Since mid-August I have not been able to connect to my Realm over wi-fi.

The realm appears in the list in the Realms tab but when I try to enter it sits on the "This may take a few moments" message for a long time before the "Unable to connect to realm. Failed attempting to join realm. Please try again later."

I have an iPhone 6 Plus running iOS v9.3.5 with Minecraft PE v0.15.7. My son uses an old iPad 2 (iOS 9.3.4, Minecraft PE 0.15.6 ) which is also unable to connect with the same symptoms.

Both devices can see and join each other's shared worlds over the LAN. It is just the paid realm service that is not connecting. It was working well for both devices until mid-August.

Internet connectivity is not an issue as web browsing, video-on-demand streaming etc is working to the same devices. These devices on different wi-fi networks in Japan exhibit the same behavior. Our friends we have invited to the realm also can no longer log in from their own home networks.

Interestingly, now I can connect to the realm over the phone carrier's 4G network which was not possible before. But my son's device and his friend's devices are wi-fi only devices and can't connect.

Other family members in Australia can connect from iPads over their own wi-fi. Is this a Japan-only problem?

Also, after the error message the realm listing shows 1 player connected when in fact I could not connect. When I change a setting in the realm options and save it gives me a disconnected message as if I was connected.

The Mojang help page mentions that ports 26000-28000, 80, 443 need to be open at a firewall but from an iPad or iPhone I could not find mention of a firewall function or how to open ports.

There is no point in keeping a realm that can not be connected to. Thank you in advance for your help.

Addition: A friend who also can't connect is running Android 5.0 and Minecraft 0.15.7. He can't connect over 4G with the message that wi-fi is required to play with friends. He can't connect over wi-fi at home with the above error. But he has an older phone running Android 4.3 with Minecraft 0.15.7 that can connect to the realm over wi-fi.