Q: Intermittent Wifi issues with iPad 2 and WiFi

JimHdk wrote:
I believe that you have the wrong idea of how the WiFi certification process has worked for IEEE 802.11n. The WiFi Alliance began certification of IEEE 802.11n products in June 2007 with the draft 2 standard *as a starting point*. See http://www.wi-fi.org/80211n-draft2.php. This step defined the initial test suite and the firm set of features tested.

At the end of September, 2009 the WiFi Alliance expanded its test suite to include some new features that were added to the final version of the standard. See http://www.wi-fi.org/newsarticles.php?f=media_news&newsid=892. As the WiFi Alliance says, "The updated Wi-Fi CERTIFIED n program maintains the requirements of the draft 2.0 program and adds testing for some new optional features". This does not invalidate previous WiFi certification and certainly does not affect the iPad which uses none of the new optional features.

Bottom line: The iPad certainly has been certified as compliant according to the WiFi Alliance.

Yeah right? JimHdk are you serious? that's one of most amazing pieces of spin I have seen in years.

Yes you are right nothing will invalidate the fact that the Apple iPAD is certified to be compliant with a draft of a standard that was released several years before the iPAD was released and has subsequently been superceded.

Once a draft 'standard' has been revised and added to, finalised, voted on, and published it is reasonable to expect a vendor to make products released after this point in time to comply with the ratified standard that supercedes the draft.

I am not sure what other people think or how the consumer protection laws in the States would reflect on this but when a vendor releases a new product in 2010 and says they meet the 802.11n standard I think it is reasonable to expect them to comply with the standard (that was released the year before) rather than some draft that was written several years earlier. Anything else has the capacity to mislead consumers.

FastBikeGear wrote:
Yeah right? JimHdk are you serious? that's one of most amazing pieces of spin I have seen in years.

*I begin to believe that you are just trolling this forum or you just can't read*. You should spend more time reading and comprehending what other people post rather than spinning your paranoia and idle speculation.

*The fact is that the WiFi Alliance has certified the iPad as 802.11n compliant.* The core of the test suite is no different between the original and later test suite versions.

Here's a further quote on this subject from the Wikipedia article discussed previously:

"The Alliance has upgraded its suite of compatibility tests for some enhancements finalized after draft 2.0. *Furthermore, it has affirmed that all draft-n certified products remain compatible with the products conforming to the final standards."*

The optional/mandatory categorization of 802.11n features which I posted earlier and you questioned was written by Eldad Perahia chairman of the IEEE 802.11 Very High Throughput Study Group and by Robert Stacey also a member of the IEEE 802.11 High Throughput Task Group. I believe that these two individuals, both experts who were actually involved in the production the IEEE 802.11n standard are more qualified than you to know what is mandatory and optional in the standard.

Your attacks and psuedo-knowledge are tiresome. This thread has become a waste of my time. No one is getting any help in this thread; it's now all just hot air.

JimHdk wrote:
*I begin to believe that you are just trolling this forum or you just can't read*. You should spend more time reading and comprehending what other people post rather than spinning your paranoia and idle speculation.

*The fact is that the WiFi Alliance has certified the iPad as 802.11n compliant.*

No they have only certified as 802.11n draft 2.0 compliant ...suggest you read the certificate, it's only a one page document and they have very clearly stated "IEEE 802.11n draft 2.0" I just don't know how they could be any clearer? Here's the link to it for you to read http://www.wi-fi.org/searchproducts.php?search=1&lang=en&filter_categoryid=24&listmode=1

You have yet to add anything constructive to this thread. Your entire presence on the thread has been to.....(I am actually not sure what you are trying to do or who's interests you are representing).

I do have some limited knowledge of standards processes as I have represented vendors technical interests as a technical contributor to previous networking standard bodies (Although I was not involved with the 802.11n standard development - most of the work on this standard came after I retired from the industry in 2005).

On several occasions in the past I represented vendors that built products to test compliance to IEEE and other computer network standards bodies such as the EIA/TIA. On several occassions we released and sold products based on draft standards prior to standards being ratified. In one instance we sold a product claiming that it would meet the ratified standard, because we believed it would meet the final ratified standard. On that occassion we thought that in the worst case instance, all we would need to meet the ratified standard was a software upgrade, unfortunately this proved not to be the case as our PHY interface was unable to meet the requirements. This required us to purchase back all of the equipment we had sold and replace it with upgraded hardware - which we felt obliged to do at zero cost to the customers of the compliance testing equipment.

Despite this cost it worked out very profitably for us, because by releasing the product early it established the product as a market leader for many years at a minimum cost and eventuated in a very profitable buy out of the company.

I enjoy the privilege of being able to participate in this forum anonymously. I do not currently represent in any capacity or have any financial ownership or vested interest in any Wi-Fi vendor, distributor or reseller or any company that sells or manufactures equipment for compliance testing.

