Unifi vs iphone weirdness
Discussion
Our home internet set up is a Huwaei 818 4G router (EE) hard wired to 3x unifi access point that handle all the wifi.
The set up works well except mine and my wife's iphone's periodically disconnect and refuse to reconnect to the wifi. They'll ask for passwords as if they have forgotten the network but typing the password in will not get them reconnected. To resolve, I reset all hardware and then it is fine again for a week or two.
iphone 11 and iphone 12 mini. The problem was present with IOS 14 and IOS 15 hasn't fixed it. All other devices are fine including a a few other bits of apple kit, ipads etc.
Anyone got any brainwaves?
The set up works well except mine and my wife's iphone's periodically disconnect and refuse to reconnect to the wifi. They'll ask for passwords as if they have forgotten the network but typing the password in will not get them reconnected. To resolve, I reset all hardware and then it is fine again for a week or two.
iphone 11 and iphone 12 mini. The problem was present with IOS 14 and IOS 15 hasn't fixed it. All other devices are fine including a a few other bits of apple kit, ipads etc.
Anyone got any brainwaves?
Got the unifi management console running?
Here's a guess - you have 3 APs, one is getting power but no data. It is screaming away with your SSID, but has no DNS, or anything useful. So your phone tries to connect to that one, can't authenticate, so asks you for a password which also fails to connect.
Turning them all off allows your phone to connect to a good one, until it decides to do something else.
I once took out half the house with a powered, set up, AP that had no data. Devices that don't move are unlikely to be affected, they will stick with the good connection they have.
(I have zero issue with iphones and unifi - they are rock solid)
Here's a guess - you have 3 APs, one is getting power but no data. It is screaming away with your SSID, but has no DNS, or anything useful. So your phone tries to connect to that one, can't authenticate, so asks you for a password which also fails to connect.
Turning them all off allows your phone to connect to a good one, until it decides to do something else.
I once took out half the house with a powered, set up, AP that had no data. Devices that don't move are unlikely to be affected, they will stick with the good connection they have.
(I have zero issue with iphones and unifi - they are rock solid)
Cheers both.
How do I indentify what the most recent 'stable' release is? Is that just a case of updating all of them automatically via the controller? Or do I need to be more selective?
On your theory RXE, I don't think it can be that for us. The house is quite spread out with thick walls and all three access points have devices that are more or less permanently tethered to them and working fine so all are serving up data. I have got the transmission power turned down quite low on them to try to stop phones clinging to each for too long.
How do I indentify what the most recent 'stable' release is? Is that just a case of updating all of them automatically via the controller? Or do I need to be more selective?
On your theory RXE, I don't think it can be that for us. The house is quite spread out with thick walls and all three access points have devices that are more or less permanently tethered to them and working fine so all are serving up data. I have got the transmission power turned down quite low on them to try to stop phones clinging to each for too long.
Gad-Westy said:
Cheers both.
How do I indentify what the most recent 'stable' release is? Is that just a case of updating all of them automatically via the controller? Or do I need to be more selective?
On your theory RXE, I don't think it can be that for us. The house is quite spread out with thick walls and all three access points have devices that are more or less permanently tethered to them and working fine so all are serving up data. I have got the transmission power turned down quite low on them to try to stop phones clinging to each for too long.
I've just dropped the latest release onto my Unifi APs, no issues at the moment. All seems good. I find Unifi releases are generally pretty stable, they don't seem to rush to release versions before they're fully tested.How do I indentify what the most recent 'stable' release is? Is that just a case of updating all of them automatically via the controller? Or do I need to be more selective?
On your theory RXE, I don't think it can be that for us. The house is quite spread out with thick walls and all three access points have devices that are more or less permanently tethered to them and working fine so all are serving up data. I have got the transmission power turned down quite low on them to try to stop phones clinging to each for too long.
xeny said:
I've seen this come and go with Unifi. First thing to try would be to update the firmware on the APs to the most recent stable release.
Unfortunately with UniFi there’s no such thing. Best I can suggest is trawl their forums to find what’s considered to be “stable” and work with that. Mine are running 4.3.20.11298, an old version but I don’t dare upgrade as it’s stable.If you’re using the rubbish USG router with your 4G I highly recommend an opnsense box. With that you can use a L2TP VPN to give you a static IP and bypass EE CGNAT and routing. Works brilliantly. Of course UniFi routers don’t support such a common feature because they’re shiny rather than feature rich.
page3 said:
Unfortunately with UniFi there’s no such thing. Best I can suggest is trawl their forums to find what’s considered to be “stable” and work with that. Mine are running 4.3.20.11298, an old version but I don’t dare upgrade as it’s stable.
If you’re using the rubbish USG router with your 4G I highly recommend an opnsense box. With that you can use a L2TP VPN to give you a static IP and bypass EE CGNAT and routing. Works brilliantly. Of course UniFi routers don’t support such a common feature because they’re shiny rather than feature rich.
