Q: Intermittent Wifi issues with iPad 2 and WiFi

@jasonfromloftus: You won't buy a router with the intentions of returning it because it is immoral... unless it's an Apple router because you don't like Apple. That is called moral relativism. Someone whose morals are formed subjectively. I wasn't implying that you "rip off" some innocent corp like Cisco (I am snickering as I type... name one innocent corp who doesn't rip you off daily.) I was suggesting that if you were to spend $50 on a more up to date router and it solved your problem then you KEEP IT.

I have been doing this professionally for about 28 years now and I had wrestled with wireless on a home and enterprise level. Wireless is a pain in the ***. Routers are finicky and wifi built into devices is sometimes poorly done. There were G issues when it first came out and then N issues. I have NEVER opened a new router and had it live up to the expectations on the box that it will "increase your distance up to 3x". What a joke. My firrst N router (Netgear) only worked if you were within 12 feet of it!!

I totally understand your frustration and I felt the same way. I had about 6-10 devices working fine and only my iPad2 was slow. My iPad1 was fast... go figure. I felt for sure it was the iPad2. I do this for a living and the last thing I want to do at night is tinker with IT crap so I ignored the problem for months. Finally one day I decided it was time to really try. I stripped off every single thing I could from my Linksys router. (no DHCP, no QoS, locked it into G-only, turned of WEP, turned of MAC filtering, etc). I was totally shocked to find that the iPad2 speedtest app jumped from 0.8Mbps to 25.0Mbps! What the **** just happened? I decided to grab my kids iTouch and run the same Speedtest app and it was just as fast as my iPad2. Then I turned on all the Linksys options again and both the iPad2 and the iTouch got slow again. I eventually narrowed it to QoS and running in mixed mode (B/G combined). None of these tests affected my Dell laptop, Droid X or BB.

Apple did a sh*tty job with certain iPad's wifi. it doesn't affect all of them but some. There may also be a few router models that just do not like iPads for whatever reason. I have heard of some iPads having DHCP renewal issues and some that work better when you lock down the wifi channel. At the end of the day I don't care what fixes it, I just want it fixed!

I don't really care who wears the pants in your home. If it were me though and I had a wife getting upset about router outages I would declare a maintenance window; a planned outage. I would tell her from 2-5pm on Sat if she wants wifi then go to Starbucks. That is your time to get this fixed once and for all. Go to Best Buy and purchase a router just in case. If you are really that cheap (aka. "moral") then go to an Apple store with your iPad and test your connectivity on their Apple Airport router. If it is still broken then maybe you really do have a bad iPad.

well, tonight my TP-Link TL-MR3420 wifi-router suddenly gave up (after 10months). i don't think my iPad2 had anything to do with it, as i was on my Dell Laptop when the router failure happened. after trying to restart, reset, reset to factory, rebooting my laptop, i gave up & took out my old WRT54G from storage.

i had this WRT54G before my iPad & iPad2, so i was curious if i would encounter wifi problems with it.

fortunately, everything went well. (but just to be sure, i disabled QoS & WMM.)

HW: Linksys WRT54G v3

Firmware : Tomato v1.28

@ae52: Interesting that your old router works without problems.

I wonder if you would be prepared to enable QoS/WMM to see if the wifi problems return, and disappear again after re-disabling QoS/WMM?  A lot of trouble I know but it could possibly be very instructive for all of us.

I went from the ole 5yr 54g to the tp link.  The 54g was obviously slower than this N router but was stable.

Mikerobe - i turned on WMM, but not QoS. there were too many settings to configure for the QoS setting.

i'll let you know if the iPads in my house (2 x iPad2, 1 x iPad) behave.

About one year later from the original post on this issue, I'm still having the same issue.  WiFi connects, but then disconnects after a few minutes or when device sleeps.

iPad 2 32gb

Just an update - I disabled WMM in my Netgear N300 router about 2 weeks ago (QoS was already disbaled), and I have had absolutely no connectivity issues with any of my devices, including my son's iPad 2 and all other Apple devices.  Also, it has not seemed to slow my wireless connection at all - problem solved (I hope)!

Hi,

    if you have an old router, ensure that the iPad's mac address is added to mac filtering in the router, which u should enable, in addition to wpa security. This appears to overcome the disconnects.

Vkv

Almost 48 hours since I changed wifi routers & turned on WMM. So far so good.

i just wanted to make a minor clarification. the iPad i originally posted i was having problems with, whose problems were eventually resolved, and the subsequent iPad2 i didn't have problems with, and all the iPads in my house, were both 3G+Wifi models.

some of us may be having problems with WiFi only models.

Same problem with iPad 2 since september. I was waiting on iOS5.1, but the problem stay there. I have no problem with my iPhone.

The wifi problem happends only at home. The wifi router is a Netgear wndrmac v2. WMM and QoS are off.

With the other iPad 2 i have since May 2011, there was no problem and then one day during last summer, the problem appear. In december, I change the wifi router, but the problem was still there.

ok, 3days after i turned on WMM, i noticed that my iPad2 3G had problems connecting to the wifi. although there was a connection, the iPad would hang when i would try to update FaceBook or download emails. in fact, some posts i did on FB did not completely load (only half of the text would be send).

so, i turned off WMM.

let's see what happens from here.

Following are settings for dlink di-524 and iPad 2

Channel 11, mode G, security wpa, mac filtering on (add iPad 2 mac address to router), Beacon interval 50, dhcp, Rts/frag 2346, Tx rate 54, 100 percent Tx power.

Sv11

48hours. System is stable. No wifi or Internet interruptions.

I boosted the access point's power from the default 42 to 100Mw to improve reception to the edges of the house. So far I am pleased with the results.

Linksys WRT54G running Tomato firmware.

WMM disabled.

channel set to 11.

QoS disabled.

Preamble: Short

Hey All

Sorry I didnt take the time to read through 99 pages of post but fyi spoke SMC and they are aware of the problem, they plan to put out a firmware update in 1-2 months.  Comcast is aware of the problem also but they will no tell you as they want you to purchase a new router from them since these were originally offered for free.