iOS 6 wi-fi glitches irk iPhone, iPad users

Published Sep 20 2012, 01:29 BST  |  By James Welsh

iPhone and iPad users experienced glitches with wi-fi connectivity on Wednesday just hours after the rollout of iOS 6.

Posts on the Digital Spy forums and Apple's own support messageboard raised the issue, reporting an inability to connect to wi-fi networks after being redirected to a faulty web page on Apple's site.

DS user interactiv-uk posted: "Has anyone else noticed wifi isn't working - If you try to join a wifi network you are re-routed to apple.com which then comes up with an error and drops your wifi connection!"

The bug was traced to iOS functionality that checks whether a hotspot login, such as those used by public access points, is needed prior to completing a wi-fi connection. Upon initiating a wi-fi connection, iPhones and iPads running iOS 6 check whether they are able to connect to a page on Apple's site - if successful, the connection completes; if not, the user is presented with a hotspot login window.

The page in question began returning "not found" rather than "success" messages shortly after iOS 6 rolled out, causing iPhones and iPads around the world to lose - and be unable to reliably re-establish - connection to wi-fi hotspots.

The issue was fixed at around 8pm Eastern Time (1am Thursday in the UK).