Hi, sorry. I'm really out of my depth with the terminology here. USG router? We use a B818 Huwaei router with EE 4G SIM. Wifi turned off on it. It's connected to a netgear POE switch which feeds 3x Unifi access points via Cat6 cable. Those are all set to the same wifi credentials. If you’re using the rubbish USG router with your 4G I highly recommend an opnsense box. With that you can use a L2TP VPN to give you a static IP and bypass EE CGNAT and routing. Works brilliantly. Of course UniFi routers don’t support such a common feature because they’re shiny rather than feature rich.
I'm not sure what this means in simpleton terms "L2TP VPN to give you a static IP and bypass EE CGNAT". Is that potentially related to my iphone wifi issues?
rxe said:
Got the unifi management console running?
Here's a guess - you have 3 APs, one is getting power but no data. It is screaming away with your SSID, but has no DNS, or anything useful. So your phone tries to connect to that one, can't authenticate, so asks you for a password which also fails to connect.
Turning them all off allows your phone to connect to a good one, until it decides to do something else.
As eluded to here, are you running the unifi management console?Here's a guess - you have 3 APs, one is getting power but no data. It is screaming away with your SSID, but has no DNS, or anything useful. So your phone tries to connect to that one, can't authenticate, so asks you for a password which also fails to connect.
Turning them all off allows your phone to connect to a good one, until it decides to do something else.
You can run this on a pc/Mac and hardwire to your switch that way you will get diagnostic data when the issue resolves it’s self.
Ideally you’d have it running 24/7 until the issue repeats but even having it running while the ap’s are working and then connecting when the fault next happens could provide useful debug data.
I wouldn’t discount the suggestion about a screaming ap so quickly, it’s possible one is failing in such a way it loses its config intermittently and droping into default status only to re establish once rebooted.
page3 said:
Unfortunately with UniFi there’s no such thing. Best I can suggest is trawl their forums to find what’s considered to be “stable” and work with that. Mine are running 4.3.20.11298, an old version but I don’t dare upgrade as it’s stable.
.
They've dramatically slowed the release rate over the past year (and spent more time in pre-release listening to feedback) to try and resolve this problem, and in production I'm running what the controller considers the current release without any trouble..
Dev releases have been more exciting I acknowledge, but I don't inflict those on the userbase, just myself.
My older APs are running 5.43.46.12754 and it has been fine. Prompted by this thread, I’m just starting a rolling upgrade to the latest version. The single LR-6 in the group is running something else, also pretty close to latest.
I’d be running the management console and seeing what is going on. If your APs are all present in the console (i.e. online, getting data), then the next point of concern would be DHCP (should have written DHCP in the post above rather than DNS). If the device can’t get an IP assigned, then it will drop the connection despite swallowing your password. I assume your router is your DHCP server, check that it hasn’t been defaulted to some weird set up with only 20 addresses. Again, devices that leave the house on a regular basis will be the ones that show up issues first.
I’d be running the management console and seeing what is going on. If your APs are all present in the console (i.e. online, getting data), then the next point of concern would be DHCP (should have written DHCP in the post above rather than DNS). If the device can’t get an IP assigned, then it will drop the connection despite swallowing your password. I assume your router is your DHCP server, check that it hasn’t been defaulted to some weird set up with only 20 addresses. Again, devices that leave the house on a regular basis will be the ones that show up issues first.
Gad-Westy said:
page3 said:
Unfortunately with UniFi there’s no such thing. Best I can suggest is trawl their forums to find what’s considered to be “stable” and work with that. Mine are running 4.3.20.11298, an old version but I don’t dare upgrade as it’s stable.
If you’re using the rubbish USG router with your 4G I highly recommend an opnsense box. With that you can use a L2TP VPN to give you a static IP and bypass EE CGNAT and routing. Works brilliantly. Of course UniFi routers don’t support such a common feature because they’re shiny rather than feature rich.
Hi, sorry. I'm really out of my depth with the terminology here. USG router? We use a B818 Huwaei router with EE 4G SIM. Wifi turned off on it. It's connected to a netgear POE switch which feeds 3x Unifi access points via Cat6 cable. Those are all set to the same wifi credentials. If you’re using the rubbish USG router with your 4G I highly recommend an opnsense box. With that you can use a L2TP VPN to give you a static IP and bypass EE CGNAT and routing. Works brilliantly. Of course UniFi routers don’t support such a common feature because they’re shiny rather than feature rich.
I'm not sure what this means in simpleton terms "L2TP VPN to give you a static IP and bypass EE CGNAT". Is that potentially related to my iphone wifi issues?
I also rely on EE 4G as my main (only) broadband connection, and not having a fixed IP was a problem for me. It might not be for you, and if you don't know what this means, then you don't need it
Apologies for adding confusion.As others have suggested, upgrade the firmware and you should find things start behaving. Making sure Unifi Fast Roaming is turned off is also a good suggestion.
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