iPhone - WaveLAN

ironclaw

Hi Folks,

I can't get my iPhone 4 to connect to the WaveLan network. Its not a proxy issue, my 1G was fine last year. It actually will not connect (No wave thingy in the top bar) Its getting an IP / DNS address fine, it just won't connect.

Anyone else having similar problems?

delta_bravo

Yeah me too on a 3G

Sad Professor

Yep, same problem. It worked okay last year. My best guess is that they are filtering MAC addresses.

I've noticed the Mail app on my Macbook can't check my non-UCD email anymore, either.

elgriff

working for me on 3G.


http://www.ucd.ie/itservices/itsupport/wirelessandlaptopsinucd/usethewirelessnetworkonyouriphoneoripodtouch/

Mmcd

It's to do with OS4. One of the tech guys said that it's apple's problem and you just have to wait for an update that fixes it!

bnt

elgriff wrote: »

working for me on 3G.

This is about using the UCD "WaveLAN" WiFi - nothing to do with 3G at all. I get the problem on my iPod Touch, no problem with my Linux netbook.

I have a suspicion that Apple added some kind of polling mechanism to iOS 4, e.g. ping, and calls the connection "down" if that doesn't work. Eduroam works, but it's only used in a couple of buildings.

ironclaw

bnt wrote: »

This is about using the UCD "WaveLAN" WiFi - nothing to do with 3G at all. I get the problem on my iPod Touch, no problem with my Linux netbook.

I have a suspicion that Apple added some kind of polling mechanism to iOS 4, e.g. ping, and calls the connection "down" if that doesn't work. Eduroam works, but it's only used in a couple of buildings.

I think he was referring to the iPhone 3G.

I'm suspecting an iOS 4 problem. MAC address filtering is unlikely given the lack security in other aspects of the network.

dr gonzo

Same here for my 3G.

On top of that my mac wont access any webpages beyond the UCD network, i.e i can get sisweb, ucd connect, library, blackboard etc but anything beyond that including google and its no go.

Sad Professor

dr gonzo wrote: »

Same here for my 3G.

On top of that my mac wont access any webpages beyond the UCD network, i.e i can get sisweb, ucd connect, library, blackboard etc but anything beyond that including google and its no go.

You need to set your network settings to use the UCD proxy. See here

http://www.ucd.ie/itservices/itsupport/wirelessandlaptopsinucd/howtosetupanapplemacforwireless/

You should probably create a new network location called "college". Otherwise you'll have to disable the proxy when connecting to your home network.

baspower

yea i just came in last week and have been having this problem as well. real pain in the ass..was just speaking to another guy and he told me that the problem was due to ios4..tried all the proxy stuff and still 9 out of 10 times it doesnt work...

is there any solution apart from downgrading?

Sad Professor

Is there anyone with an iPad or iPhone/iPod running v3.x that can confirm this problem is isolated to iOS 4?

baspower

just asked my friend who could get her iphone to work what os is she was on, and yep, she said os3....so that's it i guess...

Pigwidgeon

I was told this last week, have been trying to downgrade my ipod touch since then and can't get it to work

baspower

i believe to downgrade, you need to have your shsh blobs saved either on saurik's servers or locally...redmondpie.com has a few guides..

quite disappointed with apple....

Pigwidgeon

Ah I see, I just got it, so it came with iOS 4 on it, so is that the problem then?

Hopefully apple sort it out soon.

bnt

We're not the only site to have issues with a proxy server after the iOS 4 upgrade - see here for example.

I'm in the Library right now, and it seems to be working when I use the IP address of the proxy rather than its DNS name, and enable Authentication.

• Select "Manual" proxy settings,
• enter 193.1.172.188 for "Server" and 8484 for "Port".
• Select "On" for Authentication, enter your student ID for "Username", then your password

I'm positive I tried this before and it didn't work, so I'm not claiming that this is the solution, but it's something...

Sad Professor

I'm not there to test it, but it was working briefly for me in the library yesterday as well. Then when I looked again a few minutes later it was gone. It seems to work when you enter the settings from scratch and initially connect.

