Problem connecting an iPad to a wireless network
 

An elderly friend recently moved into an old people's home and the family bought her an iPad so she could remain in touch with the world. She asked me, (very much a 'dark side' man), to set the iPad up so she clould send emails etc.

I've coped with the unfamiliar Apple procedures without too much difficulty, but have struck (what I think may be) a problem with her connectivity to the outside world. At my place, where I did much of the setting up, the iPad seamlessly connects with my wireless network, but at the old people's home, it goes into what I'd describe as a 'loop', finding the home's wireless network, accepting the password, but the little circular 'connecting...' icon to the left of the network name remains, ... and remains... and remains.

Instead, it connects through Telsta 3G. Which leads to my first question: connecting through the Telstra 3G rather than the (free) wireless network, is she paying for all her online time on her phone account?

Yes.

Check the wireless network connectivity at the home on another device.Ask other users what their experiences are with the in-house system.A lot of in-house systems are not properly configured or implemented and suffer reliability problems.That's been my experience of staying in many hotels and motels.

You might find this thread of interest: https://discussions.apple.com/message/19625642

It may not be your problem but there are a lot of different suggestions for things to try - I'd try forgetting the network and toggling the wifi off and on for starters.

Well, it's getting the data from somewhere so presumably it's a 3G capable iPad and the data will be on someone's account.

Double check the wireless key - difficulty in connecting is often down to a missed capital letter etc.

Can you get the router at the old people's home reset? Excuse my poor terminology but there can be a problem where all the addresses to the router get used up meaning that additional devices cannot connect. Resetting the rounder sorts this out until all the addresses get used up again.

I read somewhere that the apple devices can be a particular problem as they use a new address each time they come out of sleep mode which uses the addresses quicker.

With Iphones and Ipads if the router's wireless key starts with a letter (rather than a number) disable "Auto capitalisation". If set to "On" it will change the first letter of a sentence or password/wireless key to upper case. This will cause the password to be rejected if the router (or indeed wi-fi connection) is expecting a lower case character.
It can be found under Settings, General, Keyboard.

EGTE

Thank you for that. Not a problem that I currently have, but worth remembering with all the wireless gadgets that come in to the Ancient house.

EGTE,

You could do all that.... or you could just download a copy of iCU and use it to generate a wifi profile to upload to the device (make sure you disable iTunes autosync before plugging someone else's device into your computer for the iCU profile push ! ).

Thanks to all who replied.