IPhone – Why won’t the iPhone switch to 3G when I’m out of WiFi range

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My iPhone refuses to switch over from WiFi to 3G when the WiFi signal gets too weak to be usable. It will sit there indefinitely, unable to load a web page because I'm too far from the router, and not switch to the strong 3G signal that is available. Has anyone else had this problem? Is there anything I can do about it? Would it be better if I bought an Apple router? Do Android phones do this? I already submitted a bug report to Apple. It seems like such a simple thing to switch to 3G when WiFi stops working.

I know how to switch manually, but that's not a good solution. I think it's an iOS bug. I don't think it's the router's fault either, because the phone should be the one to determine when to switch to 3G. It should happen when WiFi fails to respond for a certain amount of time. I have a high-end Linksys router and an iPhone 4S. Router works great with all other devices and iPhone works well besides this one problem. This only happens when I'm outside my house and the router signal is no longer strong enough for data to get through. Once I go far enough down the street the signal switches to 3G, but there's about 30 yards where it hangs onto WiFi even though it can't get anything through.

Best Answer

The expected behavior is probably for the phone to stay on WiFi as long as it can connect, and then switch to 3G; as of iOS 5, I don't think the capability is there to automatically notice a dead WiFi connection and switch to 3G. So what you're seeing is perhaps a lack of functionality, but it's not strictly speaking a bug.

I can't really see Apple making that the default functionality, though. They'd get a lot of flak for making the iPhone too smart; nerds would complain that they don't have control. If it was done, it would probably be an option.

It also would be very difficult to do well automatically. How does iOS know a connection is bad? What exactly does "when WiFi stops working" mean?

Lack of public internet access? Windows 7 (and maybe Vista) does this by requesting a text file from Microsoft's website with predetermined content; that's how it knows if your connection has internet access or not. But what if you're on a network at work that only offers access to intranet sites, and not the public internet?
Lack of data transfer despite network requests going out? What if you're repeatedly trying a site that's experiencing a lot of traffic? How many repeated failed requests mean a bad connection?
Long response times for outgoing requests? How long is too long? It could be averaged over time, but where's the threshold?

It could probably be done, but it would be difficult to do well, and the gain in widespread user satisfaction probably isn't that huge in comparison to other things.

Related Solutions

How to increase the amount of time the wifi waits before timing out a connection

I doubt there's anything you can do short of jailbreaking and re-flashing the code that drives the wireless chipset.

The things you can control are getting closer to the transmitter, potentiallly moving objects that could attenuate or reflect Wi-Fi signals or set up a repeater to sit within range of both the base station and the location where you wish to have network coverage.

MacOS – way to auto switch wireless networks depending on signal strength

Not saying this is ideal or works well. But Just to give you an idea.

You can use command line tools to write a script that checks the strength. and then changes the network as needed.

To get the strength you can use this command line code:

/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/airport -I |grep -i "agrCtlRSSI:"

Look at the man pages for /usr/sbin/networksetup for changing the setup.

As an example here is a quick applescript. It only runs once as it is only an example of use. But in your script I would do it as a LaunchAgent There is an app called lingon that simplifies the writing of LaunchAgents. LaunchAgents can startup apps, run scripts at specific times, regularly or when something happens.

I hope this helps

set wifi1 to "wifissid1"
set wifi2 to "wifissid2"

try
    set strength to last word of (do shell script "/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/airport -I |grep -i \"agrCtlRSSI:\"") as number
    log strength
end try
set network to do shell script "/usr/sbin/networksetup -getairportnetwork en1"
log network



if strength is less than 50 then



    if network is not equal to "Current Wi-Fi Network: " & wifi1 then

        do shell script "/usr/sbin/networksetup -setairportnetwork en1 " & wifi1 & " &> /dev/null & "

    end if



else

    if network is not equal to "Current Wi-Fi Network: " & wifi2 then

        do shell script "/usr/sbin/networksetup -setairportnetwork en1 " & wifi2 & " &> /dev/null & "

    end if

end if

Best Answer

Related Solutions

How to increase the amount of time the wifi waits before timing out a connection

MacOS – way to auto switch wireless networks depending on signal strength

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