Forgetting Wireless Networks

Here's one that was stumping me this morning -- how to not connect automatically to a wireless access point. It seems logical that you'd want the iPhone to switch over to an open wifi hotspot when it encounters one. The problem I was facing was that it was trying to connect to the PSU wireless (which requires VPN that iPhone doesn't do) or a for-fee "getwireless.net" hotspot that is somewhere close to my building. These are open in that you don't need a password to access the access point, but you must authenticate to join the network -- either via VPN or a web page.

So this morning my iPhone refused to stick with EDGE and kept trying to join one of these two "open" wifi hotspots. I turned off wifi on the iPhone, but that is silly as I want to join truly open spots. I looked all over the Apple Support area and was unsuccessful at finding a fix. Brad Kozlek mentioned to me that there is a button on the iPhone that you can touch to "foget a hotspot." Very cool. To find it:

• Go to Settings > Wi-Fi
• Let it bring up your available access points
• When/if your iPhone pulls up networks you do not want to join, first join it by touching its name
• Once you are joined (there will be a check mark by the name), touch the little blue circle with the arrow in it
• In the next screen, touch "Forget the Network"

That's it.

Comments

[Christopher Long]

You guys are making me very jealous. I am certain that every faculty member needs one of these, but I need to figure out an argument for that intuition!