But even without the proxy sever it should be possible to connect to the UCD website, but I'm not even getting a wireless icon in the menubar.

bnt

Sad Professor wrote: »

But even without the proxy sever it should be possible to connect to the UCD website, but I'm not even getting a wireless icon in the menubar.

This is what I was trying to get at earlier when I speculated about Apple adding some kind of "polling": when that fails, due to the proxy, it flags the whole connection as "down". It's still fine for me at the moment - I'm writing this on the IPod Touch 2G in the main Library.

baspower

hey...i took the trouble of downgrading yesterday only to find it the same with 3.1.2....at james joyce library now as well, and just tried your method, works so far..

EDIT: not working after a few minutes... oh well, back to my anatomy book i guess...
EDIT: now it works...ill try it out for a few hours and see how it goes...thanks man

bnt

On iOS 3.x, you could connect to WaveLAN and get the "connected" icon, but you couldn't get to the Internet before you entered the correct Proxy information. Now, with iOS 4.x, they appear to have added an extra "am I connected to the Internet?" test, which must be satisfied before it will give you the "connected" icon and let you do anything. Which shouldn't be a problem in itself, if the Proxy is handling it correctly - and that's something the IT guys can look at. The devil is in the details, but the fact that I can get through reliably today (in the Library) leads me to hope that they have been working on it - and may have cracked it. :cool:

Sad Professor

I was finished early today but I'll give this a try in the morning.

ironclaw

Thanks for the on going insight folks. Been trying myself with various proxy / authentication configurations to no avail.

baspower

ios 4.1 tried for 3 days now...nothing works...:(

bnt

baspower wrote: »

ios 4.1 tried for 3 days now...nothing works...:(

I've had no luck for the past couple of days, since after my previous post. Upgraded to iOS 4.1 last night, no difference. Back to Eduroam, then ...

baspower

i tried eduroam but it doesn't work for me..i put in my student id and pin no. and it arrives to the next screen. but when i press the accept button it says can't connect or something like that...tried on multiple occasions...is there any special things that need to be done?

ozt9vdujny3srf

Wavelan is working fine for me - iOS4

baspower - to connect to eduroam you have configure your iphone using the iPhone configuration utility to create a Configuration Profile for wifi.

If you like i can show you how to do it with screen shots, although all you really need to know is that you want to use TTLS and PAP for authentication.

bnt

To get Eduroam going I had to have WaveLAN going first, connect to eduroam.ucd.ie, and download the Profile from there. (You could use 3G if you have that - I don't.) I suppose you could enter the details manually too.

ozt9vdujny3srf

Ahh that sounds easier than using the iphone configuration utility.

baspower

i got eduroam to work....wavelan is just being stubborn though...

Hoku

You can actually get lucky with WaveLAN occasionally. It randomly worked for about 10 minutes in the Student Centre today, but I left the phone locked a short while and the connection disappeared.

bnt

Eduroam stopped working for me entirely, even after I deleted and reinstalled the profile, and I asked the IT staff about it. Basically, their responses to these problems are (a) it's not us, blame Apple, (b) Apple will fix it, not us, and (c) eduroam is managed by Computer Science & Informatics, not us. Short version: we can't help you.

So I gave up. Last night I downgraded the iPod Touch 2G to OS 3.0, using the instructions here. I couldn't do v 3.1.x as suggested, because Apple returns the 3194 "you are not eligible" error, even with the HOSTS file changes in place. (Looks like only jailbroken devices can go that way.) I had a backup of v 3.0, which went on nicely (no need for step 6), and only a few unimportant apps refused to go back on. This morning I could use WaveLAN straight away.

Note that this process wipes the device completely, and backups taken while on iOS 4.x will not restore to OS 3.x, so if you do this you need to take care not to lose data. I had all my contacts and calendar synced with Google (their Exchange service on m.google.com), and iTunes did the rest, while other folks may be syncing with Outlook (Win) or Entourage (Mac).

Hoku

Eduroam stopped working for me too last week, but it turns out my password got "out of sync" with the main servers. I went to selfpass.ucd.ie (after a few days of being redirected between different IT support groups) and changing the password solved my problem. I have iOS 4.1 by the way, and that's the only issue I had with Eduroam this year.

