remote hotspot failure unable to start personal hotspot

Hi baretive,

I did it what you have adviced. But it wasn't enough in my case. I just realised, that my iPhone's device name differs from the one registered in iCloud. So I did the following steps on both devices (iPhone and iPad):

GO to Settings/iCloud/AppleID/Devices.

It siple shows your device names registered in iCloud but it seems that with these steps the device synchronizes its own Device name to iCloud, from where the Guest device gets this information every time it tries to connect to the hotspot.

May be I'm not fully right, but it worked for me and it seems to be stable.

Thanks for the idea!

In my case, I'm starting up a personal hotspot on the iPhone and trying to get the iPad to connect to it. The reason most people do this is because they have a WiFi only iPad and the want to tether it to the iPhone to get 3G internet access.

In my case, I'm a lecturer and use Keynote on the iPad. I use the Keynote remote on the iPhone to advance through the slides, so I can walk around the room as I'm presenting (see this apple support article for details). For this to work, the iPad must be on the same WiFi network (or linked via bluetooth) as the iPhone. Creating a hotspot with the iPhone allows me to do this when there isn't another WiFi access point that both devices can join.

But after iOS8, here's the screen I'm getting when I try to connect to my iPhone's hotspot:

As you can see, the iPad shows my iPhone's hotspot (named "BGP IP3" in the image above) and even knows there is 3G available and can see the iPhone's battery level. But it just can't join it!

The only way to make it work is to go into settings/general/about/name and rename the phone, say from "BGP IP3" to "BGP IP4". If I do that, the new hotspot "BGP IP4" shows up in the iPad's list of available networks and will successfully connect to it. Funnily enough, "BGP IP3" also continues to show up in the list, even though it shouldn't be available any more.

Unfortunately, this only works for as long as you stay connected. When I pack up the presentation and move to another room to give another presentation, the iPad disconnects from the hotspot and won't reconnect. I have to go through the whole renaming process on the iPhone to get the iPad to see a "new" hotspot and reconnect.

My PC has never had a problem connecting to the hotspot. I suspect the iPad (4th gen) is just not feeling the love for iOS8. I have an iPad air but haven't tested it yet. I'll do that and report back if anything interesting happens.

I'd rather not muddy the discussion by bringing up bluetooth. BT is its own networking protocol that shouldn't require any other communications service to be running. Two devices should be able to pair via BT whether or not there's a WiFi or hotspot or whatever you want to call it, available.

I really don't get the distinction you're trying to make between an ad-hoc WiFi network and a personal hotspot and manual hotspot. In iOS7 they were one and the same. Apple used to pride itself on being so completely intuitive that you could pick up a iPad or iPhone and just start using it. But now it seems they're at the other end of that learning curve.

Note: The personal hotspot setting will still be enabled, but the broadcast will have stopped. Kind of annoying but probably a smart thing to do.

Going to have to disagree with you there. What's the purpose of the on/off switch if the service can turn itself off whenever it wants to? Call me crazy, but if that switch is in the "on" position I expect the service to be, well, on. However, according to the help topic "Understanding Personal Hotspot", it seems you may be right. It says "Wi-Fi hotspot turns off when no devices are connected. To automatically turn it back on, go to Settings > Personal Hotspot." I'm totally flabbergasted by that.

But the help topic is pretty clear in that turning on the "personal hotspot" switch causes the iPhone to make an ad-hoc WiFi network. Indeed, al of the settings we're talking about are accessed on the "WiFi" screen in the iPad. I don't see any mention of "manual hotspot" in the help topic. Searching apple's knowledge base for "manual hotspot" gets no relevant hits.

And here's another snapshot I just took:

My iPad seems to think that my iPhone is broadcasting two hotspots now, 9 and 10. Tried connecting to both, but both of them time-out with the "remote hotspot failure" message. And since the phone can apparently decide to turn off the hotspot without any input from me, I tried turning hotspot off and back on again on the iPhone... still no luck.

I feel like I need to attend a training session each time apple releases a new iOS.

I'll try to explain a bit better.

Instant Hotspot is a new feature. "Manual Hotspot" is just a term I used for the other method of enabling personal hotspot "manually" on your iPhone.

With Instant Hotspot, after everything is setup correctly, you can have a device trigger your iPhone to enable WiFi and to connect to it. All without touching the iPhone. This requires the same iCloud account on both devices.

With Manual Hotspot, you go to the iPhone and enable Personal Hotspot. Then you go to another device, find the WiFi being broadcast by your iPhone and connect to it.

One method is more automatic and the other is more "manual".

The way you know which method you are using is by looking at available WiFi networks on your device. Here is an image I found on google. It is a screen shot of how this looks on Mac OS X.

Notice the line between the "Personal Hotspot" section and the regular WiFi networks? Your iPad appeared to have the same line. Options in the upper "Personal Hotspot" section are Instant Hotspot options. Your phone could really be in one or the other, depending on your setup, but I believe it defaults to showing in the Personal Hotspot section if Instant Hotspot is an option.

I hope this explanation helps you see the difference between Instant Hotspot and what I refer to as Manual Hotspot, or setting your hotspot manually.

