Tech Forum

I likewise have similar issues. Generally the internet connection works for my laptop when I arrive at church, but then at some random point it loses internet access. When this happens, I am unsuccessful at bringing up the T&C page, using either Chrome or Edge. I have found that eventually by disabling/enabling wifi on my laptop, sometimes more than once, eventually things click and it displays the T&C.

My laptop is integrated into our Zoom sacrament meeting broadcast, so I usually spend a bit of time Sunday morning at church wrestling with my laptop so it "officially" connects to Liahona.

I wish there was a more robust implementation of the T&C paradigm, to account for the variety of user setup configurations which don't appear to be handled 100% (I don't think I have anything special on my laptop, but I'm no tech guy). Anyone know where I can log feedback for the T&C?

You could try contacting your STS and have him add your device to the Group Policy in TM. You need to be at the Meeting House and logged in so that your device can be seen.
This bypasses the splash screen and only works in that building. It saves a lot of hassle when done, especially on a Sunday.

Biggles wrote:You could try contacting your STS and have him add your device to the Group Policy in TM.

It's possible, but the STS only has 15 exceptions per meetinghouse to hand out. It was intended for devices that can't click on the splash screen such as chomecast devices, copiers, etc.

I'm suspecting the issue might be the DNS cache or a custom DNS setting. As I recall, the church network requires that you use their DNS so the filtering works. Others are blocked. If the computer has cached DNS results, it might cause odd connectivity results.

If disabling and re-enabling the WiFi on the device fixes the issue, then that's likely to be the fix.

russellhltn wrote:

Biggles wrote:You could try contacting your STS and have him add your device to the Group Policy in TM.

It's possible, but the STS only has 15 exceptions per meetinghouse to hand out. It was intended for devices that can't click on the splash screen such as chomecast devices, copiers, etc.

I'm curious to know how many devices are actually using the exceptions policy in each meeting house?

In my own Stake, consisting of 5 buildings, we have no printers, copiers etc. connected via wifi. When we get back from lockdown, Chromecast devices would probably not exceed 2-3 per building. I haven't found an indication anywhere of actual maximum number (15 as rusellhltn states), under the Group Policy. However I'm happy to be corrected on this! If the figure of 15 is accurate that still leaves my own building with about 10 spare exceptions to allocate. The only number limitations I have actually seen stated, are for Static IP addresses.

At the moment, in my own building which is the Stake centre, there are a total of 3 devices (2 of which are mine, laptop and iPad) using the exceptions policy. If the

The limit is mentioned in Registering Devices in Technology Manager.

It does indicate you can get more, but that's at the pleasure of the Meetinghouse Technology team, who I'm sure are going to be curious about "why".

I'm a "Pandora's Box" type of person. If you start down this road, pretty soon you'll have a number of requests from different people as word gets around. If two wards meet in the same building, you could easily have more than 15 requests just from the ward council. Where do you draw the line?

Thank you for the reference. That was the one place I didn't think to look!

Biggles wrote:Thank you for the reference. That was the one place I didn't think to look!

You're welcome. I think one of the biggest drivers for the forum's existence is to help people find where the information is. It's certainly my motivation since the clerk eGroup days.

Found a fix for this frustrating issue!

From https://www.google.com/amp/s/speedify.c ... ng-up/amp/

“ the problem could be that your browser cache is still trying to use the previous DNS info it knows to access sites instead of loading the WiFi login page. You can try to break this cycle by accessing a new website. You could clear your browser cache or better yet, open an incognito window in your browser and try visiting a non-HTTPS site.
You may be wondering why a non-HTTPS site. If you try to visit a secure site and your network tries to redirect your browser to a login screen, your browser will prevent to keep your data secure. Make sure to use an incognito window!”

They’ve got a few other ideas too but this one worked for me!

This has been determined to be a byproduct of IOS 14's new feature called "Private WiFi Address" which instructs a device to present a random MAC address to a wireless network when it connects. It interprets each different WAP in the same meetinghouse as a different network, thus changing the MAC address if moving around the building, which is requiring a new ToS page. Apple has provided a way to turn off Private WiFi Address on a per network basis on their devices:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211227

Once this is turned off for Liahona, the multiple daily requests to accept the Terms of Service splash page on an Apple device should cease.

This isn't just an iOS issue. The switches were recently upgraded in my local stake centre and I am now finding that random Android devices and my MacBook pro won't connect. Switching off the private address in iOS sometimes work. The message on all devices say it failed to receive an IP address. Yet in the TM interface I can see the devices have in fact been assigned an IP address. The T&C splash screen does not appear on any of them. Adding the devices to the group policy doesn't make a difference.