Personal Hotspot issue

[fjs08]

IOS 6.1.4 on iPhone 5.
Trying to use Personal Hotspot wifi w iPad 1.
I can occasionally see my network as available on iPad. But
1) it won't connect
2) connects after 5 or so try's
3) network fades off of choice list
4) network doesn't show up at all.

What am I doing wrong!??
Or should I just get a Verizon mi FI ??
Thx
Frank

 

[BENJMNS]

Was never reliable for me. Joke function.

 

[fjs08]

I'm finding that. Works, drops off completely. Won't link up. Strange.
Should an actual mi FI work better or they all like this??
Frank

 

[ptb42]

I'm finding that. Works, drops off completely. Won't link up.

This is the behavior I see, as well. I turn on the Personal Hotspot on my iPhone 5, and my iPad 2 will connect to it. If I use it more or less continuously, there's no problem.

But, if I leave it idle for 5-10 minutes, the connection will drop. That's should be no problem, but it won't reconnect again, unless I briefly disable Personal Hotspot and re-enable it.

I think it's occurring because the iPad is dropping its DHCP lease after 5-10 minutes of inactivity, and the iPhone is not allowing it to acquire a new DHCP connection after some amount of time.

The iPad works fine with a Samsung MiFi hotspot: it has no trouble re-acquiring an IP adddress.

Is there a configuration change I'm missing?

 

[jonasdamn]

maybe your carrier isnt official apple carrier? or maybe your carrier doesn't support personal hotspot? Because I had iPhone5 with unofficial carrier and personal hotspot was pain in the ass within, when tried to share my internet to iPad mini. But when i changed to official carrier, problems solved.
Trying restore or atleast reseting network settings

 

[dave8209]

I wonder what The personal hotspot 2.0 feature will bring us in iOS 7.

 

[CosmoPilot]

This is the behavior I see, as well. I turn on the Personal Hotspot on my iPhone 5, and my iPad 2 will connect to it. If I use it more or less continuously, there's no problem.

But, if I leave it idle for 5-10 minutes, the connection will drop. That's should be no problem, but it won't reconnect again, unless I briefly disable Personal Hotspot and re-enable it.

I think it's occurring because the iPad is dropping its DHCP lease after 5-10 minutes of inactivity, and the iPhone is not allowing it to acquire a new DHCP connection after some amount of time.

The iPad works fine with a Samsung MiFi hotspot: it has no trouble re-acquiring an IP adddress.

Is there a configuration change I'm missing?

Same thing here, but instead of disabling Personal Hotspot, I just go to Settings > Personal Hotspot and the iPad will see the WiFi again in a few seconds. I chalked it up to not broadcasting a constant WiFi signal for the whole world to see as I walk around day to day. To me, this made sense. If the WiFi wasn't used after a certain amount of time, my Personal Hotspot stopped transmitting. I leave Personal Hotspot on 100% of the time, and see no degradation of battery life. I'm assuming if a constant WiFi were being broadcast, the battery life would be horrendous.

 

[Armen]

The Hotspot feature is kind of wonky. Sometimes it works for me first time, other times I have to toggle it on/off or even go to airplane mode and back.

 

[fjs08]

I tried it this am while my car was being serviced. Took 3 tries of on and off etc. once linked, it worked well. Made sure I didn't let it idle. We'll see.
Thx
Frank

 

[sundog925]

I love the hotspot feature. Verizon iPhone 5.
Its become my connection source to the internet since I dont have service where I live now.
In fact, thats how I am able to comment lol. As long as it's plugged into my mac, it stay connected. No issues ever.

 

[Ledgem]

Same thing here, but instead of disabling Personal Hotspot, I just go to Settings > Personal Hotspot and the iPad will see the WiFi again in a few seconds. I chalked it up to not broadcasting a constant WiFi signal for the whole world to see as I walk around day to day. To me, this made sense. If the WiFi wasn't used after a certain amount of time, my Personal Hotspot stopped transmitting. I leave Personal Hotspot on 100% of the time, and see no degradation of battery life. I'm assuming if a constant WiFi were being broadcast, the battery life would be horrendous.

I can verify this (and search out this topic to see if others noted the same behavior). I need to be on the screen with the Personal Hotspot toggle and have a device make its connection then; once one device is connected, I can leave that screen and other devices will freely connect to the iPhone as well. However, if I leave that screen without any device connecting then no device will be able to connect.

Another observation: going to the screen with the toggle (and with the toggle set to "on," of course) will result in the iPhone dropping its wifi connection and switching to cellular for data. If you leave that screen with no devices connected - even with the toggle enabled - then the iPhone will quickly rejoin the wifi network that it was connected to.

This behavior is good in that it saves on battery life and doesn't require you to keep track of whether it's on or off. The downside is that there are a few involved steps to getting it running, including having your iPhone and other device both out at the same time (which can be a bit of a challenge when you're on the move). My hope is that iOS 7's control center will make toggling the hotspot a bit easier, and perhaps that turning it on will cause it to broadcast the network for a minute or so even if the screen is changed or powered off before stopping the broadcast if no devices connect.

Other than that, it's a fantastic feature that works very well for me.

 

[Ledgem]

I did a bit more reading on this topic and found something interesting. The wifi-based hotspot shuts off after a while (or if there's no apparent activity), but the hotspot can also be run over Bluetooth. I can verify that linking via Bluetooth results in a stable connection that lasts the entire day, even if the paired device is idle.

To set it up, set your iPhone's screen to the Personal Hotspot settings. With your other device, find the iPhone through your Bluetooth settings and then attempt to pair with it. Both the iPhone and other device should show a screen requesting verification that they are both showing the same sequence of numbers; tap the confirmatory button on both devices and the pairing is complete.

I had my iPad forget the hotspot wifi network to ensure that the connection always runs over Bluetooth. It also seems as if the iPad will use the personal hotspot connection exclusively, even if a saved wifi network is nearby. For this reason I have to manually either disable the personal hotspot or shut off Bluetooth on the iPad at the end of the day; the following day, I need to manually have the iPad connect to my iPhone via Bluetooth (although there's no need to confirm the pairing). I can't say whether both devices would pair up over Bluetooth automatically if left alone for long enough.

There was some debate about the benefits of a wifi-based hotspot compared with Bluetooth. It's difficult to find the exact numbers; wifi links should theoretically offer a speed of anywhere from 11 mbps to 30 mbps (according to some tech websites; I don't know why not the 54 mbps of 802.11g), while Bluetooth 2.0 tops out at around 3 mbps. However, Bluetooth 4.0 (as included with the iPhone 4S and newer) has a theoretical max speed of 25 mbps. To give a sense of comparison, AT&T's LTE network speeds seem to max out at 66 mbps download (Verizon's at 59 mbps, based on an article from mid-June 2013). iPhone 4S users and earlier aren't able to use LTE; their "4G" barely reaches 1 mbps for download.

Since I have an iPhone 4S I can't run a speed test on LTE to compare wifi with Bluetooth. If the hotspot runs through Bluetooth 4.0 and reaches the theoretical maximum speeds then it's possible that there isn't a huge difference with running it over wifi. Even if there is a large speed difference, the convenience factor with running the hotspot through Bluetooth and having a persistent connection is huge.