Odd Wifi Connection Problem Solved - but why?!

[enjay]

One student couldn't connect to our student wireless (radius-authenticated WPA2 Enterprise hidden network, Meru hardware). The Meru profile would install, make some changes but not add the wifi. Manually adding the SSID also failed. I tested other devices and could connect as this student.

 

A quick Google on the subject and I come up with this: connect to one of our other networks and then manually added the hidden network. Bingo, she connected.

 

So, I'm happy because this worked but why did it work?!?!

[psydii]

Likely to be an iteration of what is going on in this thread:https://community.merunetworks.com/merunetworks/topics/devices-updated-to-ios-9-unable-to-connect

 

Basically Meru does unusual things with how it advertises BSSID / ESSIDs and how it responds to client connection attempts. It does it within the specification, but some firmware/hardware/driver combinations can have trouble.

[enjay]

Possibly, although if it were that, I'd expect more devices to have been affected - this is the first out of 500+ iPhones which hasn't connected.