Apple IOS devices randomly disabling auto-join

schaefermeier · ‎08-30-2019

We have an open guest network with a web passthrough captive portal. We have random BYOD Apple IOS devices (iPhone/iPad) that will turn off the auto-join on the SSID on their own. This is causing calls to our helpdesk because users believe the network is down when it is just because their device is not auto-joining the network. We know this becasue we go to their device and turn auto-join on for the SSID. We are seeing this more and more lately.

I have seen articles discussing a feature in IOS 11 that will disable auto-join for bad network connections. The thinking is they don't want to connect to "Starbucks" wifi just becasue you happen to be walking past.

Has anybody else ran into this issue? I can push a profile out via MDM that will lay down a wifi profile that will re-enable auto-join for our SSID at each MDM check-in, but I was trying to avoid that. Another option is to turn it into a closed network and on-board devices but we are not prepared to do that just yet.

I have a ticket opened with Apple but they state they do not randomly disable auto-join on open networks and I should open a ticket with Cisco.

Very frustrating for us.

Leo Laohoo · ‎08-30-2019

@schaefermeier wrote:

This is causing calls to our helpdesk because users believe the network is down when it is just because their device is not auto-joining the network.

What IOS firmware are the iPhones running on?

What firmware is the controller running on?

Can you try to replicate the issue with an iPhone/iPad/iTouch that has been factory-restored?

Auto-Join cannot be disabled "automatically". It can only be disabled manually, by the user.

Try re-creating the SSID and observe after 24-hours.

schaefermeier · ‎08-30-2019

The IOS firmware is I would think random because it is multiple users and devices. I know of the one in particular that we own is on the latest firmware. Don't have the device in front of me currently to check but my leader uses it specifically to test and he updates as soon as new IOS is released to look for problems. I know he is not disabling auto-join for our guest SSID on the iPad but sometimes when he arrives in the morning it won't auto-connect and he checks and the auto-join has been turned off for our guest SSID.

Controller is running 8.5.140. (5520 controllers, 2700 Aps)

Haven't tried it on a factory restored device but again it is on numerous devices and they are BYOD and are personally owned by employees. We get contacted for users personal device problems. I am not an Apple guy but since its wireless it my problem.

I agree that the Cisco network can't disable it for the user which is why I am curious as to the feature that I have read where Apple IOS devices will disable open networks auto-join if it feels it is a poor performing network. Maybe what I am reading is garbage and they don't know what they are talking about. Also said it was in the IOS 11 beta release so who knows if it made it to production.

This is a 2500 daily user guest network so getting permission to recreate it to test will take some selling on my part along with an outage window. Maybe I will try and run through our opposite data center and see if they have problems. These are pretty basic configs for our guest SSID. No layer-2 auth. Just web-passthrough to access it. No auth required. Just "I Agree" and your of and running. Only required to agree once a day.

schaefermeier · ‎09-09-2019

After some troubleshooting we determined that we are able to reproduce the issue. If the user does not accept the terms of the Captive portal that are displayed via the Captive Network Assistant (Safari Lite) and they either let it sit there with no action, select "Cancel", or press the home button, it will disable the autojoin feature of the SSID most times.

If you open Safari to launch the captive portal then it appears to not timeout.

The Apple support tech was able to reproduce the issue. He sent the issue to the engineering department and he stated they were aware this could happen in IOS 12 and have introduced a fix in IOS 13. (Release date of Sept. 17th)

I'm a little skeptical since they didn't provide a bug ID or anything. Unless that is not how they operate.

We'll see what happens with IOS 13.

patoberli · ‎09-11-2019

I think that's actually the preferred behavior. That means, the phone detects that the SSID can't be used (because the client hasn't accepted the terms) and thus disables auto-connect. Otherwise the phone would be offline (no messages, no mails, no WhatsApp, …), which isn't what the user most probably would want while he is in the building.