That error messages means pretty much what it says, your iPhone wasn't able to communicate properly with your Google Home. The most likely cause here is your university has enabled a security feature called client or access point isolation, which prevents different devices from communicating with each other (i.e. your phone communicating with your speaker). Officially, Chromecast, Google Home, and Google Nest devices don't support these kind of Wi-Fi systems, known as captive portals, that require you to login first or register devices to be able to access the internet.
- Although unsupported by Google, you can try to use a phone or tablet as a Wifi hotspot. However, this will then use your mobile data plan, which could be expensive for you depending on the data plan you have with your carrier. Note you will need 2 devices to set this up.
- Turn on the Wifi hotspot feature on a phone or tablet. If you're not sure how to do this, refer to the manufacturer's support website.
- Connect a second phone or tablet to that Wifi hotspot.
- You can then use that second phone or tablet to setup your device and connect it to the Wifi hotspot on the first phone or tablet.
- If you're able to use a wired network connection instead, you could invest in your own cheap Wi-Fi router, connect that router to the wired network provided and connect your devices to that router instead.