As for WaveLAN - I manage to connect to it the odd time, but rarely. You might as well click "Forget Network" to save your battery trying to connect to it all the time.

baspower

the IT guys should come up with something, imho....

ironclaw

baspower wrote: »

the IT guys should come up with something, imho....

Its not an IT problem I think. Its on the iOS side of things, so to be fair to the IT folks, there isn't much they can do. If anything its probably a blessing as it reduces mobile load.

Anyone know if the iPad OS's are affected?

Sad Professor

The iPad is still using iOS v3.x so I assume it's okay for now.

bnt

Well, I've been tempted to run a network analyzer on my netbook, sniff all the iPod's traffic, so I can see what the thing is trying to do. IT departments tend to frown on that sort of thing, though ... :cool:

ironclaw

bnt wrote: »

Well, I've been tempted to run a network analyzer on my netbook, sniff all the iPod's traffic, so I can see what the thing is trying to do. IT departments tend to frown on that sort of thing, though ... :cool:

Sniffing traffic, as in your own traffic, is perfectly legal.

bnt

ironclaw wrote: »

Sniffing traffic, as in your own traffic, is perfectly legal.

I'm not concerned about "legal", and I'm sorted for now: it's more to do with professional courtesy. Nice guys don't run in "promiscuous mode", you might say. Say I was to find out that e.g. the iPod is trying to ping gs.apple.com - what then? Walk up to the IT desk and tell them to reconfigure the firewall..? :pac:

OTNiner

In relation to iOS 4 there is a different config required for eduroam in UCD.

A change in the way the it handles certs.

I have attached one that worked for me.

Any feedback would be appreciated

baspower

thanks otniner...eduroam's perfect....any similar solution/workaround for wavelan?

ironclaw

baspower wrote: »

thanks otniner...eduroam's perfect....any similar solution/workaround for wavelan?

Eudoroam and WaveLAN are very different networks. With 4.2 on the way, we might see a breakthrough before Xmas.

yehthatguy

Im using an iPod on v3.x and it works fine, just takes a min or two to connect so it must be an issue with the software

Improbable

iOS4 completely screwed things up for me. Downgraded to 3 and wavelan works like a charm.

hshortt

Ehhh... didn't see a problem myself. With the correct proxy both an iPad on 3.2.1 and a 3GS iPhone on 4.0.1 connect no bother.

Given that I'm an evening student, I wonder if it might be down to available addresses during the day? DHCP lease could be set too long.

bnt

hshortt wrote: »

Ehhh... didn't see a problem myself. With the correct proxy both an iPad on 3.2.1 and a 3GS iPhone on 4.0.1 connect no bother.

Given that I'm an evening student, I wonder if it might be down to available addresses during the day? DHCP lease could be set too long.

In my case, and based on what I've heard here and elsewhere (including the IT Desk), this is definitely not a DHCP issue, but it's specific to iOS 4.x. I would always see a valid IP address, but something else was preventing the connection coming up. You can find problem reports elsewhere about iOS 4.x and proxies e.g. this. (I did try the proxy IP address instead of DNS name - seemed to work for a bit, then nothing. Ditto for adding login credentials for the proxy.) Now I'm back on OS 3.0 on the iPod Touch, the connection is marked up as soon as it gets the IP address, but there's still that old lag before e.g. Safari can get out past the Proxy to the Internet. Not a big deal.

OTNiner

DHCP pool expiry does not appear to be a cause of the root issue but may be a factor in some connectivity issues.

Science complex and Newman / Arts Annex are experiencing pool depletion, this is being worked on.

It appears that from iOS4 following recipt of a valid IP configuration the iPhone / iTouch attempt to connect to www.apple.com (directly) over http on port 80.

After sucessive failurers it then appears to try and connect to apple.com through the proxy (if configured), at this point the symbol for network connectivity changes from the circle to the radio wave symbol and browsing starts to work.

This process can take 2 - 3 Minutes.

Other apps may still fail if they do not respect the proxy configuration which appears to be a common occurance.

The proxy configuration should be:

Method Manual
Server proxy.ucd.ie
port (either) 8484 or 8585

This is not to say there are not other issues at play as reported in various treads i.e. poor reception etc.

robo

OTNiner wrote: »

DHCP pool expiry does not appear to be a cause of the root issue but may be a factor in some connectivity issues.

