WiFi disconnects on Apple devices seconds after the connection

03/26/2020 45 11707

DESCRIPTION:

The WiFi on Apple devices drops seconds after the connection: It only happens when a captive portal or web authentication is being used on the SonicWall to allow internet traffic.

CAUSE:

This issue is due to the Apple Captive Portal: everytime you connect to the WiFi, iOS will check the connectivity by querying via HTTP "captive.apple.com". If you have a rule blocking the Internet traffic until the successful authentication, this traffic won't get a response, so the WiFi will be disconnected.

RESOLUTION:

This issue can be resolved by:

• disabling the Captive Portal on the Apple devices.
• creating an Access Rule on the SonicWall to allow with no authentication all the traffic to captive.apple.com

If you decide to create the access rule, please follow the steps below:

1. Create a FQDN Address Object for "captive.apple.com" from Network | Address Objects
   
2. Create an Access rule to allow all the traffic to the Address Object above:
   

The situation will now be as below:

• The first ACL will allow DNS traffic
• The second ACL will allow traffic to captive.apple.com
• The third ACL will trigger the authentication page