Q: Intermittent Wifi issues with iPad 2 and WiFi

This is exactly the issue I am having

iPad 2 64 3G has a problem with WiFi when any laptop or HTC Hero or any other device do not experince any problems. 2 month of strugling with WIFI and now I am writing this 1000+ post.

It has short range in public places and very unstable wifi. I often have to switch to paid 3G.

Hello

I have an Ipad 2 wifi 4.3.3 for 2 months and never experienced any wifi issue before my current holidays. There is a TV box in my room, connected to ethernet and that distributes Internet via wifi. I was continuously disconnected and had to reactivate wifi everytime.

After a few days, I decided to try something else: I turned my Eee netbook into a hotspot using the very nice freeware Connectify. And now it works perfectly, as well with my wife's Ipad which has the same config and had the same issue. It's a live saver!

If I can help by giving more specs, please let me know.

Nicolas

I've got intermittent connectivity too. Sometimes my iPad 64GB 3G even picks up network setting from wifi but shows no wifi icon in the status bar and shows as not connected when I try to access anything on the net. I usually need to turn wifi off and on a couple times before I get a wifi icon and connectivity. Then I lose it again after a few minutes. I'm traveling in Asia right now and it's extremely frustrating. I had no trouble at home with my own router and my macbook is having no trouble accessing the wifi here in my hotel. So there's definitely some issues with the wifi on the iPad. Apple, please get on this. There must be 1,000 comments in this thread alone, which means many more people are having the same issue. When I get back home I'm heading back to the Apple Store for an exchange.

yes, i'm having problems on public wi fi, I can download books, not audio books however, and when I try to connect to the app store, there isn't a connection at all, frustrating as I don't have broadband at home, and thought that I could use the ipad 2 on a public wi fi connection, so as it will only download up to a limit of 20mb, it seems that I will have to use the dongle on the lap-top to download large files, and then transfer (sync) afterwards, not ideal. Alan

I had my iPad 2 for a couple of months before getting this problem. I have had iPhone 3G & 3GS for a while and had never experienced this problem with them.

When this occurred I immediately thought this was a software problem, so I started deleting software installed from Cydia. No luck!! In my frustration I updated my iOS to 4.3.3, same result. Then I found this forum. To my horror, a lot of people suggested that it was shareware problem and that the only way to solve it is to get it replaced by Apple. Since I bought mine online and I don't live in the States that was my last resort.

Next I turned to Cydia and searched for WiFi programs. I found WiFi booster and decided to give it a try.

It's been almost 2 weeks now since installing WiFi Booster and I have had no problems with connectivity. I would love to hear feedback on whether people get their WiFi fixed with the same program, or was it just a fluke.

It seems a few peope are fans of WiFi Booster. It seems it may be a useful solution to see low strength wireless networks but it does not appear that this app assists with faster or more reliable performance.

Their is a discussion forum on it here:

http://www.ipadforums.net/jailbreak-applications-tweaks/35447-wifi-booster-paid- tweak.html

The following are some pertinent quotes from this thread.

"I purchased an excellent new tweak from Cydia this week. WiFi Booster from Malcolm Hall ($1.99) removes the signal strength limit allowing you to see and connect to weak WiFi networks in your area from the iPad WiFi Settings. It also enhances the network view to include the MAC address of the access point"

"I will let the iPad connect to wifi networks that are beyond apple's signal strength requirement. Do a simple test. Get a laptop, and see what networks you get. Go to iPad, you might pick up half, if you are lucky."

"It removes the cutoff limit in the operating system which prevents weak signals from being displayed. It does NOTHING to the hardware in terms of boosting signal.

The theory behind this is that the cut-off point is a little too aggressive, and you are sometimes able to connect to a weak signal using this tweak which otherwise would not be available."

"I can't really comment on whether it will work in your situ, but it does not change the signal strength (obviously). It simply drops the standard cuttoff limit for wifi in the OS. So you may be able to hold onto the signal for longer, but no promises (from me anyway)...Perhaps a small investment in a wireless range booster / repeater?"

