iPhone connection issues

[theloftycloud]

Recently rolled out a custom splash for our Guests with "Click thru" turned on. Security is set to Open (no encryption).

For some reason only iPhone clients are affected - they are unable to join the network, 2 users received a message:

"Unable to join the network "Guest" This network is operating on wi-fi channels in use by several other nearby networks".

Android devices are unaffected in our testing...I had one user circumvent the issue by resetting their network connection on the iPhone which worked apparently. Surely this cant be the only option for users?

[Philip D'Ath]

I believe Apple devices try to retrieve this URL to test for access:
http://captive.apple.com/hotspot-detect.html

I think Apple has made some other recent changes in the last 3 months as well.

You might need to make this reachable prior to the splash page - I'm not sure.

Or maybe it needs to be blocked until after the splash page has been clicked.

[Philip D'Ath]

It is slowly coming back to me. I recall that Apple have added some new DHCP options you can set to tell the device the splash page it should use.

I can't find anything on Google about it at the moment, but I'm pretty confident on this one. It just needs more Google searching.

[Brash]

I could be wrong but I think this might be what you're referencing

How to modernize your captive network - Discover - Apple Developer

[Philip D'Ath]

That is it!

[CMR]

If you go to purple wifis website, they have a good guide about what sites you need to allow for the splash page.

[timo75]

Just had the same problem with a custom build , turned out to be some JS we put in for languages , only affected apple mobile devices , worked perfect on Android. Removed and resolved 🙂

[RW-MC]

I'm having a very similar issue in my environment - iPhones are unable to connect to my guest networks. I currently have two guest networks - both of them are using "Opportunistic Wireless Encryption (OWE)" for Security as well as a Splash page. Where they differ is one uses the "Sign-on With MS Entra ID" Splash page (used for employee personal devices), and the other uses the "Click-Through" Splash page, for Visitors. For both networks, the splash page doesn't load - they simply get the "Unable to Join Network" message. On the Entra ID-based network, I have a 0% success rate with any iPhone. The Visitor/Click-Through Splash page SSID works intermittently on older iPhones, but iPhone 17 models with the latest software do not connect at all. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[CMR]

Do you have the appropriate sites listed inside the walled garden for apple devices to connect to their cloud?

[RW-MC]

I did have the Apple sites listed in there (captive.apple.com, etc.). Ironically - I resolved the issue by REMOVING them. I also had to disable the GCMP WPA3 Encryption Cipher, in the SSID Encryption settings - when this was enabled, newer iPhones with the latest iOS version (iOS 26) could not connect. It appears the latest & greatest WiFi 7 WAPs, along with the latest and greatest Apple device/software, are simply not fully ready for production together. Meraki admitted this to me when I raised this issue - they are still working on getting WiFi 7 features to work in all scenarios.