Problem Statement:
iPhone silent disconnect issue in guest wireless network.
Infrastructure setup:
- Guest wireless network has been configured with foreign and anchor controller with Cisco WAP/WLC and Cisco ISE with CWA.
- Open authentication.
- MAC Filtering enabled.
- SSID Session Timeout is configured with 43200 seconds (12 hours).
- User Idle Timeout is configured with 43200 (12 hours).
- WLC Model: 2504 and 5508.
- AP Model: 1602/1702/2602/2702/3702.
- Currently WLC is in 8.0.140.0 code, will be upgrading to 8.3.133.0 next week.
- Cisco ISE 2.2.
- iPhone model: I have only 5/6, IOS is upto date, but seeing the problem in all the IOS release, I mean checking from 10.0 trian, currently in IOS 11.1.2 which is latest.
Observations:
- After successful web authentication internet works well.
- Once device is locked and idle it looses the wireless connectivity silently, most of the times phone assumes wireless connection is down and start using cellular network, once phones receives any email or some traffic is generated through some background application through cellular network or if we unlock the device, phone tries to connect with wireless and it gets connected, we can see this transition in eyes easily, atleast phone takes 5 seconds to connect with wireless again, we can also see this by looking into uptime seconds in WLC client details page, without reauthentication phone has internet access reachability.
- Sometimes, approximately after one or two hours, we need to reauthenticate through CWA.
- We don’t have any issues with Andriod and windows laptop, all works as expected.
- Tried enabling/disabling client load balancing and Client Band select through SSID advanced settings, no luck.
- Debugs doesn’t give much details.
- Noticed this issue in ISE 1.3, so upgraded to 2.1, same issue, then upgraded to 2.2, still same issue.
- Noticed this issues in most of the iPhones.
- Same iPhones don’t have any issues with WPA2-AES-PSK, but noticing this issues only with open authentication setup.
- Tried enabling client user idle timeout in SSID advanced settings, no luck.
- Tried setting only 802.11a radio policy, no luck.
Tried raising several TAC case, no resolution, hence starting discussion here to see if anyone else experience same issues.
