Devices Intermittently Dropping Wifi

nberrios's picture

nberrios

Joined: Oct 1, 2015
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Submitted by nberrios on September 30, 2015 - 9:49am
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Hey All,

We have been experiencing an issue on our campus where Apple devices, and Apple devices only, are disconnecting and reconnecting to our wireless network.

This has caused huge issues for our teachers who are streaming content to Apple TVs. Every 5-10 minutes the wifi drops, causing whatever they are playing to stop and terminates the connection to the Apple TV.

We've experienced this issue with iPhones, iPads and Macs, both managed and not. We also have Dell desktops, Chrome books, and surface tablets deployed in the school and none of them seem to be experiencing an issue.

My network admin isn't sure where to start trouble shooting as it is only Apple devices experiencing the issue. I do know we use all Cisco Enterprise level hardware for the routers.

Any direction would be much appreciated!

Thanks,
Nick

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Jakey's picture

Jakey

Joined: Sep 21, 2014

Is it happening a lot? Do you

Post by Jakey, Thursday October 1 2015, 20:02 pm
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Is it happening a lot? Do you have a wireless LAN controllers?

If it's really common I would suggest connecting a device to an Xcode console and view the output. I believe there is also a mobileconfig file to increase the debugging of the device.

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carloleroux's picture

carloleroux

Joined: Oct 2, 2015

We have the same issue

Post by carloleroux, Friday October 2 2015, 19:51 pm
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We have the same issue in our organization and we asked Apple and Cisco to have a look at it. After 4 months of a accusing each other they came back with an answer!!!

Here is what they told us

Apple devices would send 5 authentication request (number as of example) in a matter of seconds and the Cisco Controller would answer to the first request while Apple device was waiting for the fifth request and would fail authentication and thus disconnecting from WIFI.

To fix temporally the issue we revert back to pass key instead of using a certificate. Not ideal/secure

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flowerjeni's picture

flowerjeni

Joined: Nov 28, 2015
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Devices Intermittently Dropping

Post by flowerjeni, Saturday November 28 2015, 6:05 am
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I have an SMC wireless router (model SMCWBR14S-N4). For as long as I've had it, I've been having this problem. Some devices, like my Dell Laptop running Windows 8 and my Dad's running XP (I know, he's old) have no trouble connecting and staying connected. Most other devices have a problem where they can connect and use the wifi for about an hour or so, when with no notice they will no longer be able to access the internet, but the wireless will still say it's connected. This will happen with my Mom's Kindle Fire, my Samsung GS4 and Chromecast, and my brother's iPhone 4S. I assume the problem is with the WiFi network in some way. I did a bit of tinkering with the settings to no avail. I did the whole reset to factory on the router and nothing improved. It's running WPA_PSK_WPA2_PSK security, and the WAN type is DHCP. The only interesting thing I was able to glean from the wireless's settings is that in the DHCP clients page on the router settings, there was listed my phone, my mother's tablet, etc. all the problem devices (I think). My laptop seems to have declared a static IP. I tried declaring a static IP on my phone but when I woke up this morning it was back to it's DHCP value. I'm not sure if I just did something wrong with setting up the IP or if that didn't work at all. Dot net Training in Chennai | Sas Training in Chennai

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taylor's picture

taylor

Joined: Jan 25, 2016
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We've seen issues with iOS

Post by taylor, Wednesday January 27 2016, 6:39 am
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We've seen issues with iOS and Apple devices in the past, but it's been more than a year or so. The problem generally was resolved by restarting the access points on campus, though the issue only arose with iOS and Apple computers.

I wish I could find an old article... I seem to remember that there was a bug with the iOS/OS X network stack that would arise with some hardware AP/WiFi router manufacturers that Apple eventually resolved...

Taylor
simplemdm.com
Intuitive, Powerful Apple Device Management

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swkim's picture

swkim

Joined: Jun 15, 2015

I think there's a lot of

Post by swkim, Thursday January 28 2016, 16:01 pm
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I think there's a lot of opinions and solutions because the chipset used inside an Apple device for WIFI can differ based on models. And of course, your own router (infrastructure's interaction) complicates the issue even more.

One article here says setting MTU to a fixed size on the router to 1500, solved it for them.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6617321?start=0&tstart=0

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