As for bluetooth, it's required because that is how the devices "discover" each other to know they are within range. They don't actually pair or need to pair. What other way would they know they are by each other to create an instant hotspot? I think it's pretty cool. I believe AppleTVs now work the same with bluetooth discovery.

In regards to the WiFi disabling itself after you leave the Personal Hotspot screen even though the setting still says "enabled", I understand that when you want it to work the way you do, that it seems broken and silly that they do that. However, if Apple did leave your Personal Hotspot enabled all the time, even when you're not using it, then others (and possibly you) might complain that it drains the battery and poses a security risk.

So perhaps the solution is for Apple to flip the setting to disabled if they are going to disable it for you automatically. But still, someone would complain that Apple shouldn't be deciding when the WiFi gets disabled. But for 95% of people that don't understand much or any of this, it's probably a good thing that Apple disables the WiFi after it's not being used for a minute.

I understand what you're saying a bit better, although I've still got to wonder why they thought this would be a great idea. They already had the chain link icon to differentiate a hotspot link from a WiFi network. There was no good reason to create a new area in the network screen and move it up there just to differentiate it further.

And here's an interesting twist: I was trying to compare my iPad4 with my iPad Air, and the iPad Air doesn't even have the "personal hotspots" section in the WiFi setting screen. It shows the iPhone's hotspot listed under the "choose a network" section. Both devices are on the same (current) iOS version 8.1.2. I compared all the network settings to make sure nothing was different between the two iPads. After fiddling around with settings, at one point I had this screen:

Is it a hotspot or a network? It's both! I wasn't able to join BGP IP10 as a hotspot (same error message as before) but I was able to join it as a network. Maybe tomorrow I'll reset all the network settings and start from scratch.

I'm having the same problem with my iPhone 5s and a iPad mini retina , both on iOS 8.0.

Surprisingly it did work today for 5 minutes when I was on the road, but it hasn't worked since.

Is it a bug in ios 8?

I'm having the same issue. I have an iPhone 6 running iOS 8.0.2 and an iPad Air also running IOS 8.0.2.

On the iPad I see my name listed under personal hotspots but when I chose it I am never connected. Eventually I received the error "Remote Hotspot Error". What's weird is that the name that appears in the wifi name is my full name and not the name that appears under General > About > Name.

This is the zero configure hostpot functionality that is suppose to be part of Hand Off and not the carrier hotspot stuff.

I seem have it working now. I had to reset all settings on my iPad. I noticed the name of the Wi-FI network was showing my iPhone 5 name and not my iPhone 6 name. Since there's no way to forget the personal hotspot I needed to clear the settings. I tried to just clean the network settings but that didn't work. I had to reset all settings.

I Had the same problem being unable to connect my iPad to my iPhone 5 iOS 8 both. Today I found out that Apple created another hotspot with different name 'iphone' and putting my pass in there I connected in a minute. The old hotspot '....'s iphone' don't work.

I believe it's showing iPhone because if you looks at settings General about that's the name on your new phone. Once I changed the name from iPhone to a more descriptive name I had to reset all settings on my iPad.

I Just switched back to the iPhone from a few Andriod/Windows phones and I'm pretty happy except the lack of a reliable hotspot is really making it difficult to use the iPhone for business. I'm on the road a lot and need the ability to use my laptop and iPad. I've never had a problem with my other phones (all on AT&T, the same as this one) but when I turn on the hotspot for my iPhone 6 (ios 8.0.2) it either won't connect to my iPad Air (iOS 8.0.2) and laptop, or when it does it will takes so long to connect that I give up. sometimes when the iPad goes to sleep I have to power cycle both devices before the hotspot will reactivate - and even then it can still take a little bit of time. I have changed the network's name and always try toggling the hotspot and wi-fi on and off - but nothing seems to make it work consistently.

I really like the phone - but not enough to have to pay for and carry around a dedicated hotspot in order to get my iPad and laptop online.

My iPad failed to initiate remote hotspot on my iPhone 6. I tried "Reset Network Settings" and "Reset all Settings" numerous times these few days, none of these attempts do the trick.

I suspect there is some inconsistency between registered device names in the iCloud, and possibility something messed up with the keychain. So I do the following:

1. Turn iPhone and iPad into flight mode first, eject the SIM as well, the intention is to prevent the device name sync to iCloud.

2. Do a "Reset Network Settings" on both iPhone and iPad ( General > Reset > Reset Network Settings ).

3. Change your iPhone and iPad's name according to your preference ( General > About > Name ).

4. Insert your SIM back to iPhone, and turn off flight mode.

5. Make sure you iPad and iPhone are connected properly to the internet via Wifi or Cellular connection.

6. Turn off keychain on both the iPhone and iPad ( iCloud > Keychain > Off, but before you do this, please make sure you remember your keychain security code, otherwise, you might have problem to turn keychain back on ).

7. Turn on keychain on both device again.

After doing the above steps, I could then properly do instant remote hotspot.

Maybe a subset of the above listed steps would do the trick as well, but I dare not doing any verification further since it is now working fine 😝.

Hope this helps,

Ronald