Q: Intermittent Wifi issues with iPad 2 and WiFi

Put me on the list of people with wifi issues on their Ipad2 16gig. It works fine with my Airport Extreme, but when I go my other location it keeps dropping the connection.

The wireless router at this other location is a Cisco WRT54G v1.

My Ipod Touch and MacBook Pro both have no issues with the Cisco router, but the Ipad2 does not like it.

It sees it... and then drops it. I'm not going to get into dealing with any firmware updates.

It's just easier to buy an Apple wirelss modem. Gee, you would think they would give you a discount?

This is really nasty, they've (Apple) got to do something about it.

I have just received my iPad 2 32gb wifi and 3G after a three week lead time. I have 27" iMac, MacBook and 2 iPhone 4's and have the wifi issue with the iPad, all other devices work fine, I also have an iPad 1 at work that works fine... as a comparison test im trying to use BBC iplayer on all devices and it totally fails on iPad 2... Same with 4OD (tv on demand in the uk)

What is going on apple? I Don't accept the router issue, I also don't accept the range issue (mine still doesn't work if I sit on top of the router!) I'm also not keen on returning it to apple to have to wait 3 weeks for a new iPad that more than likely has the same issue... It's a joke!

This needs to be a priority fix, as lots of people are losing faith in your product fast.

I expected after the media bomb regarding the iPhone 4 antenna, you would make sure that all major bugs we're sorted before release. It feels like it's been pushed out to meet a release schedule date, totally disregarding everything apple stands for... Beautifully designed products that just work.

As a final test I'm going to take the iPad 2 to work tomorrow and test it against the iPad 1 in the same environment, if it fails again, the only answer is the dodgy wifi receiver. I'll post back tomorrow AM.

Has anyone heard from an official apple source on this?

Hi, you will not wait 3 weeks - as a customer you have priority, this is not like buying new Ipad. I had similar issues last week and after all kinds of troubleshooting I called the support and I must say I am impressed, After trying to resolve the issue on the phone, I got instant appointment in the apple store and although they fixed the problem in the store,  and the connectivity was there restored, they also decided to give me a new Ipad just  in case - if I preferred.  Which I did prefer and I got my second Ipad today after just ONE day waiting.

So, even though the problems are there - buy they do take good care of us as their customers! 

Apple's behavior in this issue makes you thinking about going for Samsung or BlackBerry - and that definitelly can't be what they want!

I don't think Jobs/Apple are worried about that.  Pretty well known that the other tablets are inferior to the iPad when judged overall, even if each have an advantage here or there.  I've sample the Galaxy and Xoom, after having an iPad in the house since Dec (and now we have two), and niether compare really.  The Galaxy feels cheap and lacks the superior tactile characterstics and overall build quality of the iPad while the Xoom gets close in many ways only to fall short on price (way too much) and Android's lagging app selection.  So the problem with Apple caring about little annoyances like wifi are, existing iPad owners aren't going to switch (especially fanboys) and prospective iPad owners won't know about the problem until they've bought and live with one for a bit, at which point they're hooked (see first part of sentance).

I am finding the wi-fi drop out on the top of the range iPad2 shocking. Really affects my work productivity. Have compared it to the original iPad in some tests and the original iPad leaves the iPad2 for dead for wi-fi reliability. Extremely poor considering this device relies totally on wi-fi connectivity for its functioning. R & D issues from Apple in my opinion. I am in the education community and could not recommend any school or institution to use the iPad2 on a large scale considering the issues I am currently having. I hope Apple can come up with a solution because I really like the product except for its wi-fi unreliability.

Hi all,

I was wondering if any of you are located in the Greater Toronto Area and can readily demonstrate the issue with the iPad 2. I have someone in the media here that may be interested in doing a story on this wide spread issue.

If so, email me at WebGeeksUnlimited@live.ca so that we can look at this in greater detail offline.

Jake

Also experiencing problems. I also have an original iPad which shows better signal strength and wifi performance. In general it seems that the iPad 2 needs to have a stronger wifi signal than the iPad in order to work. I have also experienced that if my iPad 2 cannot find a network in a public hotspot I need to turn it on and off several times and then it may suddenly start showing the available networks.

