Fixed my slow iPad Wi-Fi issue, here is what I found...

WPA of course. I really am not worried about war driving. If war driving is something you worry about in your area then my solution is not recommended. I do know there is software that can easily see a hidden SSID. I'm merely trying to prevent easy access to my network.

I do not however understand how anyone can really get on my network with my steps above, aside from MAC spoofing. With the MAC filter enabled the router "should" effectively block any device NOT listed in its filter. My knowledge of Wifi is by no means extensive and Wifi in itself has its own wonky set of rules, but as far as I've ever seen in my work in IT MAC filters are the best way to prevent war driving as even getting connected to the network would still result in a "No Access" flag on the device. Again I really haven't spent much time with Wifi. When I set up a network I prefer to make Wifi a last ditch and ALWAYS prefer to have adequate network drops at every location.

Up until the recent years of smart phones and tablets and other wifi enabled devices being used heavily in the business world I felt that wifi was a novelty for home use and waiting rooms and was really not reliable enough for business use. As I have to deal more and more with these BYOD employers wifi is really pushing into its maturity. With cheap mesh networks available wifi is definitely far from my original feelings.

Back to the original topic. These steps worked for me to get my IPAD to connect at decent speeds. everything else I tried was just not doing it. I was going to try with a different router to see if it was the router but I gave up at that point since I had everything working. It definitely appears to be a problem with the IPAD firmware however because none of my other devices have ever had trouble with my router.

Please feel free to comment. I'm by no means an expert on wifi and if you have more information regarding your comment above I'd love to hear it! I'm always looking for good new information that I can use. 🙂 Thanks michael714 for your response, and sorry for the long reply. Cheers and have a Happy New Year Everyone!

We just got an ipad 2 for chrimbo and had problems from the get go with a faulty device - this was replaced at the apple shop and now, though it does work, I'm really disappointed with it being so slow on the Internet. We have iPod touches and iPhones already, all of which are fine, laptop's fine too - in fact the £50 android tablet I bought my 7 year old for Christmas performs better for surfing the net.

I've tried logging in to the router to change the QoS / WMM settings as described on this thread but can't find any way of doing this in the settings - I have a Sky sagemcom router - anyone have any ideas how I can sort the problem? Any help would be appreciated as currently the ipad is proving an unusable expensive waste of money.

You get 90 days phone support from Apple. In my experience they have been very helpful when I have contacted them.

You could phone and ask them to help "fix" your bad WiFi from your iPad, if you explain your iPod is OK and also your findings on this forum they may help you navigate your router to find the settings.

Sorry I can't help directly as I only have experience of NetGear, Cisco and Huawei routers.

My advice is to just consider buying a new router with more "mainstream" settings and support. You can find a good 802.11n router from NetGear in the neighborhood of $30 these days. Well worth it if your router is older than 3 years or doesn't have configurable settings.

In my experience, Apple is reluctant to get into the settings of personal routers (that are not manufactured by them). Given the number that are out there, it would be a big task for them. Their solution when I was having problems was to either replace the iPad or restore it to factory settings - neither of which was satisfactory.

Good luck!

So what speeds are you guys getting once you disable the WMM ? I got linksys wrt54 tm with VoIP.I get 16 ,17 Mbps sitting in front of the router. My pc plugged in into router gets the Comcast 25 Mbps that is what I want to get on my iPad 2. I got a airport express to use and hope to make it faster and it did not help at all taking it back to apple. I am going to play with the setting to see if it helps. Once I get the setting working will I get the speeds I am paying for from Comcast.

I have a N900 Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router

(WNDR4500)… I went to my router admin page as suggested in an earlier post and unchecked the "Enable WMM (Wi-Fi multimedia) settings" checkbox under the Advanced tab, then Setup menu option, and QOS Setup submenu. Prior to doing this, my iPhone WiFi connection was painfully slow. After making this change it works extremely fast. Thank you for your post keithfrommarietta!

I really don't want to throw a wrench in this but for me it's opposite. I disable the WMM and I get way slower speeds. I did this test a few months back so let me try to duplicate this and I'll post the results.

I have a iPad 3, iPad 2 and iPad 1. I'm pretty sure I got the same results in all of them.

Forgive me for not remembering the router I have. I have gone through a lot of them but I think I have a netgear 4500

My wife and I have identical iPad 4s. When connected to the WiFi in our home, she gets much better speed than I do, to the point where speedtest.net can't complete a test on mine.

This may seem silly, but if you are using the Speed Test app go into the app's settings (at the bottom) and select a different server. Then re-run the test. I thought for sure my iPhone 4S wifi was dying because I couldn't get it above 1.57Mbs (!!!) for download speed for several days even though it had been running fine at over 25+ Mbps on my Verizon Fios Wifi for the past two years. Oddly, the upload speeds were still blazing fast. My wife's iPhone 4S and our kids' iPod 5s, our iPad 2, and all of our desktop/laptop computers were also getting blazing fast speed. I tired all the router changes such as disabling WMM and even switching (briefly) to wireless b/g mode and even to WEP. No luck. For some odd reason--probably pathetic exhausted confusion--I decided to look at the setting button on the Speed Test app. Lo and behold, my speed instantly bounced back to 30+ Mbps!

It's really important to check and make sure the bluetooth on your iPad is turned off. I don't know what the problem is but it can make a night and day difference.

yippie! "reset my network setting" worked!! thank you..so simple..now so speedy!

I have an old netgear 514. There is no QoS or WMM settings. However changing from dual b and g modes, to g only fix the problem. Seemed to happen with ios6 upgrade.

Wow. Disabled the QOS on my router and now wifi works great on my ipad!

Thanks for the suggestion.

Yes, same issue here

my ipad 2 download speed was 1.2 Mbs ...

Turned off WMM support in my WIFI router box ... suddenly my ipad 2 download speed is 32.2 Mbs

Thank god for this thread (this is the kind of info Apple should include with all ipads)

Ok, so I too had this same problem. Here is how mine was fixed: Turned off bluetooth and my download/upload speeds went back to normal! *** apple? Now, I cannot use my bluetooth keyboard with my ipad...shame, shame.

Also, I turned off wmm, QoS Ipv4 and Ipv6 on quest Q1000 router first; those did not work for me. Then someone posted about turining off bluetooth and BAM! I can play flash vids, watch youtube...

Thanks to everyone on this forum.