I have several iPhone users in a company office. All of them appear to connect to the company WiFi access point but the WiFi logo does not show up in the upper left and the iPhone appears to be using the 3g or 4g network instead of WiFi. All Android devices in the company work fine. What is the problem?
iPhone 6, iOS 8.1.2
Troubleshooting: On one (or more) of the phones, after attempting to connect, go to Settings/WiFi. Tap on the i to the right of the network name and look at the IP address. If it begins 169.254... this means that the WiFi router did not assign an IP address, so the phone created an "ad hoc" address. If this is what you find this is a router problem, not an iPhone problem.
Start by rebooting the router. Sometimes this correct the problem by restarting the DHCP daemon in the router that assigns IP addresses. Beyond that you can try updating the firmware in the router to the latest version.
edmuseer wrote:
When I turn off cellular data, the fan icon shows up in the top left as well as the cellular provider.
Wait a minute - you said when you turn the cellular data off - the fan icon shows up??!!
Can any of your users browse the internet or stream music (presuming it is allowed) in that state?
Yes, it appears to be working (when cellular is turned off). The user can browse the internet and update email accounts. I have verified this with 3 different iPhone users by turning off cellular and enabling the wifi attached to our AP.
But the cellular provider and signal indicator are still present in the top left too.
An interesting discussing. I'm sure other are more knowledgable then myself but are iPhones more sensitive to interference from other frequencies like bluetooth or other nearby routers? You said you were in an office environment so I'm just throwing this out there for thought. Would changing channels on the router make any difference? Lawrence?
No, we do not use exchange, these are IMAP accounts. If Pogster is correct, then why do I not have any trouble with Android phones or Laptops? My Android is at the far end of the building and works fine with 4 bars showing on the Wifi fan.
I will check for security policy. Enterprise support looks like it requires a contract.
I do appreciate the help. At least I have a work around.
More thoughts: Check for a carrier update. To do this go to Settings/General/About. If a carrier update is available you will be prompted to install it.
Two more thing to try, to see if it is a problem with specific data on the phone. FIRST, back up a phone to iTunes on a computer. And probably back it up to iCloud also, just for extra safety.
Take one of the phones and go to Settings/General/Reset and tap Reset network settings. Other than requiring that WiFi passphrases be reëntered no data will be lost. If this does not resolve the problem, then go to Settings/iCloud and turn off Find my iPhone (you will need the iCloud password to do this). Next go to Settings/General/Reset and tap Erase all content and settings. This should complete in a couple of minutes, and will leave the phone in its New state. Go through the setup again, and set up as a new phone, without restoring the backup (you can still restore it later). Don't install anything on the phone, no email accounts, no apps. Then test the WiFi. If the problem is still there then there are no settings on the phone that are interfering.
I have tried to reset the network settings several times and it didn't change anything. Trying a clean phone sounds like a good idea to find the culprit. I will have to find one of the users who is willing to do it.
One of my users got a brand new iPhone and I hadn't even set up his email until yesterday. His phone had the same problem even before I set up the email. I'm a bit skeptical of the idea that it is some app that is causing the problem. I don't see how this could be on 4 phones. And all these phones work fine on other networks. I am using a 10.10.0.0/255.255.0.0 network here in the office which is different than the typical home network. But I don't see how this could be a factor (and it shouldn't) as well as the fact that all other devices have no problem. It's going to be a bit of issue to get one of the users to reset their phone so I guess I'm going to have to go with turning off the cellular for now. Perhaps the latest patch will make a difference.
If he had the problem before setting it up I think you can skip the step of wiping a phone. It's clearly some very strange incompatibility between your network and the phone. I've never seen a problem quite like this in the 7+ years of iPhone history. Phones that don't connect are a common problem, and usually easily fixable. But a phone that connects and CAN use WiFi (as evidenced when you turn off cellular data) but doesn't when cellular data connections are available is a mystery. I did notice that the screen showed LTE. Can you try turning off LTE, but leave cellular data on? There was some discussion when LTE first became available about phones using LTE when WiFi was available if LTE was faster. It was never verified definitely, but this may be a case of that.
I think I'm on to something now. Late yesterday I started checking to make sure everything was functioning correctly. First thing I found was that we couldn't send email messages from the company account. I had to open up a port on the firewall. Then one user couldn't receive messages sent to his AOL account. This required the SSL IMAP port to be open on the firewall. Then I started thinking about when I turn the cellular function on and the wifi icon appears briefly for 5 seconds or so. I am wondering if there is some essential service that is being blocked and this causes the iPhone to switch over to cellular? What about the chat function or iCloud? Is there anything you can think of that might require a specific port to be opened up in order for the phone to work?
No luck yet. I tried getting the IP address of one of the iphones and then opening up the firewall completely for that address but there was not change. Wifi icon only shows up when I disable cellular service.
Problem solved. I did not know about WPAD (Web Proxy Auto-Discovery Protocol). I learned about it last week. I had a hunch the problem might have something to do with the way our proxy is setup which is manual. You must put in the URL for our proxy server in your network connection. The strange thing is that the iPhones appear to accept the settings (they are quite easy to configure) but apparently it was not working correctly even though the proxy was specified. However, once I setup WPAD and tested it on some other machines and Android phones, I went to one of my iPHone users and he promptly told me that his wifi started working yesterday (around the time I had set turned on the WPAD in my DNS server).
Hi,
I have the same problem you had so will try your solution. However, it sounds a bit like Greek to me, can you please explain where to change the settings, is it in the phone (I too have an iPhone) or in the router?
This is what mine looks like with cellular data and WiFi on:
The IP assigned by the wireless router is correct in every instance.
Can you tell if the phones are using WiFi with Wireshark or other network monitor?
We've about reached the limit of my knowledge here. You might want to contact Apple's Enterprise support center.
Connects to WiFi but does not use it?