Science complex and Newman / Arts Annex are experiencing pool depletion, this is being worked on.

It appears that from iOS4 following recipt of a valid IP configuration the iPhone / iTouch attempt to connect to www.apple.com (directly) over http on port 80.

After sucessive failurers it then appears to try and connect to apple.com through the proxy (if configured), at this point the symbol for network connectivity changes from the circle to the radio wave symbol and browsing starts to work.

This process can take 2 - 3 Minutes.

Other apps may still fail if they do not respect the proxy configuration which appears to be a common occurance.

The proxy configuration should be:

Method Manual
Server proxy.ucd.ie
port (either) 8484 or 8585

This is not to say there are not other issues at play as reported in various treads i.e. poor reception etc.

Should you also put in the student ID and password for this to work?

bnt

OTNiner wrote: »

It appears that from iOS4 following recipt of a valid IP configuration the iPhone / iTouch attempt to connect to www.apple.com (directly) over http on port 80.

After sucessive failurers it then appears to try and connect to apple.com through the proxy (if configured), at this point the symbol for network connectivity changes from the circle to the radio wave symbol and browsing starts to work.

This process can take 2 - 3 Minutes.

The problem I had was that this almost never happened. A couple of times in the Library, when I thought I had cracked it (see prev. page), but then it just stopped working entirely, no matter how long I waited or what I tried (different buildings including Richview, proxy IP address instead of name, automatic configration URL, providing login credentials, etc.). For example, I read an ebook for an hour, wireless on the whole time with no standby, and it never connected. It had a valid IP address, but never indicated that it was connected, the whole hour. Between that and Eduroam ceasing to work, that was when I made the decision to downgrade to 3.x, which I have not regretted. You don't need to tell us what procedures to try, we've tried them all already.

OTNiner

Further analysis points to the iOS utility for use with “captive portal” wireless networks. Basically on connection to an open i.e. unauthenticated wireless network the device will attempt to retrieve “success.html” from http://www.apple.com/library/test/success.html

Failure causes the device to renew DHCP and try again approx every 2 Minutes.

This behaviour introduced in iOS 3.x is documented at:

http://forums.mactalk.com.au/31/66812-iphone-3-0-wireless-captive-portal-support.html

http://www.iphonedevsdk.com/forum/iphone-sdk-development/25401-how-disable-os3-0s-wifi-auto-login-feature.html

Further testing with iOS 4.1 on a couple of different devices show them sometimes connecting to the WaveLAN Network, it appears that particular applications can cause the device to recognise that it has a valid network connection if they run in the period between failure to retrieve the url and the DHCP renew, one of which is the default mail application if configured to connect to ucd mail via imap.

Initial testing indicates that the current version of the boingo app referenced as a way to disable this mode of operation doesn’t do it on iOS4.1 but could be worth trying.

Using the ip address of the proxy instead of the name should not make any difference and you should not configure username and passwords, UCD’s proxy servers are not configured for authentication and most browsers will transmit the credentials in clear thus vulnerable.

Getting DNS to lie and return the IP address of a locally accessible server hosting the relevant content would address the issue but at the cost of making www.apple.com inaccessible, is probably not a viable workaround.

As individual apps can chose to respect or disregard the proxy if configured eduroam is the best solution and it is planned to roll this out to all locations that the infrastructure supports it over the coming months.

Any feedback post here or PM me

bnt

Well, my first reactions:

• Yikes!
• a few choice swearwords in the general direction of Cupertino;
• a big Thank You for taking the time to investigate the situation in detail!

I did suspect that there was some kind of polling going on, but I didn't know the half of it ...

PS: that iphonesdk forum has been flagged by Google as linking to malware and infecting machines.

bnt

But now I've had a chance to look at the MacTalk article, I have more questions:

• Is WaveLAN a "captive" network? I've never seen a login screen of the sort described.
• The problems we're having are definitely only happening with iOS 4.x, and not with OS 3.x. I'm not familar with "boingo", but I'm curious to hear if anyone else has luck with that Mail trick mentioned.