport Express N I had laying around. Not a single issue with it so far (and normally I would have had an issue in that time period).

I'm picking up a new AEac today to try it out. Worse comes to worse I return it within their 14 day return policy. We'll see how it goes.

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Answer 15

Jun 16, 2013 5:44 AM in response to fairwitness

Same issue with 2 different iphone 5's and my 2010 era timecapsule. AppleTV and various macbooks connected without issue. Android devices work fine.

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