Hotspot issues with Apple Devices

We have recently started running into more and more problems with our hotspot setups with Apple devices. MacBooks, iPads, iPhones, etc. What we run into is the Apple device believes it is not online, and therefore it does not try and connect to the internet. Since it’s web browser never tries to connect, it cannot get to the login page to be signed in. This process works normally for all other devices as expected.

There has been some success with adding *.apple.com to the walled garden, but even that doesn’t always work. I am wondering if anyone else has been running into this as of late, and if they have any possible solutions or work arounds that we can use to get this process working again.

We are using a remotely hosted login page for our login process with an external Radius server, but most everything else is a standard hotspot setup.

/ip hotspot profile
add dns-name=gateway.domain.net hotspot-address=192.168.10.1 http-cookie-lifetime=1d login-by=cookie,http-pap \
    name="Guest Profile" use-radius=yes
/ip hotspot
add address-pool=hs-pool-14 disabled=no idle-timeout=6h interface=Guest-Bridge name="Guest Hotspot" profile=\
    "Guest Profile"
/ip hotspot user profile
set [ find default=yes ] idle-timeout=1d keepalive-timeout=1d session-timeout=1d shared-users=unlimited
/ip hotspot walled-garden
add action=allow disabled=no dst-host=login.domain.net dst-port=""
add action=allow disabled=no dst-host=irg.domain.net dst-port=""
add action=allow disabled=no dst-host=admin.domain.net dst-port=""
add action=allow disabled=no dst-host=search.dns.domain.com dst-port=""
add action=allow comment=Facebook disabled=no dst-host=*.amazonaws.com dst-port=""

Hi!

you are not alone : D!

We had problems like this in large events where we have tons of mobiles.. not in small networks..

I only know this behavior wen you not using a valid public tld in your gateway dns name.

I always use wifi.mycustomerwebsite.com..

The domain we are using is valid, and also has an A record created on our domain name servers pointed to the private IP for the router’s LAN interface.

We have been running into this more with business class hotels, but it does seem to happen more are larger hotels. I have also heard that a patch from Apple has supposedly addressed this, but I don’t know for sure. It’s been one of those lingering/annoyance issues that we keep running into lately.

Did any of you ever find the issue?

I am experiencing this issue now on a hotspot I set-up for a bead and breakfast?

Latest version of Router OS, And running hotspot without ssl cert.

I just tested my iPhone5 on a RouterOS V6.9, and it did good. Popped up the login page, logged in, and an hour later it logged out. I was testing the session-timeout feature.