Okay, so you would think my client wanting to get an iPad online via ethernet would be simple and straight-forward way for me to earn $20. When I arrived, this is the setup I found:
The iPad Pro (model MQDX2LL/A, with software version 14.4.1) cannot simply be plugged into the GS108PE ethernet switch because an error message occurs on the iPad when you plug in the lightning adapter: "The attached accessory uses too much power."
Upon arrival, the Amazon Basics USB Hub was not plugged into an outlet, and I found that plugging in the 5-Volt DC stopped that error message from popping up; apparently, there is a power requirement to send data of a certain quantity through the camera adapter (so I read online). With sufficient power, under the iPad's Settings the "Ethernet" option appears, as exemplified here:
The problem I faced then was that something seemed to be assigning the iPad a 169.254.xxx.xxx IP address, which is the dummy value for "bad connection" or something of the sort.
Periodically, after restarting the EU2251 modem, a real IP address of 192.168.x.x would appear, but would suddenly and unexpectedly revert back to the default dummy address 169.254.xxx.xxx after some time and without notice. I tried "hard-coding" or manually setting the IP address, but it wasn't clear this was working. Problem 1: How to secure a stable IP address.
Now, sometimes when I had a real IP, I would test a website in Safari, but I always received a message along the lines of "The site can't be reached" with subtext of "www.X.com's server DNS address [or was it IP address?] could not be found".
I found online one forum suggesting manually setting the DNS to Google's like so:
However, this didn't resolve the issue; rather, attempting to load a website would simply hang for almost a minute or two before seemingly timing out, whereas before a website could not be reached in just a few seconds. Problem 2: How to access the internet.
So that's the situation.
With so many moving parts here, I'm not really sure what the next step in trouble-shooting this might be. There's the modem, switch, and desktop that could be configured; there's hardware and cabling limitations that could be preventing data transmission or holding compatibility-issues; there's the iPad itself.
I'm wondering if there's a setting upstream from the iPad that I need to configure to whitelist, acknowledge, or route it. Do I need to hard-code/manually enter the IP address, subnet mask, and router in the iPad settings rather than relying on its default "Automatic" detection ? Am I using the wrong ethernet port in the switch (I've tried multiple)? Networking is not my forte, yet as seen, this is a relatively unusual situation.
What do you think ?
(P.S.- To be sure: the internet works fine from the desktop, and the iPad can connect to the modem/internet via Wi-Fi.)
Reference: Why not just use an Ethernet-to-Lightning adapter? "Not enough power."