remote hotspot failure unable to start personal hotspot

This question has been posted in the category "using iPhone". Providing a solution that tells us to do something with a mac (which we may not even have) is simply off topic. Different o/s, you know. If anyone here is actually having trouble creating a hotspot with their mac, it would be a good idea to post that issue under mac or the appropriate o/s.

I apologize. I misunderstood the problem. I thought it was in reference to an "instant hotspot", not manually connecting to a personal hotspot.

So you are trying to connect from an iPad to a personal hotspot on an iPhone but it won't work? Have you tried connecting from any other device? Mac? PC? Mobile? Do those other devices work?

And just to confirm, you do see your iPhone's wifi network on your iPad but it just won't connect when you select it?

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.

Okay, I may not have the answer for you, but maybe I can help somehow...

As far as I understand, there are two different scenarios you are dealing with. One is an "Instant Hotspot" and the other is just a "WiFi Network".

Instant Hotspot is something new that Apple released in the last few months with iOS 8.1, I believe. Instant hotspot allows you to see your iPhone, enable personal hotspot on it and connect to it, all without touching the iPhone. It's pretty cool. In your image, the "BGP IP3" under the "Personal Hotspots" section tells you that it is enabled for this. Normal WiFi networks show up under "Choose a Network". You'll also notice that the Personal Hotspots that use Instant Hotspot also show signal strength and battery icons. The regular WiFi networks do not show this, as you can see.

I believe that at times, possibly after a failed instant hotspot attempt, your iPhone WiFi shows up in the regular "Choose a Network" setting. It's possible that this happens when you go to your iPhone's personal hotspot and enable it manually. Then you are able to connect manually to the WiFi on your iPhone, but not via the Instant Hotspot feature I'm referring to above.

So, I don't know exactly why the instant hotspot seems to be failing for you. I also don't know why the "manual hotspot" is requiring you to change the phone name in order to work between attempts. Here's what I do know:

1. Instant Hotspots are found when two devices have bluetooth enabled, see each other and are both logged into the same iCloud account. I take it that so far this part is working for you because you are seeing your iPhone as an Instant Hotspot option. What is not working for you is that when you try to connect, it fails, as shown in your image.

I had this problem, but from a Mac to my iPhone. I spoke with Apple Support and they noticed that I didn't have iCloud Keychain enabled in my iCloud preferences for both devices. Once I enabled it, everything worked. The engineer I spoke with thinks that the issue is because the iiPhone needs to share it's wireless passphrase with the device trying to connect to it so that it can be a truly hands off process.

I don't know that doing what I did and enabling iCloud Keychain on both devices will work for you. For what it's worth, I thought Instant Hotspot was only available for OS X and not iOS.

2. One other thing I learned from the Apple engineer is that the personal hotspot on the iPhone is only broadcasting it's WiFi network when a device is connected or when you go to the personal hotspot setting screen in the iOS preferences on the iPhone. So, if I got to the iPhone's personal hotspot preference and enable it, devices around me will be able to see my WiFi network. If I leave that screen, and no device has connected to it, then either immediately or within seconds the WiFi network will not be seen by other devices.

Of course if I connect to the WiFi while I'm on that screen, then I can leave the screen and it stays connected. But within a minute of disconnecting from the iPhones's WiFi, the personal hotspot will turn off until you go back to the screen. 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. It makes the instant hotspot option that much more desirable. Also, according to the guy I talked to at Apple, this is expected behavior though they don't really document it for us.

Maybe this also explains why leaving the personal hotspot screen on your iPhone to change the iPhone name, helps make the WiFi work again when you come back? Or perhaps changing the name triggers the WiFi without going back to the personal hotspot screen? Either way, if you can't get the Instant Hotspot to work and must do it manually, try leaving the personal hotspot setting screen on your iPhone and coming right back to it. See if that starts rebroadcasting the WiFi.

So maybe those two tidbits will help you? Does what I'm saying make sense?

Let me know if you have any questions. Let me know if anything I said ends up being helpful.

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.

This worked for me to.

here on how to fix

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSeSbBjxG-A

A Lot of similar posts reiphone personal hotspot and being unable to connect to it

tthe phone appeared under personal hotspot not as a network.

what I dI'd was (on my iPad) look under networks

click other

type in the name of my iPhone's network

select wep as security and type in my password

it works

This worked for me.

Thanks. In summary:

1. Turn on iCloud Keychain on phone
2. approve from ipad
3. done, ready to connect to 'disabled' hotspot

REMOTE HOTSPOT FAILURE

Unable to start personal hotspot *(null)*

Turn off:

WiFi

Bluetooth

Cellular Data

Data Roaming

Personal Hotspot

Set Enable LTE to off

Shutdown your iPhone and turn it back on.

Re-enable everything that was turned of. And try to connect to your hotspot.

This solution worked for me as of 11JUNE2015.

My hardware:

iPhone 6 128GB(ATT)

iPad mini First-Gen 64GB (WiFi)

Reference: http://www.qdinformation.com/iphone/is-your-personal-hotspot-not-working-try-thi s

This solution worked.... I can't believe that this is the work around... it's so counter intuitive.