We have over 25 Pepwave access points some older and some newer. All of a sudden no one with an iPhone can connect. The device sees the SSID and recognizes the password but there is no data flow. Its like the AP is not connected to a network behind it but the AP is accessible from any non-Apple device. There is no trouble with Windows PC or non-Apple smartphones.
I tried disabling security. I tried only 2.4g or 5.0g wifi. I am guessing an Apple update has caused this because it affects every iPhone and iPad we have. Is this a known issue? Solution?
Are you using band steering? If so try to disable and a said to a specific band?
Jonathan we are controlling the APs through a Balance 310. I see a setting to prefer 2.4 or 5g. It is currently set to 2.4 which is the default. I don’t see a “no preference” option maybe that is somewhere else?
In the meantime I had a direct discussion with Peplink support. They said the issue is in the iPhone itself with a feature which creates a random MAC so the user is not tracked. The problem is when the user leaves the wifi zone and comes back. The actual MAC is reserved but the random one is shown so they don’t match. I may be explaining it wrong but the proposed solution is to turn off that feature on the iPhone. This feature is set under the individual SSID its not something the user can completely turn off. I can confirm the solution worked but implementation is not easy when you have a lot of users.
He said if you increase the length of the lease time that reduces the problem. I had it set to 30 minute because we have a lot of customers coming and going and I don’t want to run out of addreses. For now I changed it to one hour. To go further I will need to expand the DHCP range which can be done.