Anyone else having issues with iPhone 6 devices connecting to wifi but not using? I have a client that is having issues with 3 users (all iphone 6's on verizon). The phones connect to the wifi network fine, pull an address, and can even communicate with the edge router across the network. The phone however never shows the "wifi" icon in the top and shows still connected to LTE.
I just wanted to see if anyone else had ran into this before I go chasing my tail. Onsite techs have already verified connectivity between the phones and the rest of the network so wifi is "working" but it is like the phone refuses to use wifi for internet traffic.
Yes. There can be issues between iPhone6 and wifi, possibly connected to their MAC address randomization. Solution for us was to fix the iPhones, not the WLCs or the RADIUS infrastructure.
Really? What had to be changed on the iPhones to resolve? I have been researching this but haven't found much in the way of useful information.
For all I know, they went at them with axes and hammers... I think there was a way to switch off MAC randomization.
Ok, thanks! I will look into that a little deeper.
This come up in a discussion when I was at Cisco. For the randomisation to work, the iphone must have these 2 conditions:
- location services = off
- mobile network / 4G / LTE = off
IF either of those are on, then the mac is not randomised. Apparently even if they are both off, there's traffic still from the Burned In Address as well as data traffic from a randomised address. If a randomised address is being used then it still follows the same logic whereby you can take so many bits and it will show as registered to apple.. (there is a name for this but I can't recall right now).
Going back to the OP, on my Samsung SGS5, this does happen to me for a couple of reasons:
- there's an option to optimise bandwidth / speed by utilising both the 4G and the wifi connection together (no idea how, but I don't use it as 4G is limited data)
- The SGS5 also backs off wifi connections if it starts getting flaky and it will refuse to use it, loading up the 4G again and keeping the 4G active. This is sometimes a PIA for me. Especially if I'm the reason the wifi is flaky in the first place because I'm making changes or testing something. I've not been able to turn this function off.
I'm wondering if this is something similar with your apple devices?