My experience so far with the iPad 2 is that it is inferior and less reliable than the iPad when it comes to wifi performance. Apart from the wifi issue, I am totally satisfied with my iPad 2.

Hope that Apple will fix this issue soon. Apple cannot afford hiccups on both the iPhone and the iPad when it comes to radio performance.

I have experienced this problem and was able to reduce it but not completely eliminate it by switching to G only. After additional work I discover my neighbors WiFi routers had the same IP address as my main router 192.168.0.1. I have scanned all of the wireless signals in my neighborhood and found they all are using 192.168.0.1. Although the wireless networks are secure with different SSID's I came to the conclusion that my iPAD 2 would get the IP confused causing the problem.

I changed my home network to a new 10.41.XX.X address. Since doing that I have not experienced and problems.

Hope this works for you.

No, I won't laugh.  If you've got a 3g iPad, it's got a radio for that.  And your bluetooth connection is via a radio as well, as is the WiFi.  The differences are the frequencies and protocols they use.  Well, that and the fact that the WiFi and the bluetooth are on the same board inside the iPad, at least on the iPad 2 (I haven't researched the iPad 1).

So, the reason I suggested checking the bluetooth extensively, and I'll get into what I saw with mine more in a moment, is because if you have big problems there, you'll have big problems with the WiFi.  And it'll be board-level problems that they have to open up the iPad to fix, meaning that Apple will replace your iPad.  You can't fix it with a restore or a router configuration change, so don't even try.  Just call Apple and get it taken care of right away.

The telltale on mine was that my bluetooth was showing as off, then unavailable right as I'd tap it to try to turn it on.  And, if I did manage to get it to turn on, it wouldn't reliably display a list of available clients to connect to.  Keep in mind that iPads, iPhones, and other Apple devices don't always connect to other devices as most cell phones do, but my iPad wouldn't connect to anything.  It would appear as if it would connect, then it would just shut off the bluetooth, without warning or waiting.  And it would do it instantaneously.

And that was actually the second problem.  The first problem was when the WiFi went out temporarily - well, sort of temporarily.  It quit functioning in the middle of a game, and turning it off and back on had no effect.  So, I turned it off and rebooted, expecting to be able to turn it back on after rebooting, but it showed grayed out and unavailable.  It finally started working again after five (5) restores, but the bluetooth was still inoperative.

I shipped my iPad 2 out on Tuesday evening, and it's now Thursday afternoon and I'm restoring my backup on a new one.  Excellent turnaround, if you ask me, but my problem on this one was pretty cut-and-dried.  Hopefully everyone else's can be resolved that easily.  This replacement is on iOS 4.3.2, and will stay that way for a while, I think, though I'm going to be watching this thread for issues to see if anyone posts what iOS version they are using.  My last one was on iOS 4.3.3.  I don't want to jinx my new iPad and give up hardware problems for software problems!  Let's face it...problems are problems, no matter how you look at it.

Good luck, everyone!

Another update. After 2 days of heavy use the connection has not dropped once since I changed the router as outlined above. This is in stark contrast to the situation beforehand with the connection dropping every ten minutes or so.

I'm experiencing exactly the same. Since I changed my Linksys router from WPA2 to WPA my iPad 2 works flawlessly since about two weeks now - without a single connection drop. But I'm still not sure about the connection speed. It's quite satisfying the way it performs, but it could be faster using WPA2 (discussed above) - unfortunatelly I can't verify that.

Though I'd share a tool for id network

- I use the free "VAinfo" app on the iPad2 -

It has some useful info of what's going on in your system; including a block of Network info showing realtime ip's hosts and nodes - Also a page of background tasks running.  Does anyone else use this for seeing what's going on inside the iPad?  Anyone find some other app useful? 

JEB: thanks for sharing this info. I will test the app in my ipad. Is free?

wep, wpa or wpa2 don't give you more or less speed. Normally, if you use a more complex auth or encryption, traffic speed is affected, but with today algorithms and hardware, this is not an issue.

The huge diference is if you use 802.11G or 802.11N.

802.11G max speed is 54mbits, 108 for turbo enhanced G networks.

802.11N can reach 300 ~ 400Mbits

Ipad2 apparently do not work well with N networks, even fully supporting N protocols and having N radios inside.