Q: Intermittent Wifi issues with iPad 2 and WiFi

What a shame!  I can trump you with 35+ years in telecoms across the widest board, but this is a support forum and not a p'ing contest.

The point here is that if all other devices connect happily to a router and yet the newest device does not then perhaps the newest device conforms to the newest standard whilst all others devices (including the router) do not?

If the newest device does not connect anywhere to any other router under any circumstances then the newest device is probably at fault.  If not, then not!  That's the point at which one might expect the router firmware to be checked for its latest update, isn't it?  I know of many people who wouldn't know even where to begin with that (let alone that it might need to be done at all), so it's easier for them to blame the newest device, isn't it?

Please let's not descend into bovine excrement when there are people out there who need support which may lead them to having their problems resolved.

What a shame!  I can trump you with 35+ years in telecoms across the widest board, but this is a support forum and not a p'ing contest.

 

The point here is that if all other devices connect happily to a router and yet the newest device does not then perhaps the newest device conforms to the newest standard whilst all others devices (including the router) do not?

Here I'll have to disappoint you again, I have the latest and greatest Cisco Business Class Wi-Fi router that even supports devices that can exercise power save mode with devices and the firmware is the latest available.

And if that is not enough, my best friend who is likely one of the best Cisco certified individuals around, with 35+ years’ Cisco certified networking experience who has also looked into this with me.

Now that the bovine excrement part is over with, let's face yet another fact, which you with 35+ years’ experience should understand all too well as I and many others do whom live in the real world.

There are millions of hotspots all over North America and world and the likely hood that each and every one has the latest firmware or even using the latest and greatest hardware device is pretty slim.

1. Given the mounds of obsolete     Wi-Fi routers that exists out there, no other device is having issue with     Wi-Fi connectivity, oh except the iPad
2. Even with the latest off the     manufacturing floor Wi-Fi router devices, the iPad is having Wi-Fi issues,     yet every other device seems to work fine
3. Apple would be crazy to     create a device, like the iPad that would require something unique that     would result in, gee all the issues that people are having with Wi-Fi and     require bleeding edge routers to operate
4. Given again that everything     else appears to be working fine with hotspots and home Wi-Fi routers, but     again we have the ipad that seems to have issues.
5. Apple cannot expect the     whole world to be running the bleeding edge Wi-Fi routers and firmware in     order for the iPad to work properly with Wi-Fi
6. Steve Jobs is smoking weed     if he expects #5 to be anything other than real world
   
7. Oddly enough, the Blackberry Playbook doesn't seem to have issues with Wi-Fi on the very same networks that the iPad does.
   

So no, this is not a p'ing contest, we expect some knowledge coming from experienced people to use some common sense in looking at the issue.

Troubleshooting is that just that, people coming together in this forum, to convery their experiences and things we have tried and from that, we can come up with come with some common sense points based on many expereinces.

RestlessFool wrote:

 

What a shame!  I can trump you with 35+ years in telecoms across the widest board, but this is a support forum and not a p'ing contest.

 

The point here is that if all other devices connect happily to a router and yet the newest device does not then perhaps the newest device conforms to the newest standard whilst all others devices (including the router) do not?

 

If the newest device does not connect anywhere to any other router under any circumstances then the newest device is probably at fault.  If not, then not!  That's the point at which one might expect the router firmware to be checked for its latest update, isn't it?  I know of many people who wouldn't know even where to begin with that (let alone that it might need to be done at all), so it's easier for them to blame the newest device, isn't it?

 

Please let's not descend into bovine excrement when there are people out there who need support which may lead them to having their problems resolved.

I am an ex Cisco Certified Wireless Engineer (I didn't bother to keep my certification current when I quit the IT business). I also used to run some of Cisco's training in N.Z. I was also a Lucent Certified wireless Engineer (We used to host the training for them in New Zealand) and I also ran training for D-Link many years ago as well. I also got good practicle experience using a variety of early wireless network analysers to troubleshoot wireless networks. Having said this my training and 'expertise' stopped at 802.11g and WiMAx which is about when I left the industry. So I am now a little knowledge is dangerous!

