Q: Intermittent Wifi issues with iPad 2 and WiFi

ok.  So i had the same problem.  I think I have fixed my issue by pure luck.  I have a Netcomm NB9WMAXX.  I found this post http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/763631 which pointed me in the right direction.

At Wireless/Configuration I changed my 54g mode from 54g Auto to 54g LRS.  I also changed the 54g Rate and the Multicast Rate to 48 mbps (also from Auto).

I did a save and reboot and presto, wifi is working fine.  no drop outs and great speed.  Have tested it with Safari, AirVideo, Crackle and Google Maps.  Best performance since i bought the iPad. 

Ironically, I have an appointment with the Genius Bar tomorrow to resolve.

Good luck.

DadCad,

Are you using WPA or WPA2 in your implementation?  I have had pretty good luck with my iPad 2 since I changed to WPA but I am wondering if your Multicast Rate setting would not only improve my performance but also let me switch back to WPA2.

NOTE: I just changed my Multicast Rate to 48 on my Verizon FIOS WAP and my performance on all of my wireless devices seems to be significantly better.  I guess a lot was lost to the "auto" sync rates.  I haven't changed back to WPA2 yet as I want to run under this configuration for a while to see how things work out.

Good post DadCad, thanks for sharing!

Good point. Still using WPA but I'll try WPA 2 later tonight.

I had issues with the WiFi dropping out on iPad 2. Had been working fine for a month or 2 since purchase.

All my other idevices (iMac, MacBook, iPhones) seemed to work fine.

I updated the firmware to 4.3.3 problem resolved on first.

folks! I have been struggeling as well with my ipad2 and Sitecom wl-341 v3 router. Loss of connection after sleep, dropping out numerous times etcetere. I have tried all remedies noted on this forum. Nothing worked! My last hope was à new router. I bought an Apple Airport Extreme. And.... It worked perfectly for the last three days. My laptop, pc, nas and everything Elsevier perform well as they did before with THE Sitecom.

Like some I have solved my wifi problems but am still monitoring this forum because I really feel for those guys that are still having them. My problem was caused by having a second DHCP source in the house although nothing else except the ipad2 was finding it. So I think that there is something that the ipad is doing (or not doing) that none of my other wireless devices are (I have had 5 other wireless devices working fine the whole time). Although marcelfromdordrecht appears to have fixed his problem by purchasing an Apple Airport Extreme (whatever that is) I just hope that this isn't an attempt to force anybody with an ipad to have to buy more Apple products. I have spent the last 3 days fixing one of their other mistakes in reducing the current available on the USB port. I can now read CF cards quite happily by using a powered USB hub. Very happy with this solution so I guess on to the next one of their design faults.

So I thought I would tell you what I am now using at home and that has worked flawless for a week now.

Not in any particular order -

Reloaded IOS 4.3.3. Note I said reloaded. This was suggested by Apple support because they said that my problems with wifi were not known to their support centre and the few issues with wifi were mostly caused by mistakes with peoples WPA security settings.

I have now set up 2 WAP's. Both with WPA2, different SSIDs but the same password phrase.

One WAP is 802G only (on channel 8 selected by the WAP) and the other is 802N only (on channel 11 selected by the WAP). Any performance settings are on whatever the highest is. Both are 2.4Ghz. I don't yet have a dual band wireless N. My area has little internet wireless activity ( one next door and nothing else shows up). I do have cordless phones (about 6) but no other wireless devices operating anywhere near 2.4Ghz.

The 802G is in its usual position either 1 or 2 walls away from my usual operating position and the 802N is either 0,1 or 2 walls away. Although I have run no throughput tests everywhere I use it internet performance seems the same. And I won't worry about network speed until I can work out how to transfer photos over the network instead of that incredible crippling USB connection (at least over the 802N because I have 1Gb ports on the WAP). I don't use iTunes (what's that ?) to transfer photos but just copy directly from the ipad using the camera device that shows up when I add it to my PC. And I want to do that because anything that saves me having to use that ipad special plug on the side means it might last one day longer down the track.

