iPAD WiFI and 5Ghz Band problems

What kind of router are you using?

Yep. 5 GHz definitely appears to be a problem with my iPad (64GB + 3G). I have an Airport Extreme dual band. When I connect the iPad to the 5 GHz band, the speedtest.net app shows a download speed of 0.020 Mb/s (yes, 20 kb/s). Connecting to the 2.4GHz band gets me 1 to 1.5 Mb/s of download speed. I can switch back and forth and the results are consistent. I've tried moving the channel around via manual configuration of the AE, but it doesn't make a difference. The 5 GHz band seems to work fine with my iMac.

Is your router setup in 5Ghz only mode or mixed mode when you see the slow throughput? Do you have the latest firmware on the access point?

AE is set up dual band (plus Guest access). 2.4GHz is channel 1 and 5GHz is set to automatic (which selects channel 149, but, as noted, changing the 5 GHz channel didn't help). AE software is up-to-date.

I'm actually not jumping up and down screaming about this, because for me it's not a huge problem. The iPad works fine on the 2.4 GHz band, and I've seen lots of other threads reporting this problem with the 4.2.1 firmware, so I assume Apple's aware of the problem and will eventually have a fix. I only posted because the OP asked if there were other folks in his same boat.

The thing that I am a wee bit ticked about is that I get better throughput with Guest access than with non-guest. Download speeds with Guest are about 1.5 Mb/s instead of 1.0 Mb/s with non-guest. I assume the encryption is handled in hardware rather than by the iPad's A4, so that doesn't explain the difference. Not a huge deal but annoying; since I want to use AirPlay and (eventually) AirPrint, I'm stuck with the slower access speed. But I figure this is probably a problem with the AirPort Extreme rather than the iPad. And it's not so annoying that I won't just tolerate it until Apple fixes the 5 GHz problem.

I have also problems with the 5GHZ band. I use a sitecom WL350 router
When the ipad wakes up it can see the 5ghz band but can't connect to it, but the 2.4GHZ band is no problem. However, when i first connect to the 2.4 ghz band, i can than switch to the 5 ghz band without problems.

I use the 5ghz band because the download speed is a little higher (30Mb) and more important more stable. The speed of the 2.4ghz band drops very often to a rate that's to low for my slingbox to stream video content

Also having the same problem, running the Cisco-Linksys E2000 Advanced Wireless-N Router.

It seems that there's no connection on 5Ghz. Spoke to a Genius at the Apple store. He says that 5ghz is a no-go for iPad 1 right now.

styles01 wrote:
It seems that there's no connection on 5Ghz. Spoke to a Genius at the Apple store. He says that 5ghz is a no-go for iPad 1 right now.

That is not true. iPad definitely supports 802.11n on 5GHZ band.

I have a D-Link DAP-1522 Access Point at home and my iPad has no trouble at all connecting to it on 5GHZ band with WPA2 security. I also have successfully connected to other routers on 5GHZ band at a few friends' places. No issues for me with either old 3.2.2 or the latest 4.2.1 firmware.

As for 2.4GHZ band, no problem either. My iPad can connect to my Buffalo WZR-HP-G300NH router just fine.

styles01 wrote:
It seems that there's no connection on 5Ghz. Spoke to a Genius at the Apple store. He says that 5ghz is a no-go for iPad 1 right now.

That is completely incorrect. The iPad definitely supports 802.11n 5ghz.