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.

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