Q: Intermittent Wifi issues with iPad 2 and WiFi

This is, quite simply, a joke.

I should not have wifi problems on an "always connected" device when I purchased the wifi only version. The whole **** point of the iPad is defeated for me.

If I let my iPad sleep for more than a minute or two, I have to restart the iPad or restart wireless to get it to work. It's blazing fast up until then.

It connects fine. It browses fine. When I leave it alone, it stops. It's like it puts the wifi to sleep and doesn't wake it up when I come back.

Love the iPad 2 when it works, but am seriously disappointed in Apple here, and am starting to feel a bit ripped off.

Some common sense suggestions if you are having wifi connection problems:

1. Try some other wifi networks. If you don't know anybody who will let you onto their network, try an internet cafe or an Apple Store. Most people find that the iPad2 works reliably on most wifi networks, holding a connection and connecting rapidly upon waking for sleep. If you are having problems with all wifi networks, you may actually have a hardware issue. Time to visit the Genius Bar.

2. If the problem is confined to your network, try reconfiguring your router. Update your router if it is not running the latest firmware. If that doesn't solve the problem, do a hard reset to reset it to factory settings and configure it from scratch using default settings (you may want to save your old settings first, in case you want to go back to them later). Verify that it works with your iPad before changing settings, and make whatever configuration changes them one at a time, testing after each one, instead of making a bunch of changes.

3. If #2 doesn't work, replace your router. Routers are cheap nowadays, particularly compared to the iPad2, so hanging onto an old router that isn't working with your iPad2 is penny wise and pound foolish. Pick up a cheap router from Micro Center or Amazon. Heck, get a few different models--they're cheap, and you can return any you don't use. Configure to default settings as in #2 above and test before you try making any tweaks. Two routers that I've used successfully with the iPad2 are d-Link DIR825 and DIR655.

An alternative to #3 is to replace your router's firmware with open source firmware like dd-wrt if there is a version available for your router. This will essentially turn your old router into a new one.

If every other wifi device in the history of wifi devices worked fine on my network, except the iPad, it's not my network that needs to be fixed.

It is clear that the iPad works fine on most networks. So there are only two possibilities:
1) You have a bad iPad, in which case you need to replace it. This can easily be checked by testing your iPad on other wifi networks.
2) There is something unusual about your network that is causing problems for the iPad.

Of course, you can stand on your pride and fulminate that there cannot possibly be anything wrong with your network, and it is Apple's responsibility to make the iPad compatible with your network. You may even be right. Good luck with that, but don't hold your breath.

Or you could recognize that routers are cheap, and that (unless your iPad is defective), it should be easy, quick, and inexpensive to find a router that will work with your iPad, and then you can spend your time enjoying your iPad instead of arguing with Apple tech support.

Add me to the list. All other devices work fine in the home (air, pro, MacBook, iPhones, previous iPad, etc.). On iPad 2 wifi connectivity signal strength goes up and down. Every few minutes it will just hang.

Between this and the new MacBook Pro issue with home sharing I'm beginning to doubt how Apple is testing these things. I guess it's the price of early adoption...

For my iPad 2, i've isolated what is causing the wifi to freeze. It seems to be my phone's gsm activity. Every now and then, my iPhone will poll the tower, or receive a text message, etc. When this happens, my Wifi drops on the ipad2, and usually on the iphone itself. Though the iphone is much more reliably than the ipad2 for wifi.

Only way to get wifi going again on the ipad2 is to airplane and de-airplane mode it.

*****.

I was able to return my iPad today and the new one seems to be working fine. No more wifi drops. Yay!

The girl at best buy said I was the only return they had. Guess I was the only one in my aera with a bad wifi chip

Go figure.

Ok what will fix it give it a static IP address basically same one you get on DHCP but copy it exact but on DNS just just the same address as your defult gateway

It's been a week and a half, no dropouts. All I changed was wpa to wpa2. Static ip didn't make a difference for me. I am using a Verizon fios router.

Message was edited by: Victor_D

I have just received my iPAD back from the Apple repair centre. The fault report is interesting to say the least and includes some correspondence between the repair centre and Apple.

Firstly.

1. On going in to pick up my unit from the service centre we tried to connect to the repair centre's own network and my iPAD was unable to load web pages while connected to their network.