RestlessFool's discussion on new and old routers Vs iPads is interesting because the iPAD uses a very old Broadcom wireless chipset that was released before the 802.11n Wireless standard was completed. Effectively the iPADs are a much earlier WiFi device at their core than most of the routers that they fail to operate with out of the box.

When I was looking at this problem (Before I got a refund for my iPAD after 9 months of ownership) I did some benchtop testing with a Linksys/Cisco WAG120N router. I did some testing with the firmware this router shipped with and then I downloaded and installed the latest version of firmware onto the router and tested again. Both before and after updating the firmware the same identiacl fault symptomes were reproducible at will. I was also able to reproduce the problem at some but not all hotspots with no doubt a variety of different routers.

The issue is with the iPADs (I tested three iPADS. My first iPAD, a replacement I was given due to this issue and an iPAD 2 that a friend recently purchased. All displayed identical and reproducible intermittet connectivity symptoms). My testing left me fairly confident the problem rests with the way the iPad deals with going into and waking up from Power Save mode. (I think there have been two implementations of WiFi power save mechanisms. One before 802.11e and a newer Power Save mechanism that was part of the more recent 802.11e standard.) The only differences I found between the iPads I tested was that both the iPAD '1's had marginally better signal strength at the fringe of coverage than the particular iPAD 2 I tested. The intermittent connectivity problem was reproducible when all the iPads were very close to the router ...so the problem was not related to signal strength on the three iPADs tested.

I was going to do some testing with a Fluke AirMagnet that I still have access to and publish the results, but at about this time I was offered a refund on my own iPad which I accepted.

When I first raised the problem with Apple the 1st level tech support guys said that they have not heard of this problem before, although I did have one guy in Singapore admit that he was inundated with calls on the problem. I have written correspondence from Apple's service guys who looked at my first iPAD telling me that amongst other remedies I should wait for Apple to release a software fix for the issue.

Since then I have discussed the issue with senior Apple Wireless engineers and marketing staff and there was never any attempt at a denial from any of these people that the problem exists. In fact the senior engineers seemed to be very familiar with the issues and one of the senior marketing people for the region stated incredibly at one stage that customers should accept tand be willing to live with issues of this nature in new products.

Like everybody else my other wireless devices have never experienced this issue with any Wireless Access Point.

Given that senior Apple engineers have absolutely been aware of this issue for sometime (They seemed well aware of it even before I raised it personally and directly with them.), it woud appear that they have not been able to fix this problem in the iOS. Given that I have come to the (unconfirmed) belief that this problem is not fixable in firmware, I believe that Apple front line staff are not being advised on the issue and Apple is keen to keep their heads in the sand on this issue until the release of the iPAD 3 - which I am very confident will not display this problem.

If you are not happy with this state of affairs I recommend you ask for and insist on a refund as I did and wait for the iPAD 3 or have a look at the new 10" Samsung Galaxy, these are reportedly the first of the Android based tablets that really are a match for the iPAD. (Make sure you look at the latest 10" Galaxy as the earlier 7" Galaxy is a different animal and did not recieve great reviews).

I am very confident that the iPAD 3 will use a much more current WiFi chipset and will not exhibit this problem. Anyone want a friendly wager on this?

I have the same problem with my IPAD2, it works for a bit, then kicks me off.  When I check settings, it shows I'm connected to my router, but I'm really not.  All my other devices and computers work!  This is very frustrating - does anyone know the root cause of this problem?

Hi, I have similar  issue with wifi - at first I had only problems with connecting my Ipod2 in the bedroom where the signal is weaker and I got used to holding the ipad up, above my head to download email. It was once on once off but didn't bother me because I knew of that weak wiifi connection...

But today a few hours ago it stopped for good - no wifi at all, even when I am standing next to the router. My laptop connects pefectly, so it is not the wifi problem in my home, I went outside to another wifi hotspot and my Ipod doesn't recongize any connection - wifi function in setting is greyed out.

I did all troubleshooting, resetting network, rebooting, no improvement.

Tomorrow I have a call witch tech support - but reading this thread makes me feel that this might be harder to resolve.

very frustrating.

Try reading some posts on this thread!

Some GOOD NEWS.

