The problem with Wi-Fi on the iPhone is that it isn’t a secure medium – most hotspots require varying degrees of security to log on before you can use your iPhone in each particular hotspot.

How to Connect
No matter where you are, you’ll need to turn on the iPhone’s Wi-Fi switch, located in the Settings section. In most cases, the connection is very easy – the iPhone will search for all the available networks and you select the one you want, enter a password if required and begin browsing.

Sometimes it’s not so simple. If the network administrator wants to restrict who can access the network, they can switch on MAC address filtering which means only devices that have had their unique MAC address added into a safe list will be able to connect.

Other networks will be hidden and can only be found by your iPhone if you know the name of the network and enter it manually in the “Other” option on the Wi-Fi settings page. It will be case sensitive so make sure you enter it exactly.

Once you’ve selected which wireless network to connect to, you may be asked to specify a password. There are two different types of encryption technologies that require you to enter a password – WEP and WPA – but you don’t need to know the differences to connect your iPhone, just the password. This can be obtained from the network administrator.