Need a signal strength meter

Have you tried licking your finger and holding it up in the air?
😉

Such an App would be pretty pointless as I doubt the iPad has a calibrated aerial inside it - yes, you could do things 'relative' but it wouldn't help between different devices.

Apple has actually banned these types of apps for inexplicable reasons (maybe they knew about upcoming wifi problems with the iPad and didn't want people noticing). I have a very nice app on my iTouch called "WiFiTrak" that will show you all of the networks that are in range, the signal strength, the security being used, etc. It is no longer available in iTunes.

The best thing I can think of to suggest is the app called speedtest.net (or just go to a web based speed test and just see what bandwidth you get.

Yes, WiSpy by Metageek.net is a very good product. Used it at home and a corporate environment.

This is a pc or mac application.

Try speed test .net it's an iPhone app but works great forth iPad
I had wifi problems but a reset worked for me that was 3 days ago

I seemed to have gotten my wireless problem working with my Ipad. I went into my router settings and just disabled B. I only had B and G. So with only G enabled I've had no problems for that last 6 times and before that it was constantly dropping................might give that a try?

I have a question about this information. The AirPort Utility always reports a rate of 39 Mbps for my iPad. Even if the iPad is only two feet away from the base station. I expected to see 300 Mbps on the 5GHz band and 130 Mbps for the 2.4GHz band. That's what my MacBook Pro gets.

Can anyone explain why this is? Maybe a power-saving feature? Or is there something wrong with the iPad?

Me too, the highest I get is 39, while at the same time my iPod gets 54 and my Mac Mini gets 270. What's going on?

Thanks for the info, Fred. At least i'm not alone. I still wonder if it's normal behavior or not. Does anyone else know?

Tried to access speedtest.net as suggested, but the first message is to
download Flash!

Uh-oh...

Just get the app from the App Store.

"There's an app for that"

folks, you need to understand how 802.11n works. the ipad has a low power 802.11n adapter. it can only use up to mcs rate 7 instead of 15 like your laptops/desktops. this means you will never see more than 150Mbps connection and that would only be if connected to the 5Ghz radio of your access point.

if you see a max of 270 on any device it sounds like your access point doesn't support short guard interval. your ipod connects at 54Mbps because it's only a b/g device. and if your ipad connects at 39Mbps it appears to be using mcs rate 4 and a 20Mhz wide channel. so it sounds like it's connecting to 2.4Ghz radio.

dual band radios depend on the software driver to determine how they will connect to an access point and what band they will prefer if both 2.4 and 5Ghz is available. perhaps the ipad's driver chooses 2.4 first and then 5Ghz only if 2.4 isn't available? if you can disable the 2.4 radio altogether and test the ipad. problem will then be that your ipod won't connect. this is where the newer access points can help if they can run both radios and use separate ssid's for each. that is a way to force your clients to use one radio versus the other.

http://www.ciscostadium.org/en/US/solutions/collateral/ns340/ns394/ns348/ns767/i mages/whitepaper_80211n_design_and_deploymentguidelines-1.jpg