I changed some settings on my Aztech router 2days ago and since then wifi dropped only once instead of once an hour. The changes were: set to mixed b/g mode, set to channel 11, use security WPA2. this was easy and only involved confirming the old password on my many other wifi machines. From the discussion above it seems that for many users the issue is not purely ipad hardware driven but depends on the specific iPad-router interaction. Some tinkering may alleviate the problem that Apple seem to have caused us.

I am an IT guy and I have spent dozens of hours tring to troubleshoot this problem.

I remembered that the shipment of the ipad was delayed due to Apple having a WiFi issue so it seems they have known about this for about 15 months or more. Different software updates seem to change the problem by making it worse on some iPads and better on others.

I have a partial solution as this fix only works on your own router as not too many public wifi places let you login and change their settings.

To summarize the changes I made, I did all the changes with the bands(B,G & N) no luck. I changed the security to none, WEP, WPA, WPA/WPA2 and just WPA2, still no change. I did find that the iPad would stay connected longer if I went into the iPad settings and cleared the cache in Safari settings. But this would only work as a fix for about 30 minutes instead of 15 minutes.

The iPad has stayed connected for over 36 hours so far by logging into the router and changing the Wireless security "Group key update interval" to the maximum. I was also connected to a different router for 2 hours with the same change made to it's router and no disconnection from an iPad 1 or iPad 2. Different routers will have slightly different descriptions of this setting.

Now this will only help those who know how to change their Router and are allowed to. I also suspect that this is only a fix for some model routers as well.

If by some chance Apple have not worked out why this is a solution and how they might be able to fix it then hopefully they read this and start trying to fix it because this problem is a major failure for a great product.

Many users here suggested the workaround that worked for them:

1) Upgrading to latest firmware of the Wi-Fi router

2) Configuring only in g mode or n mode instead of mixed mode

3) Configuring in mixed mode b/g or b/g/n

4) Changing the channel to 11 or 6 or 1

5) Using specific routers – Apple/Linksys/Netgear

6) Resetting the iPad. upgrading/downgrading the iOS

7) Changing the router location

8) Changing the DHCP to static IP configuration in iPad

9) Changing the wifi authentication to none,WPA,WPA2,WEP

10) Increase the brightness of iPad and turn off auto brightness. Yes! Apple approved solution for iPad 1. Not sure if Apple solved it or the users learned to live up with the problem. Sometimes works in my iPad2.

11)Launching a different app before firing the browser. In my case TOI app helps sometimes. I launch that app first before I use the default browser.

My iPad didn’t work out if the box. Just opened the iPad powered it on and it didn’t connect , though it showed full signal in the indicator. Then suddenly it worked after 1 hour. But the next day it didn’t. I did almost all other above suggestions. It worked when I changed the channel from 11 to 6.

But, the same workaround didn’t after few days. It worked when I changed the config to the default config which was not working earlier. So the solution does not seem to be in the Wifi settings. It’s just the timing of turning on/off the router and connecting the iPad and the apps running in it.

I would like to know, the solution posted by the users here in this thread works permanently for them?!

As some users suggested in this thread, the most possible reason could be the iPad’s handling of power save mode with some routers.

After doing some Googling, I found this link on MS website: Even Windows 7 notebooks seems to suffer this problem:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928152

But, the good thing with Win7 is that, we could turn off the power save mode in few clicks and not worry about the few hours/minutes lost due to that option. The WIFi works. That should be good enough for practical purposes.

If the power save mode is the problem with Apple, I am not sure what stops them from fixing it in one of the patches. I am not sure if the Wifi antenna used by the iPad does not have option to turn off the power save mode??less likely. Only Apple can confirm it. Well, they are not even acknowledging the issue itself.

Coming to my story, I bought iPad2 Wifi only 32GB here in India( with is approx $150 higher than US price). After sales service( though bit improving) is a nightmare here, let alone trying to get a refund for my iPad. Only the apple resellers are handling the support here.

If the Wi-Fi was 100% not working,  I could have returned it. Here the problem is ‘not knowing’ when it works and when it does not. If I take this to them, they are going to start giving lectures on how I should configure my router or upgrade the firmware. That’s the reason I am looking for some concrete solutions in these forums or from Apple itself. Anyway I am going to visit them this weekend as my frustration( along with my BP) increases whenever the iPad drops the signal.

