[Off Topic] iPhone Wifi Issues

[mgoller]

There is an employee at my job who consistently has Wifi issues on their iPhone. We have a Cisco Meraki Wifi network. This individual has iCloud+ which offers iCloud Private Relay. I did not want to disable Private Relay completely because the user pays for it. I believe the issue could be related to Private Relay because it essentially is a VPN (which we do not allow). I have also read articles that state that if your wifi network has a splash page (we do) and you have Private Relay turned on it could lead to connectivity problems. I turned off Private Relay on the user's iPhone for the Wi-Fi network they are trying to connect to and turned off "Limit IP Address Tracking" on the wifi network they are trying to connect to also. It seems like both of these solutions only work for a little while and they will be disconnected again. No other users have reported a problem like this. It seems like it is only this employee's phone that has these issues.

Does anyone know of any solution or something else I can try? I am running out of ideas. 

[chand]

Hi, just adding a tag as [off-topic] for this forum. Thanks!

[Kim_Nilsson]

Such features should not be used at work and you are in the right to disable it.

The user could also be a nerd, like me, that has a personal VPN/DNS profile connected to my pihole at home, filtering junk I don't want to see on my phone. I have set it up to exclude that service while at my network at work.

[alexgrutza]

Also note that sometimes the iOS "Private Wi-Fi Address" can cause issues because it can change the MAC address of the iPhone which causes the phone to lose connection. We have a NAC at my organization and that was causing many headaches. I think the NAC had an update to address it possibly (not my specific area), but remember that it was an issue. That, and having the end-user (students primarily) connect to "Public" and "Organization" wifi caused issues.

[Kim_Nilsson]

For managed devices, at least, you can disable that feature, and for private devices... well, they shouldn't be on the school network now, should they. 😎

[alexgrutza]

If it's the public network (some schools provide publicly accessible wifi for fitness centers, etc.) then yes they should be able to connect (with limited support for troubleshooting), considering it's a publicly funded function of the school.

Should the students be on their personal devices during class? Probably not. During lunch/recess or before/after school? Sure, with limited troubleshooting.