And the bottom line is that I have absolutely faultless wifi connection on both SSIDs everywhere in my house.

And doesn't alter the fact that the ipad is so marketing (?) crippled that it should be a crime.

If we ever get to space in my lifetime and I find out that the command computer is an Apple I am going to take a lifepod and get the **** out of there. My worst nightmare would be finding out that the lifepod is also run by an Apple and that the other passenger was called Dr Smith.

I got my iPad2 WiFi solid last night after months of constant dropouts.  I'm using WPA2 security and an older D-LInk DI-624 as a WAP.  Taking hints from here I went into the D-Link and turned off the Turbo G mode and set it to operate in g mode only (no b/g switching).  I then selected a different channel, in my case channel 1 instead of channel 6.  I suspect there must be some interference from a neighbor's WiFi.  Our laptop, iPod Touch and iPhone didn't have any problems with dropping connections, but they did seem slow.  Now after these changes everything is nice and fast without dropouts.

I had the same problem as you all have, got abit "pist" and made a deep look at my home network.

I found out that I had an invisible dhcp repeater in my network that gave my ipad2 a false ip adress 169dummy sometimes.

My netgear wnd3700 is my wifi spot and the only dhcp server. So I followed the repeated dhcp req/anw to a different mac-adress. To my surprise i found out it was one of my airport express that I uses for AirPlay streaming...

So set my computer and only looking at the airports requests to the network. Answer I got when a wifi device send a dhcp req to the network this airport answer it sometimes with 169 address. Open up my ipad2 and at the exact time the airport answers the dhcp req and send out the 169adress, and I lost the wifi at the ipad2.

Turned the airport express off and all fine for the ipad2.

So back to the main problem, I have 4 airport express in the network. Why only one messing with me??

Oohhh". That took me 2 sec to reveal... At some point "someone" must had reconfigured my the airport express as a repeater and not as a AirPlay device. Smile. Reconfigured the airport express correct and now all works fine, great and perfect. 

i have a pocket wifi, it runs both my laptops, my iphone, my printer, my husbands HTC ( when he's home )...and soon i hope to run my iPad 2 off it as well, ( when it arrives ), occasionally it drops out...but not enuff to cause me distress....i love it...and i have no complaints.. my provider is Vodafone, just in case you might want to check it out , its called Netcomm MyZone Mobile 3G WI FI Router, i also love the fact that it is mobile....I CANT LEAVE THE HOUSE WITHOUT IT !!!!...good luck guys.

Guys try this,

In your network settings, enter the following numbers into the DNS line

8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4

I tried this and no drop out since

So, I was having bad Wifi problems since upgrading to 4.3.  I finally made a genius appt this weekend.  They saw exactly what I had been dealing with.  He said this is not right and gave me a replacement iPad.  The new one works perfectly.

I asked the guy whether he had been dealing with this a lot.  He said I was the first and I could tell he was 100% sincere.  I suspect there was a bad batch of wifi chips that were shipped.  If it helps, my original ship date was 3/24/11. 

Bottom line- don't suffer any longer.  Get in to an Apple Store and they will make it right for you.  I suffered much longer than I should have.

Same situation here - and as I have posted earlier.  My first rig started having wifi issues after about 2 weeks.  I called Apple/AppleCare and they sent me a new one and it has been flawless since May.  I am convinced there are a slew of them out there with faulty chipsets and all of those could be traced to a particular assembly line/manufacturing date range.

Reconfiguring your home router is NOT the solution for a device that is supposed to be universally portable.  If there is wifi around (and prefereably free), my iPad2 will find it and connect instantaneously.  Have Apple replace your unit!

Hi everybody, I am having the same issue with a White 16 gig iPad 2. Just ran some trouble shooting on my network and nothing seems wrong there as far as laptops and my phone are concerned.  Appears to be iPad that has an unstable connection to a perfectly good Wifi location. Even purchased an extender and sitting two feet away problem still exists.