<Edited by Host>

After doing some Googling, I found this link on MS website: Even Windows 7 notebooks seems to suffer this problem:

I can confirm that this was an issue with some notebooks that ran Vista or Windows 7, but believe it was the NIC firmware and whether you were using a router with N still in draft mode. Since then, most of the NICs had updated firmware released, but still as suggested you can turn the power save mode off on the NIC.

Part of that problem was everyone rushing to make N available before it got out of draft mode and so we ended up with NICs and routers based on earlier drafts.

But even with latest updates, some configurations just don't seem to like to play together.

I'm using a Cisco WRVS4400N Router and found a setting in the router in the Wireless menu item, "VLAN & QoS" called "U-APSD (WMM Power Save):" which was disabled.

 

The Cisco help describes this as follows;

 

"U-APSD(WMM Power Save) is an enhanced power-save mode for IEEE 802.11e networks. If you Enabled the UAPSD, the wireless client is allowed to enter Power Save mode."

 

When I enabled this feature on the WRVS4400N Router, I no longer have the issue with WiFi not doing anything useful after a period of inactivity. Without that enabled, I need to disable and then enable the WiFi or Airplane mode (either method works) to get things working again.

Further to the above from my original post on this, despite the fact that my iPad will lose connectivity still, I've noticed a further pattern and maybe this router change has made some difference.

• If I turn the iPad on with this feature enabled in the router, overall it seems to make a difference with my iPad. If left idle for long periods and I do the odd surfing with Safari it always seems to work OK.
  
  
• But, every time I play with "Real Solitaire V1.7.3" by EdgeRift Inc. a couple rounds, I can guarantee that my Wi-Fi will become unresponsive.

I'm not saying that the APP is at fault here, but there seems to be a potential pattern here.

So, if I do nothing but use Safari and Email for most of the day, the Wi-Fi problems do not appear, or at least that is what I've noticed for a couple days. But for sure firing up the above noted APP and play a couple rounds, Wi-Fi problems again. Coincidence?????

Now I am wondering if certain APPs somehow are part of the issue, but not really certain how that could be, but that's what I've noticed this weekend.

I'll have to check and see if certain APPs when used, result in Wi-Fi issues after use, but I'll have to track this carefully to see if there is a definite pattern as I've noticed with the one APP so far. I also noticed that it does fire up the Game Centre when started, something else to make note of as you never know what pattern will emerge here.

Jake

Poorly configured routers? I believe the Ipad/Ipad2 devices must work ok with any kind of setting like wep, wpa, wpa2, G, N and free access wifi signals. There is no fault of users having different settings in the router. A wifi device must be Wi-Fi compilant and if Ipad/Ipad2 supports 802.11N, there is no reason why you will found issues with certain scenarios where other devices (laptops, pcs, phones, xboxes, etc) works flawlessly. This is a huge problem for Apple and mostly, for users.

This issue is very anonyng!

Update:

The ipad works flawlessly with the 2wire router (configured as access point) in 802.11G and wep. After some hours, browser stops, a line in the signal quality is lost.... wait some seconds... signal is full again, browse is back again to normal. Very frustrating.

Anything else I can test?. I will try different channels to see if I get better luck. Apple definitely needs to look into this!!!

I recently had to switch out my router (I had a Cisco WRVS4400N) and I purchased a Buffalo WZR-HP-AG300H.

WRVS4400N: I had to downgrade my security settings to WPA which helped some, but still didn't fix the issue totally.

WZR-HP-AG300H: I am running WPA2 again and I haven't had any issues with the WiFi disconnecting. I have tried both the 2.4GHz band and the 5GHz band and both seem to work about the same.

While there is still no excuse for this issue, I thought I would share my findings.

Regards,

willo2

I found my newly purchased ipad2 has the same problem. I put my Andriod phone next to it and my phone can get the signal without an issue. This is my first Apple purchase I had. It is a shame since this is an vital issue. Without the wifi, it has no difference as a dummy terminal. I received it for less than 30 days. Could anyone tell me if I can return it?