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Need help to stop iPhone from changing iPad's WiFi network

aces99

aces99

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Apr 18, 2014
441
222
Canada
Hi, I am having a problem I need some help with. I have a Wi-Fi modem in my living room that covers one side of the house and I have a Wi-Fi extender in the family room that covers the other side of the one because the signal is to weak if you are in the family room and hooked to the main modem. The problem is if we are using the iPad in the family room and hooked to the "Extender" and I take my iPhone in the living room and hooked up to the "Main modem" the iPad also switches and hooked up to the "Main modem". How do you stop the iPhone from changing iPad Wi-Fi network as well when you move the iPhone and hook up to a different Wi-Fi network.
 
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I'm no expert, but there are a few possible fixes:

Theoretically you should be able to set up your main router and the extender to be on the same wifi network. That way your devices can switch seamlessly between the two no matter where your are in your house. I'm not sure how to do this, but it should be in the instructions for the extender.

If that isn't possible or desired, you can turn keychain off on one of your devices, either their iPhone or iPad depending on which one you want to limit to only the main router or the extender. You just have to make sure that each devices "knows" the networks you want it to connect to.
 
The two devices are independently connected to WiFi, but you're saying that the iPhone somehow changes the connection of the iPad?

aces99 said:
Hi, I am having a problem I need some help with. I have a Wi-Fi modem in my living room that covers one side of the house and I have a Wi-Fi extender in the family room that covers the other side of the one because the signal is to weak if you are in the family room and hooked to the main modem. The problem is if we are using the iPad in the living room and hooked to the "Main" modem and I take my iPhone in the family room and hooked up to the "Extender" the iPad also switches and hooked up to the "Extender". How do you stop the iPhone from changing iPad Wi-Fi network as well when you move the iPhone and hook up to a different Wi-Fi network.
Click to expand...
 
Yes, if I have both hooked to the same wifi network and take the iPhone to the other side of the house and hook to a different wifi network it also changes the wifi network on the iPad. I never had this problem until recently. I think it started when I updated to the latest IOS version. There must be a way to stop that from happening.
 
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You have to disabled iCloud keychain on one of the devices

When you have iCloud keychain on it saves wifi passwords which syncs to any other device you have signed in to the same iCloud account

Though you could just manually change the iPad back to the other AP after the fact
 
Ok, thanks for the info. I am going to go into my modem settings and set the extender to the same as main modem. To set the extender to bridge mode do I actually need to click on something in the modem or extender's settings to put the extender to bridge mode and if you do where would I find that? Or do I just change the extender to same SSID as the main modem and it will be in bridge mode automatically?
 
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I'm still puzzled by this. ICloud keychain helps you share passwords between your devices. You guys are saying that it will change what network another device is on? I'm skeptical.
 
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Paco II said:
I'm still puzzled by this. ICloud keychain helps you share passwords between your devices. You guys are saying that it will change what network another device is on? I'm skeptical.
Click to expand...
Just set your network up correctly, and be done with it.
 
Paco II said:
That will help the OP, but was wrong information given in regards to one device somehow switching another devices network?
Click to expand...
Oops Sorry....I replied to quickly...I didn't check the sidebar, and just assumed you were the OP. i'm with you on the keychain causing the problem. I can't say for sure that it doesn't, but I also don't understand how syncing password info could make another device switch SSID's. Seems like a reach...
 
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If I change my 5G extender to the same as my regular modem how will I know if I am hooking up to my 5G on all my other devices. My iPhone shouldn't be changing the wifi network I am on on my IPad though. They should be totally independent
 
aces99 said:
If I change my 5G extender to the same as my regular modem how will I know if I am hooking up to my 5G on all my other devices. My iPhone shouldn't be changing the wifi network I am on on my IPad though. They should be totally independent
Click to expand...
If you want help with your networking, you are going to have to tell us exactly what type of equipment you have (including ISP equipment). You keep saying modem, and I keep wondering if you mean router. no one can make recommendations blindly. Is your ISP supplying a modem/router, or just a modem? Do you have two routers, and are using one as an extender/switch/access point?

Read through this thread, and maybe it will give you a general idea how to set up a network...
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...fi-connectivity-issues.1945667/#post-22392740
 
JamesMB said:
Oops Sorry....I replied to quickly...I didn't check the sidebar, and just assumed you were the OP. i'm with you on the keychain causing the problem. I can't say for sure that it doesn't, but I also don't understand how syncing password info could make another device switch SSID's. Seems like a reach...
Click to expand...

I am with you JamesMB, the iPhone shouldn't be change the wifi network on the iPad when the iPhone changes wifi networks. The iPad should stay on its wifi network no matter if the iPhone changes to a different wifi network. But it does on mine. My iPad and iPhone will both be hooked to my 5G wifi. But as soon as I take my iPhone to the other side of the house and I have to switch to the regular wifi, because the 5G signal is to weak, it also switches the iPad to the regular Wifi. Which causes the Internet to be slow as hell and sometimes not even work because the signal is to weak. So if someone is using the iPad on the 5G wifi in the family room and I go to the other side of the house and I connect to a different wifi because the 5G's signal is to weak and the Internet is slow. Once I connect the iPhone to the other wifi network it switches the iPad to the same regular wifi network which makes the internet slow as well or stop completely because the regular wifi network is so weak in the family room because the modem is so far away. If the person doesn't know how to to go to the setting to switch to back to the 5G wifi they are out of luck until I fix it. I would like to find a way to stop the iPhone from changing the wifi network on the iPad.
 
