CM2010

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

I believe the iPad may have a issue if the router's QoS (Quality of Service) is enabled. I have a Linksys WRT300N router and when I disabled the QoS my download speed went from ~500Kbps to ~13000Kbps. This QoS setting does is not affecting my iPhone and iPod devices, only the iPad.

I have not experienced any signal issues, so I don't know if this will resolve those issues. I have informed Apple of my findings. QoS is a common feature on many routers, so if you are experiencing Wi-Fi issues please disable QoS in your router and let everybody know if this fixes your problem. Please report back your routers make/model and where to find the QoS setting.

If your were experiencing signal issues and after applying this patch resolves those issues please let everybody know by responding to this thread.

< Edited by Host >

Mini, Mac OS X (10.6.3)

Posted on Apr 12, 2010 6:50 PM

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

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  • by RE47,

    RE47 RE47 Apr 12, 2013 10:29 AM in response to dj_1958
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Apr 12, 2013 10:29 AM in response to dj_1958

    I think Linsys and Netgear routers may have issues, after reading reviews on Amazon about Apple airport I'm going to try that to solve

  • by Chuck Bevitt,

    Chuck Bevitt Chuck Bevitt May 4, 2013 11:07 PM in response to CM2010
    Level 1 (4 points)
    May 4, 2013 11:07 PM in response to CM2010

    Had the same slow home wifi internet speed problem on my iPad 2 (ios 6.1.2).. Speed Test showed 2.9 Mbps while my android phone setting right next to it got 15 Mbsp. Tried the router settings changes suggested here - no luck. Tried rebooting my iPad by powering off and on - still nothing. Then...(drum roll please).. I killed every running app. Bang! 22 Mbps! (It must have a better wifi radio than my phone.)

     

    If anyone doesn't know how to kill running apps - you double press the home button to open the app bar at the bottom that displays all the running apps. Long press one and they all start wiggling and display a red circle in the upper left hand corner with a minus sign it it. Pressing that red circle kills the app. It does NOT uninstall the app - the app just starts up from scratch the next time you use it. It seems all my apps were running - I must have killed 25 or more. One of them must have been hosing up my internet connection (actually my wifi local network connection as it affected video streaming from a computer inside of my local network as well).

     

    Next time, I'll kill the apps one at a time and figure out which one it was.

     

    Happy iPading!

  • by Chuck Bevitt,

    Chuck Bevitt Chuck Bevitt May 5, 2013 9:31 PM in response to Chuck Bevitt
    Level 1 (4 points)
    May 5, 2013 9:31 PM in response to Chuck Bevitt

    Update to my previous post - it happend again and as I killed all running apps one at a time it turned out to be Amazon Streaming that caused the problem. I'm an Amazon fan and I love their streaming service, but I guess a app bug got out the door. I updated to the latest version / bug fix; but if it still happens at least I know all I have to do is kill the one app.

  • by frighty,

    frighty frighty May 7, 2013 3:37 PM in response to CM2010
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 7, 2013 3:37 PM in response to CM2010

    My Ipad2 just started playing up, we are BTinfinity (70mps average) and although surfing etc is still super fast my app downloads have just ground to a complete halt, well I did a few searches and there is a lot of forum chatter talking about QOS and router settings so I tried to find this setting on my home hub but there is nothing obvious, what I did find though was the list of connections to the hub, wired and wireless and all historical were listed, my old iphone, wired connections and such that are no longer valid, I clicked refresh so now I just have my current network and bingo, Ipad downloaing apps at normal speed again..

  • by IPadSlow,

    IPadSlow IPadSlow May 8, 2013 2:51 AM in response to CM2010
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 8, 2013 2:51 AM in response to CM2010

    Am I the only one thinking how ridiculous this while thread is ? Change your router settings to enable your wifi speed that you get from every other device without change ?  I work in technology snd have no issue making these changes, but am moving to android. What a nightmare apple is these days expensive, bloat without the upside of simplicity or reliability. No advantage anymore

  • by RE47,

    RE47 RE47 May 8, 2013 9:08 AM in response to IPadSlow
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 8, 2013 9:08 AM in response to IPadSlow

    Yes, shouldn't have to be figuring all this out. Not sure android is the answer either, I like android os better in a lot of ways, but have found it occasionally unreliable and buggy, but my main objection us personal in that it appears with Android you are absorbed into the Google "collective" top to bottom.

    Switching to AirPort Extreme has helped. Lot of issues, BUT not all in that with iPhone 4 and mini I still have to often reconnect to router, and wipe out history and cache, and some other annoying buggy procedures as outlined in these forums to get back on wifi.

    Also running airport utility on windows 7 and iPad is not a pleasant experience compared to Netgear.

    I cannot block access to certain devices, except by using a passcode. The choices in managing are very limited.

    All said and done for me the benefits of Apple vs the others are still there, but I expected a little more.

  • by TheDr1970,

    TheDr1970 TheDr1970 May 8, 2013 10:04 AM in response to RE47
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 8, 2013 10:04 AM in response to RE47

    I work in IT too and have followed this post for a long time. The advice/logic of some has been pitiful and good from others. It seems that the iPad problem has a few sources which makes it hard to pin down. The big one has been that iPads are not compatible with certain mainstream wireless routers. The ONE fix that seems to fix everyone having this issue is to buy an Airport... which is an expensive fix. Other fixes that seem to work are turning off QoS, changing channels, turning off encryption, turning off DHCP. The problem is not the routers, it's Apple. yes, you can make it work (in most cases) but it sure is frustrating.

