iOS 11 can't connected to unsecured network??

So I used a variation of the suggested fix (it didn't work for me) and this has worked with my offices Aruba network hardware for multiple iOS 11 people.

1) For your unsecured wifi connection, add an invalid DNS server IP (I used 192.1.1.1)

2) Try to Connect/Join

3) While it is trying to connect, click on the connection to view the details (probably not required but I did this)

4) Go to your browser and try to load http://www.apple.com

5) This might take 20-30 seconds, but eventually the wifi icon connection will show up.

6) Remove the invalid DNS entry.

I found a solution!! All my devices were affected (iPAD, iPhone 7 plus, MacBook pro). Try the following non-elegant workaround:

Go to "Configure DNS" within the network you are trying to connect to--> Switch to "Manual" and add an IP address--> Attempt login (which will fail however the wirless wifi remains open)--> Go back to your network settings and delete the "Manual" IP address you inputed--> reattempt to open a website which should redirect to the login/network accept page.

This worked on all my devices. Good luck!

I had the same issue with university network. Go to wi-fi settings and forget the uni network. Then conect to it (inputting all required data), submit that you trust this network and it should work. For me, that works with eduroam-networks in Uni.

I hope that help you.

We had the same issue at a couple school districts. It would connect and immediately disconnect before you could get the authentication pages.

The issue was that the device is trying to get to Captive.apple.com but the connection was being blocked because you are not authenticated yet and it would disconnect. We added a filter bypass for captive.apple.com and it works now.

We also contacted the web content appliance manufacturer who said they had dozens of pending support tickets due to this issue. They added it to a couple of their clients and it fixed them.

We just had to deal with this issue where I work. I had to come up with some detailed instructions for the "technologically challenged" to be able to follow, so I figured I would shared them here, since we followed TakKunz and Xcamr's instructions to get iPhones to connect to an "unsecure" Aruba network too:

• Go to Settings

• Go to Wifi

• Find the network you want to connect to

• Tap on the small, blue "i" to the very right of it

• Scroll down to "Configure DNS"

• Tap Manual

• Under DNS SERVERS, enter this number: 192.1.1.1

• Tap Save on the top-right corner

• Wait a 2-3 minutes for the Wifi icon to appear at the top-left of the phone (next to the cellular "bars")

• Once the wifi icon appears, go back to the same place where you entered 192.1.1.1, delete it, tap "Automatic", then tap "Save" again on the top-right corner

• Go to browser (usually Safari), then try to go to any website

• If the browser complains about "unsafe connection" or "invalid certificate" or something like that, just tap on advanced and browse anyway

• Hit accept at the bottom of the acknowledgement page

TakKunz and Xcamr, thank you for your help.

In my testing, I found that when iOS11 trying to connect WiFi, will attempt to go the URL http://captive.apple.com automatically, but some companies will have proxy authentication or web authentication in their network and enforce to authenticate before access to the internet that causing the iOS11 drop the connection itself.

If you are IT administrator in your company, there are two ways to solve the problem.

Solution 1. Bypass captive.apple.com without any authentication on your proxy server or web authentication server and allow captive.apple.com traffic go through internet firewall.

Solution 2. On your internal dns server, create a new Forward Lookup Zones. The name must be "captive.apple.com". Do not need to create any dns records in this zone. How it works? When iOS11 trying to resolves name captive.apple.com, they will get an ip address of your dns server instead of real public ip. So, that the traffic will run in your network internally, not pass through the proxy or web authentication server.

If you are connecting to public WiFi and facing this problem. There is only one way to solve the problem that is manual fix an invalid dns server ip address on your iOS11 as Xcamr, higado2 provided in this post.

Hope this help

In my case, the solution was easy: making sure I was trying to get to an HTTP site (e.g. http://www.google.com) rather than an HTTPS site to get a redirection to the network login page. With an https URL, Safari complained about not being able to set up a secured connection, which didn't happen with an http URL.

No, it is NOT a big bug. If you don't see the login page either forget the network or open Safari and go to google.com. This is nothing new; if you connect to a network that you have previously connected to iOS doesn't check again to see if you need to log in; it assumes you are already logged in. Nothing new here.

I was referring to authenticated web content filters, such as CIPAfilter or iBoss. The wireless would not stay connected long enough to display the authentication page. This was also an issue with another districts PFSense firewall captive portal. Allowing the filter/firewall bypass for captive.apple.com fixed the issue in our situations.

Thank you!!! This actually works! 100% on my iphone 7 ios11.03

just follow EACH AND EVERY step:

Much more detailed!

1. go to Settings

2. Wi-fi

3. Click on the “i” next to the network you’re about to join

4. then FORGET THIS NETWORK

5. click the “i” again on the same network

6. Configure DNS

7. Click manual -> Add Server “192.1.1.1” then SAVE

8. Join network and wait for the wifi logo to appear on the top left corner of your screen.

9. Once it appears click the “i” again then Configure DNS

10. delete the Manual Server you added then click Automatic then SAVE

11. Go to Safari and open any website

12. Welcome back to reality!!

Hope this works! I’ve been struggling for about a month then I found the solution here.

Hi Lawrence,

Being a technical guy i already did that and much more. As it turns out, with the new iOS 11 there are some internet delivery systems that do not handle well if you are using a automatic wifi finding application. In my case it was Boingo. once I removed Boingo from both devices it logged in easily. The hotel apparently has alerted their internet provider to this issue, but they haven't been yet able to resolve it.

Cheers all.

beotte wrote:

Hi Lawrence,

Being a technical guy i already did that and much more. As it turns out, with the new iOS 11 there are some internet delivery systems that do not handle well if you are using a automatic wifi finding application. In my case it was Boingo. once I removed Boingo from both devices it logged in easily. The hotel apparently has alerted their internet provider to this issue, but they haven't been yet able to resolve it.

Cheers all.

Thanks for that. I have Boingo and I will watch for the problem. I may not have seen it as I rarely connect directly to unsecured networks. I use an external VPN hardware device (Keezel).

Hey, so some of the other replies didn't work for me and I didn't check all the other replies, but my phone did this and on the page I'd been trying to load, a pop-up come on that said 'unsecured network' blah blah blah whatever, but I clicked on 'view details' and it transferred me to another page which had a button 'visit this website' and clicking that brought me to the log in page for my coffee shop's wifi and from there everything was fine. Hope this helps!

I had the same problem. Tried all of the suggestions but nothing worked. Here is what finally worked for me. I ent through my iPad and deleted every VPN application I had installed, rebooted my iPad and i could again connect to unsecured WiFi networks with no issue. Apparenty something had been corrupted and clearing out the apps, which I didn’t use anyway, and deleting their associated data and profiles solved that issue for me.

When I had that problem I had to unistall Boingo. That fixed the issue. See if you using it or other apps that control your wifi.