I live in the UK and bought from the Apple store in April this year but currently at my holiday home on the Algarve in Portugal - no Apple stores here  - phoned Apple support in the UK but they will not permit me to return the iPad directly from here to their repair centre or wherever - they insist I return the iPad to anyperson in the UK who can then take it in to their nearest Apple store to be exchanged and then for that person to send the new iPad back out to me!

What a merry go round!!

Seemingly iOS 4.3 requires a WMM (Wireless Multimedia) support in order for it to be enabled. Put your router in Wireless N-mode for 2.4ghz band and also 5 ghz band if your router does 5ghz. Somehow, it willrefuse to connect to a dedicated N-router or it will fall back to G on a mixedmode router. Once you enabled the WMM, all idevices can now do 2.4ghz band and 5ghz band again on iOS 4.3

jbrownman wrote:

 

Seemingly iOS 4.3 requires a WMM (Wireless Multimedia) support in order for it to be enabled. Put your router in Wireless N-mode for 2.4ghz band and also 5 ghz band if your router does 5ghz. Somehow, it willrefuse to connect to a dedicated N-router or it will fall back to G on a mixedmode router. Once you enabled the WMM, all idevices can now do 2.4ghz band and 5ghz band again on iOS 4.3

Two issues

There appear to be two different WiFi connectivity issues with the iPad and people in this thread seem to suffer from one or the other or sometimes both issues!

1st Group

The first and largest group of people have issues with the iPads incompatibility with many routers. The problem this group of people have with the iPADs intermittent connectivity are due to how it inititiates or handshakes with the router (or not) after Wi-Fi idle periods. Many previous posters in this thread have discovered that altering the Power Save Settings in their router or their security set up provides a work around to the intermittent connectivity issues  at home. This group of people typically experience loss of connection after a period when the iPAD WiFi connection has been idle.

Wireless Multimedia Extensions (WME), also known as Wi-Fi Multimedia (WMM), is a Wi-Fi Alliance interoperability certification, based on the IEEE 802.11e standard. When you turn on WMM on many routers, you also turn on the other functionality included in the 802.11e standard, including the 802.11e Power Save functionality. For more info on WMM, 802.11e see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi_Multimedia.

While playing with the settings of your router may solve your home interconnectivity issues, but it is not a practical solution for when you experience the same interconnectivity issues when trying to use hot spots.

Both owners of iPad '1's and iPAD 2s seem to be experienceing the above issue and they have noticed that they lose connectivity even when they the iPAD is indicating that they have good signal strength.

To date Apple has not been able to resolve or alleviate this issue with subsequent IOS releases. While you can configure a workaround at home there is no published remedy for this issue when you encounter it at hot spots. Indications are that this issue will be addressed with the iPAD 3 which is probably going to use a Wi-Fi chipset that is compliant with the full 802.11n wireless standard,

2nd group

There is also a second group of users on this thread who appear to have experienced intermittent connectiivtiy issues due to flaky signal strength. This appears to be a separate issue from that above that effects a subset of people in this thread. It seems that no amount of fiddling with your home router will improve connectivity for this group of sufferers. Many of these people have remedied their connectivity issues by returning their iPADs to Apple and getting replacements. Very few people with iPAD '1's have found that swapping out their iPad  resolves their intermittent connectivity issue. Most of the people in this second group are iPAD 2 users. It seems that there may have been a batch of faulty iPAD 2s that caused this problem. So if you have an iPAD 2 the first step in trying to resove this issue may be to get Apple to replace your iPAD.

Interference issues

It is also evident that some people have experienced interference issues. If you can see your neighbours network name then you could be having interference problems due to them being on the same or an adjacent channel. Normally this will only cause performance/throughput loss not connection loss. A good way to avoid this is to set your network name to something like 'channel 6' so that your neighbours will know what channel you are using and will hopefully pick a channel at least 5 channels greater or less than the one they use. However for fun I nromally use a network name  like "we_are_using_your_connection" or "please_close_your_curtains" etc