Wi-Fi Direct and iOS Support

Question

I want to use Wi-Fi Direct in a solution  but I m unsure which platforms support it   Does Wi-Fi Direct depend on iPhone iOS version   Can I develop an application with Wi-Fi Direct feature on a iPhone 4s with iOS 8

User · Answer

According to this thread       The peer-to-peer Wi-Fi implemented by iOS  and recent versions of OS   X  is not compatible with Wi-Fi Direct     Note Just as an aside  you can   access peer-to-peer Wi-Fi without using Multipeer Connectivity   The   underlying technology is Bonjour   TCP IP  and you can access that   directly from your app   The WiTap sample code shows how

User · Answer

It took me a while to find out what is going on  but here is the summary  I hope this save people a lot of time   Apple are not playing nice with Wi-Fi Direct  not in the same way that Android is  The Multipeer Connectivity Framework that Apple provides combines both BLE and WiFi Direct together and will only work with Apple devices and not any device that is using Wi-Fi Direct   https   developer apple com library ios documentation MultipeerConnectivity Reference MultipeerConnectivityFramework index html  It states the following in this documentation -  The Multipeer Connectivity framework provides support for discovering services provided by nearby iOS devices using infrastructure Wi-Fi networks  peer-to-peer Wi-Fi  and Bluetooth personal area networks and subsequently communicating with those services by sending message-based data  streaming data  and resources  such as files     Additionally  Wi-Fi direct in this mode between i-Devices will need iPhone 5 and above   There are apps that use a form of Wi-Fi Direct on the App Store  but these are using their own libraries

User · Answer

The official list of current iOS Wi-Fi Management APIs  There is no Wi-Fi Direct type of connection available  The primary issue being that Apple does not allow programmatic setting of the Wi-Fi network SSID and password  However  this improves substantially in iOS 11 where you can at least prompt the user to switch to another WiFi network    QA1942 - iOS Wi-Fi Management APIs  Entitlement option  This technology is useful if you want to provide a list of Wi-Fi networks that a user might want to connect to in a manager type app  It requires that you apply for this entitlement with Apple and the email address is in the documentation    NEHotspotHelper   MFi Program options  These technologies allow the accessory connect to the same network as the iPhone and are not for setting up a peer-to-peer connection    Wireless Accessory Configuration  WAC  HomeKit   Peer-to-peer between Apple devices  These APIs come close to what you want  but they re Apple-to-Apple only    NSNetService Multipeer Connectivity   WiTap Example Code  iOS 11 NEHotspotConfiguration  Brought up at WWDC 2017 Advances in Networking  Part 1 is NEHotspotConfiguration which allows the app to specify and prompt to connect to a specific network

[ios] Wi-Fi Direct and iOS Support

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