MrBlack23

Try enabling SSID Broadcasting, I had to enable mine to keep my connection solid. I have 3 iPhone 4's and other wireless devices that work with SSID hidden. When I brought my IPad 2 on opening day I was having wifi connection problems and since I enabled SSID it's been solid every since.

Good luck

MrBlack23

I forget to mention that I'm running IOS 4.3.

I have read that some people started having problems when they upgraded to 4.3.1 and some said said it fixed their wifi problems. So I'm going to keep mine at 4.3 since my wifi connection is working flawlessly.

I have intermittent connection issues both at home and at work.
At work I have a Cisco g router and at home I have a Netgear wndr37av n router.

This is the second disappointment from Apple for me.
My new 2011 MBP is having wifi latency issues and so do many others.

Ther's hope!

Never had any wi-fi problems so far with my iMac, iPhones (4.3.1) or iPod.
All together working fine on a non Apple router (mixed-N).
Then the iPad-2 (4.3.1) came along, ai ai, every 15 minutes or so wi-fi dropped on this beauty.

My fix (keeping my fingers crossed):

Did not change any settings at all.
Just restarted my router with the web-configurator using the iPad to do so. At this point all other wi-fi equipment was turned off!
Maybe its because the iPad is now first in line using the routers resources DHCP and stuff but never had any problems since (1 week now).

Pawoolford

Yeah I saw that enabling ssid broadcasting for some people seemed to work, but I didn't need to resort to that. Just changing the radio band from 40MHz to 20MHz worked for me.

Thanks for the advice though.

I have both generations of the ipad (64GB wifi + 3G). Th newer iPad definitely has wifi issues. Where I have 3/4 to full strength in my house with iPad (gen. 1) the iPad (gen. 2) either has 1 bar or drops the connection and this is in some cases not more than 15ft-20ft from the router, on the same floor in a wooden house.

MrBlack23

I'm glad you have your iPad working. It is a great device when it's working properly.

Re. Fastbikegear's earlier posts:

Here's some additional info on 802.11n certification. Based on this, a certification program for the final 802.11n standard has been available since October 2009. This supports the question as to why the iPad is only certified to draft 2.

http://www.betanews.com/article/No-more-draft-80211n-WiFi-certification-program- finally-begins/1254434466

Same, I'm having difficulty syncing my .pdf files as well via the "Books" App. as well

billeeee wrote:
Re. Fastbikegear's earlier posts:

Here's some additional info on 802.11n certification. Based on this, a certification program for the final 802.11n standard has been available since October 2009. This supports the question as to why the iPad is only certified to draft 2.

http://www.betanews.com/article/No-more-draft-80211n-WiFi-certification-program- finally-begins/1254434466

Nice article! It's a good technical summary and explains why we can expect some incompatibility in the negotiation/handshaking/authentication between draft 2.0 products and products that meet the final 802.11n standard. The article also hints at some of the politics that went into getting to this point.

The following is a little off topic but may provide some insight into how we got here and why we are experiencing these issues. My memory is that the Wi-FI Alliance was initiated by a group of manufacturers that got frustrated with the time the IEEE was taking to develop standards. The slow pace was preventing manufacturers releasing new Wi-Fi technologies. Some manufacturers as well as the IEEE were very opposed to the Wi-Fi Alliance. The WiFi alliance pushed ahead with standards at a much faster rate and consequently and understandably went down some dead end technical roads from which they had to extract themselves from while trying to protect the investment of manufactureres who were members of the WiFi alliance. The Wi-Fi Alliance was and probably still is manufacturer driven (not a bad thing).

Eventually I believe the IEEE and the Wi-Fi alliance came to an agreement that the IEEE would publish the final Wi-FI Alliance's 802.11n standard as there own. (I don't know if the IEEE made any changes before adopting it). The IEEE 802.11n standard is now almost universally accepted as the definitive document. I think the Wi-Fi Alliances role now is to continue to explore the development of new standards and to provide a standard compliance role.

A large part of the process of developing standards is campaigning and negotiating to get the technology that your company/academic department, etc has a lead or vested interest in accepted. It's the basis for a very good soap opera. It gets really funny when a leading campaigner gets poached by a competitive company and stands up a week later and campaigns for something 180 degrees different from what he espoused at a previous session. Manufacturers will at times even try and get their brand of product or patented solution specified in a standard. Manufacturers often pay key technical staff to be full time advocates on the standards committees to protect and promote their interests.

As you can imagine there are inevitably some fun technical compromises along the way. The story of how the original 802.11b standard was arrived at would make the basis for a great book.

Well so far so good with a different router (linksys e3000). It has been stable for a couple days now with no disconnects.

I have been having the same issues with a 64gb wifi Only, I have done a full restore and seems to have sorted the problem and has stayed connected for a few hours now.

is anyone else having a problem with the looking glass cut and paste tool mine seems out of focus through the looking glass.