Apple's iOS 6 Wi-Fi problems linger on
Apple fixed the major iOS 6 Wi-Fi problem quickly. That foul-up turned out to be a missing Apple Web page. While Apple siming replacing that page cured the networking headache for 90%+ of Apple iOS 6 users, other Wi-Fi problems are continuing to pop up.
A quick look through the Apple Support forums shows thousands of iOS 6 Wi-Fi problem reports. Winnowing them down, it seems there are two significant iOS 6 Wi-Fi problems left.
One of these Wi-Fi problems seem to be unique to iPhone 4S smartphones and iPad 3 tablets. A school teacher reports, “I am a teacher in a school that went one-to-one Bring Your Own Device this year. We have 750 students each with a choice of device from Mac to PC to Android to iOS. With hundreds of students with iPhones and iPads, all connected to our school's WiFi network, we have been monitoring the development of WiFi issues on iOS devices. These issues are unrelated to last night's infamous Apple login page.”
The teacher continued, “There is definitely an issue where iPhone 4S and iPad 3rd generation devices are "unable to join network" after updating to iOS 6.” The teacher isn't the only one. Others report the same problem of being unable to join their local Wi-Fi network with these devices.
Numerous fix-it-yourself solutions have been suggested. These include:
Go to Settings>General>Reset>Reset Network Settings
Reboot system
Go to Setting WiFi and select your wireless connection.
Hit the ">" symbol for that connection.
Select "Auto" for HTTP Proxy.
This answer seems to work fairly often.
Others, who have say over their home of office Wi-Fi configuration, have found that resetting Wi-Fi security on the router to WPA2 TKIP (Wi-Fi Protected Access II Temporal Key Integrity Protocol) from WPA2 AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) has enabled them to connect with their Wi-Fi routers. This suggests that iOS 6 has a potential security problem.
At least these users can turn on their Wi-Fi on and tinker with it. Other iDevice users aren't so lucky. Many users found after "upgrading” that their WiFi was “grayed out and disabled.”
The usual fixes suggested by Apple support techs, “soft reset, hard reset, and reset network settings,” haven't been working. This problem, like the other one, seems to happen more often with iPhone 4s phones.
I have yet to see a solution suggested for this particular annoyance that consistently works.
It's not just the iPhone 4s that's unable to talk Wi-Fi. Some users are also reporting Wi-Fi troubles with their shiny new iPhone 5s. This problem also seems to have a Wi-Fi security element. In particular, it's being suggested that iOS6 has trouble with WPA2 AES.
Apple, as per usual, had no comment.
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