Guys & Gals,

We have a client with 90+ locations who has sporadic issues with Apple devices not being able to authenticate against their WLAN. Each location runs the same device, same SSID & Password.

The senario is the device will prompt the user that the WLAN password is incorrect and regardless of what you do with the device it fails to authenticate. The only fix is to make any change relating to wireless on the device; below is a list of things that we find bring it back online.

• Disable/Enable WLAN
  Change Mode AP Bridge > Station > AP Bridge
  Change freq
  Change modulation type
  Change SSID
  Change Security Profile items

From the customer this is what they have tried today on the site it occured on:

• Firstly had her try connecting and it was showing incorrect password
  Had her restart the iPad and try connecting on her own personal iPhone while the iPad was restarting. Her iPhone has never connected to a Customer-SSID AP before yet kept showing incorrect password (tried twice)
  Had her try connecting the iPad after the first restart – was getting the error message “Unable to join the network Customer-SSID”
  Forgot the entire Customer-SSID network and restarted again (second time)
  Tried connecting to the Customer-SSID network after restart – incorrect password
  Forgot all network settings on the iPad and restarted – still getting wrong password
  Tried connecting to the shopping centre free WiFi – connected instantly, working fine
  Tried reconnecting to the Customer-SSID network – incorrect password
  Finally I had the other girl working at the site try her own iPhone too (also never connected to a Customer-SSID AP) and it also gave her incorrect password without fail

We are stumped and not sure what to do from here!

These devices were all provisioned with FlashFig and happens randomly to devices it has not occurred on before and also reoccurred on devices multiple times.

Help!

We have a hotspot solution from fdXtended with around 1700 online clients. There are many more problems with iPad/iPhone clients, compare to Android, Windows and other. Apple seem to incorporate Wifi their own way, with lots of spesial solution. Like that all clients tries to connect to all open Wifi and talk back home to Apple without user trying to log inn to the net.
Also on the same Wifi access point we have other SSID connecting to corporate network. If an apple device has connected to the corporate network and then later, its not possible for the user to connect to the guest network. He do need to delete the corporate network, before entering Guest network.
This is not a problem with non Apple users. Not sure what your problem is though.

Extension of dhcp lease time to 1-3 days and group key update interval to 1hour usually helps.

Extension of dhcp lease time to 1-3 days and group key update interval to 1hour usually helps.

I've read the post but why would this cause an instant auth failure and a simple setting change allow it to reconnect?

Because of bad implementation of WiFi driver behaviour in Apple devices?

From my experience (especially newer) @pple devices do not work very well on 2GHz.

Unfortunately there are no adequate follow up devices to the famous RB951G/Ui-2HnD.

My experience matches your description. Wrong password message is quite annoying - simply just don't type in new one. Actually having no problems since using single SSID with CapsMAN - even with 15 min. DHCP lease time and no setting for group key update interval (whatever this defaults to).

I've adjusted the DHCP lease time and the key renew and also setup caps on multiple units so we will see what if any provide the winning solution.

So we have done some more troubleshooting over the last 3 - 4 days and found no devices are able to connect to the SSID but can see the SSID. All devices fail to connect and nothing appears in the logs on the Mikrotik under the standard logging options + Wireless enabled for logging.

Rebooting the unit resolves the issue.

It appears something is stalling or crashing out the wireless but not enough to stop the SSID from responding to requests.

Do you have access lists in place? Try without restricting signal on @pple devices.

We have now been able to confirm this issue not just Apple Devices. Android and Surfaces also cannot connect but can see the SSID

How your wireless is configured? Any special characters in the ssid? Try to use small letters only single word like "test" to see if the clients are able to connect.

I can try that however any action against the wireless restores connectivity. Eg. Disable/Enable on the MT, Change SSID, Change channel, Reboot etc.

Did you happen to turn on the EAP options in your security profile? I've seen Apple devices not connect when someone made that mistake. The Android and other devices still worked as long as PSK was also enabled. That may not apply to newer versions of Android and such.

@lambert
Many thanks for your comment : disabling EAP in security profile solved all my iOS devices connection issues.

Did you happen to turn on the EAP options in your security profile? I've seen Apple devices not connect when someone made that mistake. The Android and other devices still worked as long as PSK was also enabled. That may not apply to newer versions of Android and such.

Thanks a lot!! This solved my iPad issues too