2. The repair centre staff were happy to acknowledge at the time of the pick up (after being serviced) that my iPAD could not connect to their own wireless network. I asked them to confirm this in writing on my repair sheet and sign it which they have done.

Bottom line is that I still have an iPAD that will not reliably connect to my network and would not work on the service centres network at the time when I went to pick it up.

*Where it gets interesting*

Written on the repair sheet (which I now have a copy of) is the advice the repair centre received from Apple when they escalated it. It confirms the suspicions and suggestion on where the problem lies that I provided to the repair centre when I took the unit in to the repair centre.

I am pretty convinced that I know understand exactly what is causing the issue - I believe that the issue lies with the iPAD not implementing the wireless standards correctly. I am also convinced Apple also knows exactly what this problem is ....and has known about the problem for some time.

I think that I can configure a hack to work around this problem. Further testing today should confirm this. (I will update this thread if I have any success). While my work around may partially resolve the issue, I do not believe that Apple can satisfactorily resolve this issue via software...they have had a long time to address the issue and have so far failed. It will probably require a massive recall of affected iPADs to address....watch this space.

I have tried calling Apple directly to discuss this as advised by the repair centre, but after 15 minutes on hold I hung up.

If any Apple representative wants to contact me regarding this they are welcome to do so. They can get my contact details from the Newmarket Apple repair centre in Auckland, New Zealand

Add me to the list of wifi issues. Happens with both a home router and a Sprint hotspot... Sometimes it hangs, sometimes it simply disconnects.

Try this:

If you have connectivity problems, change your ROUTER setting to "NOT" search or scan or an available channel. I found this trick a few years ago from a Cisco Engineer, and always immediately disable it on a new router.

My iPad2 WiFi has worked perfectly at home (Netgear Router N/G Mode) but at a friends house where auto channel scanning was on, it would lose connection at times.

Once we changed his Lynksys router to no channel scan, both our iPad2 units worked with no lost connections.

I've also found auto channel scanning on a number of routers to be unreliable. Often, it does not even pick the clearest channel. I always check the signal strength of other nearby networks (you may need to do this at a couple of different times of day to find all potentially interfering signals, and manually set the router to a channel that is far from other strong signals.

OK I spent most of yesterday testing and I have confirmed my suspicions (see my post above). The problem is related to the handling of the private security encryption key. Which explains why many people who have altered settings related to this in their routers have resolved the issue on their home networks.

The key problem with the WiFi intermittent connectivity issue is that in periods of inactivity the iPad does several things to save battery power.

One of the things it does is to aggressively inactivate the wireless connection when it is not required. For example your iPad might suspend it's WiFi connection during the couple of minutes you spend reading a page on the web. This should not cause a problem. Many other wireless devices also do this. However the iPad does not reinitiate the wireless re-connection sequence as it should on wireless connection wake up.

There are several ways to work around this problem with a router that you administer at home but there is no way to resolve this issue with a WiFi router that is not not already configured with a work around at a wireless hotspot.

The work around requires you to configure or trick your router into re-initializing the session with your iPad rather than relying on the iPad to correctly reinitialize the session. Some routers do this by default, but many do not.

One way of doing this is that on some routers you can shorten the life of the private session key to something like 60 seconds. I have tested this particular work around and it is effective in masking the problem.

As per my post above, Apple support staff are well aware of this issue but for obvious reasons have not been widely publicizing it.

Hopefully Apple will come up with a proper fix for this sometime. In the meantime they are apparently giving refunds on request (see previous posts from others in this thread and other threads on the same issue).

Why do you think it is that so many other people are not experiencing your problem with their home networks (without having to tweak settings) or in wireless hotspots? I've never seen the phenomenon you describe, and I've now used my iPad in a variety of public hotspots and on an institutional network. Even if the screen dims or the iPad sleeps, it connects immediately when I activate it.

You mentioned that there was a problem with your iPad at the Apple store. Did Apple tell you that their own iPads were failing to reliably connect to the Apple store network? Considering that Apple Stores have a large number of iPads laid out for display, connected wirelessly, for demonstration purposes, that would seem to be a big obstacle to selling the iPad, wouldn't it? Yet they seem to be selling well, and when I've visited an Apple Store, any demo iPad that I've tried seems to connect at once.