cant connect to college wifi

[ak9237]

is there a reason that my college wifi signal is strong but it says it cant connect to the server. how do i fix that

[ak9237]

OK I think I may have figured out the last question but when I go to New York City in Penn Station and try to connect to wifi it wont let me. The wireless network is named "Free Public Wifi" but when you click on it to connect it says it cannot connect to the server. How can you get this to work or is there no way to do it?

[DerekVOF]

Couple things - first, search the forums as there are many people who are having issues with college networks. Something about incompatible security standards that they're using.

Second, for the public Wi-Fi, you often have to go to an acceptance page to agree to their terms & conditions. Try to open Safari and go to Google once or twice. Should autotransfer you to a page to accept their T&Cs...

[ak9237]

i tried safari and it said it cant connect or something along those lines.

[gsu_paintballer]

Sometimes it also takes a few minutes to "get to know" the connection. For instance, my home network showed up as available, but not known. It took a few minutes for it to transfer and connect. Same with my college network.

[mach_zero]

I'd contact campus IT and ask them if there are some manual security settings you need to enter on your Touch to get it to work.

Also, be aware that you'll spot a lot of these "Free Public WiFi" hotspots as you roam around the city. They are almost always not actual hotspots at all, but rather computers that have been compromised by a virus that secures a PC's SSID and broadcasts it as a dummy ad hoc network connection that goes nowhere to lure other computers in so it can spread. It broadcasts the signal but seemingly never let's you connect, all the while propagating itself to the computer that's trying to access it. Of course, the iPod Touch is most likely not vulnerable to this infection (as far as I know) but if you try to connect with a laptop or PC, it's gotcha.

[Trumper]

...and lots of the "free" spots aren't free at all: they launch a web page where you need to enter all kinds of info to "sign up" first...or sometimes they try to charge you for "premium" access or something.

On this campus, you have to "sign up" for wireless. So even though most of the campus is covered and it's free, you can't get on the WiFi network unless you register your device. In that case, it means registering with the network people and giving them your WiFi address.

Settings-->General-->About--> scroll down to Wi-Fi Address.

If they don't have you on the WiFi database, you aren't getting in....

So yeah, check your IT dept or residential computer guru or the computer lab or something...and ask them.