IPhone – Public wifi issue

iphonewifi

I am living in an RV park while going to school. When I moved in, the park's wifi worked great, but recently a new (unrelated) wifi network popped up. When I try to get on the park's wifi on my iPhone, I am unable to.

Is the other network blocking the signal, and is there anything I can do to fix this?

Best Answer

Interference is possible, especially if the new network is using the same channel as the old one, and the signal from the network you were using was weak to begin with.

However, I think some other things are more likely.

  • Let's do some basic troubleshooting first before we go sleuthing: Delete both wifi networks from your phone. Go to settings, wi-fi, tap on the network name and hit "forget network" on the screen that appears. Once that's done, do a soft reset on your phone by holding down the power and home buttons until the apple logo appears.

Now, see if you can connect to the original or new networks. Do they work at all? If you try to browse to a page in Safari, what do you get?

  • Anyone else with the same problem? If the local wifi is borked, other people are probably having issues too. Ask around! This will be helpful for the next step:

  • It's possible that the appearance of the second network is purely coincidental and something is wrong with the RV park's router. Ask the management if everything is okay on their internet - maybe all they need is to power cycle their router and everything will be fine again.

  • If that didn't work, the next thing is to determine if the new network is at all related to the old one and how. You're living in an RV park, so I'd have a talk with the management to ask if they recognize the name of either network, specifically the new one. If they do, and they're running it, it's possible that the original network was some kind of "staff only" thing and you should be using the other one anyways.

Many things are possible here, so definitely ask first :)

Now onto the less likely interference problem

If it's an interference issue (this is more obvious if the signal is weak.. while using your phone, you may see it drop the wifi connection and then reconnect often), you may be able to convince the management to put the network onto a different channel. There are 3 "main" wi-fi channels: 1, 6, and 11. These are the only 3 channels that don't overlap onto their neighbors. It looks something like this:

wifi channels

In my experience, most cheap routers start on channel 6, with the result that 6 is often overcrowded. If you can get their wireless moved onto 1 or 11, you may have more luck.

I must emphasize again that it's more likely that the management has done something or that something is not quite right with their router. You said that the wifi was "working fine" before, where if the signal was marginal enough for this new network to be causing problems, you probably would have been having dropoffs the whole time.

More drastic measures

If that didn't work, if nobody else is having problems, if the management insists that the first network should be usable, then we've isolated the problem to your phone. Next thing to try there is doing a full restore. You'll have to reinstall all of your apps, so this isn't a step to take lightly - but if you wish to try it, follow the steps here on Apple's knowledge base

If that doesn't work, it's time to make an appointment at the local genius bar.

Good luck, and let us know how it works!

Related Question