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aces99 said:
I would like to find a way to stop the iPhone from changing the wifi network on the iPad.
Click to expand...
Then set up your network correctly.....Right now you have two LAN's and have to manually switch between the two depending on where you are in the house....Not Good!
 
JamesMB said:
If you want help with your networking, you are going to have to tell us exactly what type of equipment you have (including ISP equipment). You keep saying modem, and I keep wondering if you mean router. no one can make recommendations blindly. Is your ISP supplying a modem/router, or just a modem? Do you have two routers, and are using one as an extender/switch/access point?

Read through this thread, and maybe it will give you a general idea how to set up a network...
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...fi-connectivity-issues.1945667/#post-22392740
Click to expand...

It is the modem that the ISP give you to get Internet. I do have a 5G Asus RT-AC68U Router as well. But I don't have it hooked at the moment and is not the modem I am referring to in the other posts. They also gave me 5G extender because the signal was to weak on the other side of the house. So I have the regular modem downstairs that covers the basement, living room and all the bedrooms on one side of the house. Then I have the 5G extender upstairs that covers the family room, kitchen, office and dining room on the other side of the house. We originally had the modem upstairs but because there were to many walls blocking the signal it wouldn't cover the whole house upstairs So the Installer said the best would be to put it downstairs on the other end of the house and because we only had the one floor blocking the signal to the upstairs it wouldn't matter and it still would get good signal for the one side of the house upstairs. Then the 5G wifi could cover the other side of the upstairs. Now the whole house it covered with good signal. I like to hook up to the 5G whenever I can because it is supposed to be a little faster and has stronger signal in the living room, office and kitchen where we spend most of our time at home.
 
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I wasn't implying icloud keychain was changing the wifi network of the ipad, it's the only thing that syncs wifi passwords between devices.

FWIW 5Ghz has much shorter range than 2.4ghz so whilst the former provides good speeds it drops off considerably the further away you get from the AP.

With consumer grade wifi roaming is not really effective, there's no way to force your phone or ipad to switch to an AP with stronger signal as it'll cling onto it till it loses signal altogether (when you give them the same SSID). You have to get into enterprise grade AP's like Unifi etc if you wanted to go down that route.
 
I did what was suggested by making my extender have the same SSID as the main modem and that did not work and actually made the problem worse because it hooked to the main modem and I had no way of getting it to hook up to the stronger 5G Signal. I also couldn't tell what wifi network I was hooked to. So that does not work at all. I switched it back to the way it was but that didn't fix my original problem either. I am still trying to find a way to stop my iPhone from switching my iPad's wifi network all the time. Apple either needs to fix it or give us a option to shut that feature off.
 
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First of all, what iPhone and iPad do you have ?

Does both your ISP modem and extender run in 5G mode ?

When the issue happens, can you manually reconnect your iPad to the modem ?

If you make your iPad forget the extender network, will it stay connected to the modem then when your iphone is connected to the extender ?
 
aces99 said:
I did what was suggested by making my extender have the same SSID as the main modem and that did not work and actually made the problem worse because it hooked to the main modem and I had to way of getting it to hook up to the stronger 5G Signal. I also couldn't tell what wifi network I was hooked to. So that does not work at all. I switched it back to the way it was but that didn't fix my original problem either. I am still trying to find a way to stop my iPhone from switching my iPad's wifi network all the time. Apple either needs to fix it or give us a option to shut that feature off.
Click to expand...
Setting the SSIDs the same should work and you can even do that for 2.4 and 5g bands. Then the iDevices will connect to the better channel (actually preferred from Apple and a former Apple engineer wrote an article about this). Anyway that works flawless for me on a single router with 2.4 & 5ghz bands. Your issue is caused by iCloud keychain most likely as mentioned. Turn it off and it should solve this particular issue.
 
twintin said:
First of all, what iPhone and iPad do you have ?

Does both your ISP modem and extender run in 5G mode ?

When the issue happens, can you manually reconnect your iPad to the modem ?

If you make your iPad forget the extender network, will it stay connected to the modem then when your iphone is connected to the extender ?
Click to expand...

First of all, what iPhone and iPad do you have ?
I have the iPhone 5S and iPad Air

Does both your ISP modem and extender run in 5G mode ?
No, the regular modem only runs in 2.4 GHz band and the extender runs in 2.4 and 5GHz band

When the issue happens, can you manually reconnect your iPad to the modem ?
Yes. But it is a pain because you have to do it every time and if I leave the house and that happends then people are SOL until I get back because no one else knows to check or how to change.

If you make your iPad forget the extender network, will it stay connected to the modem then when your iphone is connected to the extender ?
No, as soon as I connect to the modem and put in the password the iPad connects to it as well. It shouldn't as I have told the iPad to forget that wifi network. But as soon as one device connects to it they all so. There should be a way to stop that from happening.
 
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jhuynh said:
Are you sure that is what's happening or is the iPad just connecting to the stronger network?

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202831
Click to expand...

No the iPad is hooked to the 5G because it is the strongest network, that's why I have it connected to the 5G one. As soon as I take my iPhone to the other side of the house and connect to the other wifi network the iPad also connects to it even thought the iPad hasn't moved from the room. When you check what wifi network the iPad is hooked to it is hooked to the weak once that only has 1 bar at mist and the IPad is slow as hell or doesn't work at all. As soon as I hook it back up to the 5G it works like a hot dam. The iPad always stays on the one side of the house and always should stay on the 5G always has full bars. If it hooks to the regular modem it would then have a lower signal. So if the iPad is supposed to hook to the strongest wifi network that would be 5G. I have been using computers since the old commedor vic20 days, so I am not a Newb at this. Never had this problem til I updated to the latest IOS.
 
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