Fixing Verizon Jetpack and iPhone Issues with Data Collectors

Which data collector you ask? A: all the data collectors that we sell.

Verizon JetPack Issue

Windows Mobile based data collectors have a hard time connecting or staying connected to Verizon Jetpacks (Mi-Fi Hotspots).

More data: customer says “it used to work just fine, but … now it won’t connect or looses connection frequently.”

Apparent answer: Verizon pushed a Firmware update that added or changed the default security or made a change the the protocol implementation.

The Solution: log into the Jetpack as an administrator from a computer. (You can connect by Wi-Fi to the Jetpack, then browse to the address 192.168.1.1 typically. The administrator password is on one of the display screens.)

Browse to the Wi-Fi settings screen, then select the ‘Primary Network’ tab:

Find the ‘Security:’ drop down. It will be set to WPA2. Change it to WPA/WPA2. (Note: None works great, but …). Click on Save Changes.

Item #2: Make sure the SSID is simple. I don’t know what the rules are, but I think it is safe that an SSID like “Mark’s JetPack-01” is not OK. Keep the SSID really simple like “MARKJP” using all upper case letters and numbers with no punctuation marks. (This is especially true on iPhones where the default SSID would be “Mark’s iPhone” but the ‘ (apostrophe) is a multi-byte character that Windows Mobile does not support.

Finally: On the data collector, remove settings for the Jetpack, then reconnect.

Problem solved typically.

But, I don’t know if this makes your Jetpack feel insecure or not. We should worry about that.

iPhone SSID

One some iPhones the default SSDI is the iPhone owner’s name. Like:

‘Mark’s iPhone’

However the “‘” between the k and s is a multi-byte character. Some devices (like the Data Collectors) reduce the apostrophe to a simpler single byte ASCII character. This prevents the collector from reconnecting to the phone.

The solution is to change the SSID of the iPhone to something simple. I reccomend:

‘MARKSIPHONE’

No spaces, not mixed case, no spaces, no funny characters.

You can get to this from ‘Settings: General: About …’