Dear FastBikeGear,

I know that WiFi booster does nothing to the signal strength, but what I wrote was exactly what happened. The only way to know if this works for others is if more people try it and write about their experiences.

I could remove WiFi Booster, I guess, and report back with the results. ( I've been scared of deleting it as I don't want to be WiFi-less again).

So I have been using my ipad 2 on my shaw internet/my linksys router with NO problems.... and security enabled, anywhere I went with the ipad, it connected fine.... but just the other day, I got the shaw broadband 50 internet (which comes with its own router built in) and BOOM 1 ipod 3g connects just fine, ipod 4g connects just fine, galaxy tab 10.1 connects.... just fine and my iphone 4, connects just fine.... but the apple ipad2 will not connect to it, it even goes as far as saying I have the wrong password...

I did network resets, I changed channels/security settings..... everything, spent an hour on the phone with shaw tech support.

But if I turn off the security, it connects just fine..... which makes NO sense, any input appreciated.

Try changing your DHCP ip start address differently within your router, for instance mine started at 192.168.1.0 and had intermittent connections with the ipad, I changed it to start at 10.0.0.0, reset all adapters to renew the get the new dynamic ip address and haven't had any issues since.

Broadbird

AdilRiyami wrote:

 

Dear FastBikeGear,

 

I know that WiFi booster does nothing to the signal strength, but what I wrote was exactly what happened. The only way to know if this works for others is if more people try it and write about their experiences.

I could remove WiFi Booster, I guess, and report back with the results. ( I've been scared of deleting it as I don't want to be WiFi-less again).

Sorry I wasn't meaning to imply in any way that what you had done could not fixed your problem. I applaud and thank you for trying this and for letting us all know your results.

There are obvioulsly some very weird things going on with the way the iPad does WiFi. The comment in the last paragraph in the comments I copied and posted from the the other forum "It simply drops the standard cuttoff limit for wifi in the OS. So you may be able to hold onto the signal for longer" is interesting and is a possible explanation of why what you have done appears to be working at this stage.

Would you post back to this forum after a few more days and let us know if this fix appears to be permanent?  often in this forum people report they have found a fix only to report back a few days later that their problems have returned.

Now that you have jailbroken your iPAD you will also find that there are a few handy apps (that used to be in iTunes) for doing wireless analysis that Apple will no longer allow us to download from the iTunes store.

Once again well done and many thanks!

Try to reduce the processing required during the handshake phase between your router and iPAD.  (Your problem could be a timing time out issue due to processing overhead). The following may reduce the processing overheads for the iPAD.

Do each of the following one step at a time and test after each change.

• Use a shorter password
• Use AES encryption,
• Use WPA2 (this last one doesn't reduce processing but is recommended for robust security)

thanks for the input, no matter what setting or password I use.... it says "incorrect password"

but all 5 of my other devices connect instantly, with no issues.... I just talked to a friend that has the same internet and an ipad, says he has no issues....

but again, will connect to it with no security, my phone or my personal router.... but when I tried connecting both routers, it killed the performance :/

Hi all,

Reporting back on my experiment. I uninstalled WiFi Booster immediately after posting my previous comment and my WiFi continues to work just fine. CONCLUSION: WiFi Booster has nothing to do with the improvements in my WiFi connectivity.

After reading the post by Kakarot I realized that I also removed the password of my Internet router trying to solve some other problem. That now makes more sense why my WiFi remains good. I'll re-activate WPA 2 password and report on the progress of my WiFi issues.

Thanks.

I'll add another fact for Apple. 

I have two iPad2s.  Out of the box in April, they worked fine on all wifi routers including my home.

One of them got dropped and I got it "repaired and fixed" via squaretrade.

The other iPad is running latest iOS and works fine against my house and office wifi.

The fixed one has the wifi dropping issue in my house and had trouble, but didn't eventually auth against my work wifi.    I suspect this is a combo of some weird iOS change that triggers a problem that is intermittant in hardware - presumably the "fix" to my broken iPad (a broken glass screen) involved replacing some hardware, including perhaps the wifi bits...

Either way, this is clear an Apple defect - I'd love a solution.