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Forum Discussion
Flash7Gordon
Aug 25, 2016Guide
2.5 ghz password not what Nighthawk admin shows
Hi, Lately my iphone's have been asking for the password if I ask for the 2.5 ghz ssid on my Nighthawk. I go to a PC and look at the password on admin and the password that fails is what I hav...
- Sep 23, 2016
Flash7Gordon, I think the iOS doesn't work the way you think it should? In order to use FORGET the network you MUST be in range of that network. Here is the rub, as far as I know ONLY the SSID and P/W is retained. That is all that is needed to connect. The MAC address is not needed. Some large places have repeaters that use the same SSID and P/W. If it saved the MAC Address it wouldn't connect.
So you were NEVER forgetting the network because you couldn't connect to it. When you FORGET it it just will not AUTOCONNECT to it. That network SSID now goes into the list you can select from.
Again, from what I know, and I could be wrong, this is what is happening.
First 'forget' doesn't delete the data, it just tells iOS not to connect to it. Data is still retained. So in your case it stops trying and then still appears in the list with the wrong P/W. You select it again and it does what it did before, tries to connect. You are in a vicious circle. About all you can do is RESET the network which does wipe all Wifi and SSID data out. However, with one SSID with 2 different P/W's you still have problems again.
Flash7Gordon
Sep 23, 2016Guide
Irv, see my comment below. I agree with what you said but what's interesting was that I was doing many "Forget this Network"/"Forget All Networks" when I was at home and it still wouldn't work at home, either ios9 or ios10, iphones and ipads. The only thing that worked at home was to go to a different ssid. One of these routers was a nighthawk and the other was a Linksys so maybe that has something to do with it.
IrvSp
Sep 23, 2016Master
Flash7Gordon, I think the iOS doesn't work the way you think it should? In order to use FORGET the network you MUST be in range of that network. Here is the rub, as far as I know ONLY the SSID and P/W is retained. That is all that is needed to connect. The MAC address is not needed. Some large places have repeaters that use the same SSID and P/W. If it saved the MAC Address it wouldn't connect.
So you were NEVER forgetting the network because you couldn't connect to it. When you FORGET it it just will not AUTOCONNECT to it. That network SSID now goes into the list you can select from.
Again, from what I know, and I could be wrong, this is what is happening.
First 'forget' doesn't delete the data, it just tells iOS not to connect to it. Data is still retained. So in your case it stops trying and then still appears in the list with the wrong P/W. You select it again and it does what it did before, tries to connect. You are in a vicious circle. About all you can do is RESET the network which does wipe all Wifi and SSID data out. However, with one SSID with 2 different P/W's you still have problems again.
- Flash7GordonSep 26, 2016Guide
Elaine,
Yes, that's interesting. An iphone can only really forget a network that it is really connected to. And that point about large organizations using to same ssid to cover large areas with different routers makes sense too. So maybe if you felt to absolutely had to have 2 routers with identical ssid's and different passwords (I don't feel that way, but just hypothetically) would be to "Forget" the ssid of one place as you were leaving to go to the other place.
- Flash7GordonSep 26, 2016Guide
I guess your last paragraph is saying that you just can't have 2 identical ssid's and different passwords.
- IrvSpSep 26, 2016Master
Although I can't say for sure you can't, I also think you'd need to do RESET vs. FORGET. Of course RESET wipes out ALL networks which might not be practical.
What is the problem with using the SAME P/W?
- Flash7GordonSep 26, 2016Guide
Irv, In my opinion I did do a "Forget all Neworks" at the Settings level on the iphone, not just the WiFi level on the phone and it still had the "Incorrect Password" problem when I tried to connect. In my opinion Apple should make it if you Forget Network, that the next time you try it's a fresh try with no baggage and clearly that's not happening. I work as a software developer. I think I could write the code that says Blow this ssid out of the Hash table, no questions asked. There's no huge problem with passwords the same. I just didn't do it that way to start. I can't remember the exact sequence but I also think maybe that this worked for a while (I could connect in both places if I put a password in) and then suddenly it didn't like it. I was slightly reluctant to change the vacation home password because it was programmed into dvd players, roku's and we had given it to some guests and it was in our documentation for using the cottage. It would have been interesting to change the password on the Home Nighthawk to the the vacation home password and see if that would have worked. That would have been the least disruptive way to fix this and I think that was your suggestion.
- IrvSpSep 26, 2016Master
I'm only working with an iPad, but I'd suspect the iPhone would be the same.
Under NETWORK, when you are connected to a network you can forget it. All that does is STOP the device from automatically connecting to it when in range. The network will still appear in the list below the connected network so you can change to it if you wish.
There is no "Forget all Neworks", at least not on my iPad? There is a RESET NETWORK SETTINGS under GENERAL --> RESET, though. That will delete ALL NETWORK data for every network you can connect to.
Now what surprises me is that one would think if you supplied the wrong P/W (for the SSID) you don't get prompted for a correct P/W? You'd think that would happen? Come to think of that that does happen on my iPad? Hmmm..... I'm on iOS 10.0.1 now and when I was in a Dr.'s office this morning trying to connect to my ISP's hotspot that is exactly what happened? Had the UID but needed my P/W and I had connected there some time before I had changed it?
- Flash7GordonSep 27, 2016Guide
Irv, That's a good point. We were all fixating on the "remembering" part but you're right. When it failed on "invalid password" it asked me to put it in again and I did and it failed again. Then I went to look at the nighthawk admin and the password that I put in after being prompted that failed was sitting there showing as the password for that ssid. So there's definitely something strange going on and it's not just a clean presentation of the ssid and password from the iphone to the nighthawk. So that's why I asked the original question. I have a fairly late model iphone and ipad air 2 and I agree, they both behave pretty much the same for this.