Wifi not reconnecting

[Sheridan]

We' have a couple of ipads, mini and 'regular' both on ios 11 (although the problem existed on 10) that don't reconnect to the wireless when it goes off for any reason.

 

If the wireless AP's are restarted for any reason, these two lose their connection but fail to reconnect when the wifi is back online. The fix is to manually toggle the wifi off and back on (in the best IT Crowd style!)

 

Its a pain as these two are used in Single app mode for a sign in system, and both are set to automatically connect so has anyone got any ideas why they might not?

[AlanD]

Same iPads show this consistently..but other iPads are OK?

And have you completely reset iPads ...tested...Without reinstalling apps and profiles and problem is still there (not app related)

If so...then is it signal strength, or band steering...have those iPads been repaired?

[Sheridan]

Both brand are brand new, in a perfect signal area and have been like this out of the box. They have a very basic config profile on to setup the WiFi but that’s about it.

[AlanD]

Definitely sounds like MERU (..or rather Fortinet as now is) need to take a look at logs. Do you have other new ones (same models) that work OK? Is it because these later iPads have different WiFi chipset - perhaps supporting "ac".

[speakercon]

As above, it's not Fortinet wireless is it?

[RLR]

We had something similar to this with Fortinet. We found our band steering had randomly turned itself off (maybe after an update or something). Turning it back has helped.

[Sheridan]

Sorry I'd been distracted and have only just got back to this. We use xirrus wireless and its only the 2 ipads that are running our visitor sign in system that have this issue - but they're also the only two that are on 24 hours a day (albeit charged on a timer)

 

Once they drop the wifi, the only way to get it back on is to switch the wifi off and on. I've reset,updated and tried new profiles but it still happens on a regular but intermittent basis. None of the other ipads have this issue - some can be 'asleep' for days but reconnect on wake up within a minute or so.

 

I wonder if being on constantly is causing a hardware problem, but it seem odd it affects both a full size ipad and an ipad mini in the same way, or perhaps they have the same wifi chipset.