Technology Services Wi-Fi Help Portal-Troubleshooting

This page is to help provide background or additional information that might help assist you in troubleshooting various issues you might come across.

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  1. In rare occasions, after a phone, tablet, or computer performs a software update, the Wi-Fi has issues connecting or staying connected. In the past, this has occurred, and the only solution is to remove the Wi-Fi profile, and perform the steps to re-join it to the Wi-Fi.

  2. Did you just recently change your password? Did you make sure that you updated the new password on all you devices? In some cases you will need to remove the old Wi-Fi profile and rebuild it from start. In rare occasions we also have seen that some keyboard layouts do not properly input characters with what you may think. Make sure the keyboard layout is set to English and that you do not have any special character plug-ins enabled on your device.

  3. Still having issues? Please don't hesitate to contact our Technology Services Help Desk.


  1. If you are connected to the Wi-Fi but cannot connect to a specific website or load an app, check to make sure you do not have any VPN software running. If you do, turn it off and try again.

  2. Check to make sure there are no weird networking settings that are configured. Everything should be set to automatic. The Technology Services Help Desk can help assist you further if you think that a network setting might be the cause of a problem. A link is here: Technology Services Help Desk.

  3. If you are a faculty, staff or student, make sure you are connected to "IllinoisNet" and not "IllinoisNet_Guest" or "eduroam".

  4. We do not perform any blocking of ports or websites while on the Wi-Fi, be sure to check the host firewall of the site you are trying to connect to.

  5. Still having issues? Please don't hesitate to contact our Technology Services Help Desk.


A MAC address (or Media Access Control) is, in short, a unique identifier to your computer, phone or tablet. Its job is to make sure that you have a unique presence on the network which allows you to be online. It has 12 characters of values between A-F and 0-9. So why do I need to know this? Well, you should not have to be able to. However, for devices that are unable to join "IllinoisNet", or us credentials, we have to "pre-authorize" those devices on the Device Registration Page. To uniquely identify those devices, we have you fill in the MAC address of the device which then "registers" that device. ***In most cases, devices that have wired connection and a Wi-Fi card will have two unique MAC addresses. Please remember that we need the Wi-Fi MAC address NOT the wired MAC address.

OK so how do I find my MAC address? There are so many devices out there, we would need a huge database to have detailed instructions on finding the MAC address of every time. The best suggestion we can offer is to find the operating system, device, or manufacturer website and see if they have instructions on how to find the MAC address. A simple Google search such as "How do I find my MAC address on Windows 10" or "How do I find my MAC address on Amazon Alexa" can go a long way. Most companies have this information documented and keep it up-to-date. Additionally, we have many IT professionals across campus that can help with this.

Still having issues finding your MAC address? Please don't hesitate to contact our Technology Services Help Desk.


When registering a device on the device registration portal, that device is valid in the system for one year (365 days). If a device needs to be active for more then one year, toward the expiration of that device, you will need to extend the expiration of that device, which can be done for another year. Instructions on how do to that are as follow:

  1. Navigate to the Device Registration Page

  2. Login with your NETID and password. (or with your departmental label if you have one)

  3. Once you login, on the left hand navigation bar click on "Manage Devices"

  4. Click on the device that you wish to extend the expiration on

  5. Once you click on it, you will see a small secondary bar show up below, an option to "edit" will appear, click it

  6. You will now be presented with options to edit your device, one of these options will be to edit Airgroup settings, and another one will be set, or extend the Account Expiration values.

  7. Make the appropriate changes, save them, and logout


Airgroup is a type of service used in our Wi-Fi enviornment that allows two of your devices to be able to see each other. For instance, if I have an IPAD, and wish to "cast" to an AppleTV, I will need to make sure that I have "AirGroup" ENABLED on the AppleTV. Why the AppleTV only? The reason for this is because the AppleTV is "serving" the content. The AppleTV will send out a message looking for your IPAD, and your IPAD will respond. By enabling "AirGroup" we allow this message to propagate through the Wi-Fi environment, and find your IPAD, so that you can then cast your IPADs screen. The same concept applies to Chromecasts, Android and Apple Phones. Just remember to enable "Airgroup" only on the device that is presenting.

To enable Aigroup, please visit the device registration page, find your device in the "Manage Device" list, edit it, and enable "Airgroup". When you enable AirGroup on this page, you will get secondary text box pop-up. This boxes allows you to specify with whom you wish to allow this device to be "discoverable". With so many users on campus, we don't want everyones device to be visible to everyone. By default the device is only visible to only YOUR NETID. Adding in additional NETIDs will make that those devices are discoverable to those individuals as well. If you are in an "operator" role, you can leave this blank, and then anyone in the same building as this device will be able to "discover" this device. This is intended for uses cases such as conference rooms or collaboration spaces.

There are a few steps here to process, but remember that we are on an enterprise level network and is complex and a shared resource. At home, a lot of these settings are done automatically between your device and your router.

Finally, some devices require special "Firewall" rules in order for them to be "discoverable", sometimes that involves us to make a configuration changes. If you have a new devices that is not properly being discovered don't hesitate to drop us a note or ticket at consult@illinois.edu.


Please be advised devices registered on the Device Registration Portal, located here, will expire. You will receive an email notifying you of this expiration 1 Month, 2 weeks and 1 days before the expiration date. You can update your expiration time by editing the device and changing the expiration date.