iOS being randomly kicked off guest network

[MMoss]

       I have a facility where the iOS users are being kicked off the guest network when their phone is idle for to long. The models I know of are the iPhone 8 and iPhone X, both are running iOS 12.3.1 which released about a month ago. The issue has been going on for about 10 days. Guest has a click through splash screen, and that doesn't show revoked. The logs just show the phone connect and later disconnect without any other logs. They say the devices work on other Wi-Fi networks just fine.

      I have 20 so faculties, and this is the only one experiencing the problems. We use MR33's with a MR220 and MX60 at half of these location in the same config. All Firmware is up to date, and I power cycled the AP's just in case. When I went to do a packet capture it would start off OK, but fail before it was complete. Normally it would say network error, I'm assuming this was because the phone dropped on, but I never got a log to view.

     Has anyone has something similar happen to them? 

[dalmiroy2k]

I had the same problem with my IDevices on my home network. On a regular use, with a 5 GHZ SSID  with WPA2 PSK validation, session dropped when the iDevice was idle.

Jun 18 08:20:56 MR33 IPA iPhone Dal 802.11 disassociation client has left AP
Jun 18 08:20:56 MR33 IPA iPhone Dal WPA deauthentication radio: 0, vap: 0, client_mac: 6C:72:E7:9B:91:66 more »
Jun 18 07:52:08 MR33 IPA iPhone Dal WPA authentication
Jun 18 07:52:08 MR33 IPA iPhone Dal 802.11 association channel: 11, rssi: 28
Jun 17 19:25:22 MR33 IPA iPad Jorge 802.11 disassociation client has left AP
Jun 17 18:11:40 MR33 IPA iPad Jorge WPA authentication
Jun 17 18:11:40 MR33 IPA iPad Jorge 802.11 association channel: 11, rssi: 23

I tried most tips on Meraki MR troubleshooting. It got somehow fixed pushing (and forcing) a custom WIFI profile via System Manager, enabling Cisco Fast Lane and Sentry validation, but that solution doesn't apply to you problem.

I recommend opening a case in Meraki help center.

[vassallon]

@MMoss I just got an email from Apple about an issue I had with iOS devices being dropped from WiFi and thought I'd pass it along.

The issue we identified in this case that can cause intermittent failures to connect to a PSK Wi-Fi network has been resolved in the iOS 13 beta.

If you have an opportunity to test, please let us know if you see improvements.

It might be worth a try of using the iOS 13 beta on a device having issues and see if it works correctly.

[MMoss]

@vassallon 

The Guest Wi-Fi is open with the exception of a click through screen resetting every 24 hrs. They tell me late yesterday and today it's been good after 10 days of being kicked for sitting idle. This location has no cell reception so they were gathering pitchforks and torches to come pay me a visit until it it suddenly started working. 

[vassallon]

@MMoss Good to hear it started working. Very strange that the issue was happening, is there anything around that may have been interfering on 2.4 or 5 that was blocking/affecting the connection?

[MMoss]

@vassallon I do not believe that to be the issue. It was only an issue with the iPhones they reported to me. Android phones, laptops, and even tablets seem to be unaffected. This is why I suspected it would be tied to the iOS firmware that was pushed a month ago. They did another push for the iPhone 8 plus, but that wasn't the version they were showing on the phones. More so the logs did not show Meraki initiating the disconnection the best I can tell. It only listed connection and disconnect, nothing leaving me to believe it was the actual Wi-Fi.

Meraki asked I use a mac book and do a pcap on site, but I don't have time to drive 2 hours for a guest as-is network even if they are staff. On top of that the company has no Macbooks unless you could the I.T. Directors personal Macbook Pro. Hopefully it'll stay working, because I don't have anything that way for over a month.

[Phelzier]

I've just deployed Meraki Wireless on on of our sites and I get a message in Event Details

disassociated because device was idle

for some iPads that I have for electronic visitor book.  I would think that you would get the same message if the device idled, unless there's a setting somewhere in the Meraki config for Idle timeout that I've not seen.

I know it's not the exact same issue that you are facing as it's not on a guest network, but just in case it helps.

[vassallon]

@Phelzier I know that within iOS 13/iPadOS there is a fix for some wireless disconnection issues that Apple has said was a bug in previous versions of iOS.

Which iOS are you using with the devices? Are you also using the Auto-Lock settings for passcodes or have you set it to never?

[MMoss]

@Phelzier I don't know what changed, but it started working for my users one evening and they haven't had an issue since.