     

    When my problem started, I had 2 iPads, 4 iTouches and 1 iPhone. Every... single... device... was super slow. I turned off QoS and all problems went away. I got lucky.

     

    I will point out that I have NEVER EVER had one connectivity issue with any Droid phone. They all connect, they all work and they all show reasonable wifi speeds.

     

    Has Apple ever admitted a problem or posted a fix? Nope.

  • by Jesse Diaz,

    Jesse Diaz Jesse Diaz May 8, 2013 10:31 AM in response to TheDr1970
    Level 2 (200 points)
    May 8, 2013 10:31 AM in response to TheDr1970

    I thought I posted this already but just in case:

     

    I had the opposite of what you experienced TheDR1970.  If I turned off my QoS and it was slower than with it.

    Although I wasnt experiencing what I would consider "SLOW" speeds, they were slower than I was getting on my computer.  For instance, I would get 30mps DL on my computer but would only get about 20 on my iPads and about 12-15 on my iPhones.  As soon as I turned QoS on, I was getting 30+ on all iDevices ( total of 8 )...

    I turned the option on and off several types on different days, etc and got the same results EVERYTIME

  • by TheDr1970,

    TheDr1970 TheDr1970 May 8, 2013 10:41 AM in response to Jesse Diaz
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 8, 2013 10:41 AM in response to Jesse Diaz

    Jesse, my problem was more drastic. I was getting 20+ on my other wireless devices but all Apple products were getting 0.9 *at most*!!

     

    It all started with my iPad2. I am an IT nerd and I was excited to use my new toy but downloading an app literally took hours and any sort of streaming just didn't work. I am a busy guy (w/ 6 kids) and basically set it aside. One day I decided to research and took my wife's iPad + my kids various Apple devices to test. All of them got DL speeds of 0.5-0.9. We are talking about various IOSs and iTouch revisions. The UL speed was decent (5.0-6.0) which made me start thinking a router issue.

     

    I researched, found out about the QoS solution and my iPad was flying (20-25 DL speeds). I tested and every other Apple product was now getting similar speeds. Wow. That was it??

     

    Over time, it has seemed that others have had different (more complicated) experiences. Most of these (nearly all) go back to Apple's implementation of DHCP, handling of QoS, TCPIP handshakes, etc. it could be firmware or maybe the IOS. Who knows? The other problem seems to have been Apple hardware (faulty antenna, poor power, etc).

  • by Margo0621,

    Margo0621 Margo0621 May 11, 2013 6:22 PM in response to Headhunter06
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 11, 2013 6:22 PM in response to Headhunter06

    I have been fighting with my Internet provider to fix slow speed on my ipad ( all my other devices had no speed problem). I tried different things suggested on this blog. Nothing worked. After I followed your advice to select a different server on the Speedtest.net, the speed was absolutely fine. It was not internet or ipad problem. it was sppedtest.net issue. there is another speed test available on ipad: SpeedtestHD. it works great! Thanks so much.

  • by Jesse Diaz,

    Jesse Diaz Jesse Diaz May 11, 2013 8:06 PM in response to Margo0621
    Level 2 (200 points)
    May 11, 2013 8:06 PM in response to Margo0621

    Oh. Man. I never thought of that!  That might explain why I wasn't Experiencing the slow downs you guys were getting. The use the HD version of that speedtest.

  • by avalon1957,

    avalon1957 avalon1957 May 16, 2013 8:10 AM in response to CM2010
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 16, 2013 8:10 AM in response to CM2010

    After "fixing" this problem a while ago ... the problem reared it's head again this week.   I know for a FACT that my download speed was slow (and that it's wasnt some sort of SpeedTest issue) becuase YouTube and Netflix videos were constantly freezing and pausing.

     

    I had to go back into my router settings ... and even though it showed WMM was turned off ... I had to turn WMM on again and then back off again.

     

    Doing that increased my download speed by about 25x  from 1 MPS to 25 MPS

     

    I guess I will have to do this jury rigging every so often.

     

    Poor poor clueless Apple!  It's no wonder their stock has dropped by nearly 50% in the past 9 months! 

  • by pakaipad,

    pakaipad pakaipad May 18, 2013 9:48 PM in response to CM2010
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 18, 2013 9:48 PM in response to CM2010

    I have 2 ipad 2's. One (a 16 gig) gets the same speed as my wired connection (12Mbps) and the other (8 gig) gets an average of 1.7 Mbps. Any idea what gives? These are identical iPads except for the memory. Different apps are loaded on each, but I used to get full speed on the 8 gig, and now cannot. Tried the WMM trick even though the 16 gig was fine, and it predictably did nothing. All apps are shut down at least I think since I know of no way other than the double home press to see if apps are loaded in memory. Without a more detailed task manager, I cannot see what other apps may be slowing me down. Anybody have an idea?

  • by pakaipad,

    pakaipad pakaipad May 18, 2013 9:57 PM in response to pakaipad
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 18, 2013 9:57 PM in response to pakaipad

    Ok, after downloading speedtest X HD, it's reporting 12 Mbps (the 16Gig had an updated version already), so I guess problem solved. Still doesn't explain youtube and other streaming site freezeups, but no need to reply for now.

  • by OldPhysicsGuy,

    OldPhysicsGuy OldPhysicsGuy May 18, 2013 11:34 PM in response to pakaipad
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 18, 2013 11:34 PM in response to pakaipad

    I'm wondering if the root cause of this is a software bug on the iPad corrupting soft memory.   What happens if you turn the iPad off and back on again.   I had a similar issue on my iPad and I don't remember if I tried this simple solution. 

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