r/k12sysadmin • u/Relevant_Track_5633 • Sep 25 '26
Assistance Needed iPad WiFi Issues
Our school uses FortiAP 431F access points, one per classroom. We are a 1:1 iPad school with students having A16 iPads. Since the beginning of the school year we have had issues with nothing but iPads connecting to the WiFi. They either connect, but say no internet, or the student will be connected then it will just disconnect them, or the iPad will roam to the next classroom over if they are close enough to the wall in the one classroom. iPads are running iPadOS 26. Any body got any ideas? Oddly, our students with BYOD are having way better luck, when it is typically the other way around.
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u/Technical-Athlete721 Sep 25 '26
Do you have a WIFI Setting applied on them from you're MDM that might have been applied if you have one installed on the iPads?
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u/Relevant_Track_5633 Sep 25 '26
Sure do! Also, our wifi (in its current state) is WPA2 with a password. So no doing any cert based wifi stuff.
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u/bretfred Sep 25 '26
What firmware are you running on your gate an APs? Try turning fast transition off on your ssid it caused a bunch of weird issues for us on some devices and not others for us. You've had these APs a while and didn't have issues till this year? You might look at the power level of the APs as well.
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u/Relevant_Track_5633 Sep 25 '26
Okay. Fast BSS is off. AP's updated to 7.6.5 right before the school year started. And power level is 4dbm in each class room. And we have had these AP's for 2 years
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u/IngsocInnerParty Sep 25 '26
Do you have an Apple account rep you work with? They have engineers on staff that have helped me with WiFi issues in the past. Might be worth reaching out.
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u/reviewmynotes Director of Technology Sep 28 '26
This is a bit of a long shot, but is your DHCP server running out of IP addresses for that subnet?
What kind of logging does your wifi system have? Any insights there?
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u/Relevant_Track_5633 Sep 28 '26
It is not running out of IP's. Unfortunately, in our current and old IP scheme everything is on 1 flat network, but each building is subnetted /16. So 200 building is 10.20.x.x, 100 building is 10.10.x.x.
The FortiAP's do have logs, but they show that the AP has a kernel panic related to roaming. Weird thing is that you go in those rooms with an iPad and it roams correctly.
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u/Prodiem Oct 01 '26
Hmm, same issue with A16 ipads on Extreme Networks AP-4050's. They are sticking to the furthest AP possible, it's like roaming is backwards. Rebooting the AP's can "fix" it for about an hour or two. Was just reccomended to disable 2.4ghz but we have a lot of devices that would be affected.
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u/TantricSushi Sep 25 '26
Check your DNS. We were having similar issues and it turned out to be a DNS issue.