Apple has posted a series of tips to help you manage Wi-Fi connections with an iPhone or iPod Touch, which is essentially the same as the former, but without phone features and some other functions.

The first tip offers advice on what to do when you’re having trouble connecting with a wireless connection to a paid commercial hotspot, such as the ones available at Borders and Starbucks. It suggests renewing the hotspots DHCP lease. To do that:

1. Tap Settings > Wi-Fi Networks, then pick the network you are trying to connect to.
2. In the DHCP panel, select the Renew Lease button.


Picture From Apple Web Site

If that doesn't work, see iPhone Basic Troubleshooting or iPod touch: Basic Troubleshooting.

It then leads into a couple of tips that involve the iPhone's cellular-data EDGE capability.

For example, Apple explains what to do if your Wi-Fi connection keeps reverting to EDGE. That's when your iPhone looks like it is connected to the Internet over Wi-Fi, but goes to EDGE when you try to access a Web page.

This can happen when the wireless router is using MAC Address Filtering and the iPhone's MAC address hasn't been entered into the filter list or when you've entered a WEP password wrong.

Here's what Apple suggests:

If MAC Address Filtering is enabled on the wireless router, make sure iPhone's Wi-Fi address (in Settings > General > About) is entered into the router's filter. See the documentation that came with your wireless router for additional information.

If you experience this and use a WEP Password, on the iPhone tap Settings > Wi-Fi. Then tap More Info ( > ) next to the Wi-Fi network name and tap Forget this Network. Then try accessing the Wi-Fi network again. Alternatively, turn off WEP encryption on the wireless router.

Additional tips include what to do if there's a weak iPhone Wi-Fi signal, you recieve the "unable to join Network Failure (error -3)," and when there's no Internet access when switching networks. Click on the Get the Full Story link below for these tips. +