Q: Poor wifi reception on new iPad

Here is a Video of a guy using an Ipad 3 and when he touches it,it stops the wi-fi connection.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZeJhVOXQSA&feature=related

His hand is too fat.

@Philly_Phan

unlike serial protocol ethernet protocol is arranged in frames and doesn't need a start and stop bit.

Outer frame is the ethernet frame with source and destination mac, some status bytes and crc checksum at the end. Inside this frame is ip header which includes source ip, destination ipand some more usefull information like TTL, checksum and so on. IP header is followed by TCP Header with  source and destination ports sequence number, ack number and some status bytes. This header is followed by data you want to transfer (i think maximum 1500 bytes, but i'm not sure, anyway only a part of transmission is information you want to transmitt, rest is comunication overhead).. So you send just a fragment of data in one frame, fragments can be assembled together using sequence number. Every send frame have to be acknoledget by receiver, but you don't have to wait for this and can follow with the next frame. is a frame not acknoledged by receiver within a certain period of time it has to be resend. Of course the transmissio is encrypted.

With poor connection many frames get lost and are resend by sender => drop in throughput. There are also some synchronisation and broadcast frames and so on. you can see all data communication with a network monitor (wireshark is a good one for pc).

correct me if I'm wrong.

hope it helps somehow.

Sorry for my poor english.

Guys, this is a huge problem with iPad. 

I also experience poor reception when I'm out in my living room.  It will constantly alternate from full bars to just one.  Sometimes it wont even see my 5GHz band, only the 2.4GHz when it loses complete reception.

Luckily I use the iPad in my room where the router is at.

Having wifi range issues here too. Thought is was the wireless router from Comcast so just spent $80 on a Netgear 3400 and my new iPad wifi drops connection at 35 feet, 2 rooms, from the router. I get fluxuating no connection to 1 bar at about 20 feet from the router unless I am in line of sight to the room the router is in.

This is totally unacceptable and I've been an Mac guy since 1985 and this is my worst problem so far.

OK, enough of us have the same problem.  I just got back form a trip and could barely use the iPad in hotel rooms.  Signal reception is weak and comes and goes.

We've heard enough about bit rates and fragments on this site.  Such information is not relevant in a hotel room. 

So, does Apple ever weigh in on these discussions? Its clear this community does not know the answer to the question “What does Apple have as a solution to reception problem with the iPad 3?”  

I really do not want to return mine but I will.

Are you holding it in the death grip?  Just curious, and not saying that you don't have a problem.  There are just so many different issues floating around this thread.  It is tough to keep it straight.

Do you have any problems when holding the iPad in portrait orientation?

One more confirming update. I have had a severe version of the weak wifi problem since i got my 3. My wife doesn't have this problem on an iPad 1 right next to me. I had tried every posted fix to no avail. To leave no stone unturned I just got a brand new gateway router from AT&T, and increased my wifi speed from 12 to 18 Mbps.it made absolutely no difference: super speed near the router and crawl speed one floor away.

I really hate that Apple won't put out a serious public acknowledgment of this problem, and say we will get if fixed or give you a new good unit. This is a very poor business practice.

I actually managed to find two iPads that have good screens.  One for me, and one for my wife.  One of them does not have problems with WiFi, and the other one does.  The one that has issues starts to drop the signal when I get about fifteen feet away from the router.  The other one can go 30 or more feet with no problems.  If I set them both in a room that is 20 feet away, one of them has connectivity issues and the other doesn't.

So I finally find one with a good screen, and it has other issues.  ****

I've held it a couple of ways.  Last night in the hotel, I got better reception pointing the iPad antenna toward the router in the hotel office, two rooms away.  It would still drop the signal.   The bars also go up and down when you use the iPad.

My preliminary findings with my own new iPad:

New iPad 64GB WiFi

Using Asus RT-N56U dual-band router with 5GHz off

SSID not hidden

WPA2 AES

AP not isolated

Fragmentation threshold 2306

RTS threshold 2307

Beacon interval 75

TX bursting, packet aggregation, WMM DLS enabled

Full bar around the house so far (knock on wood), both holding landscape & portrait

Able to see neighbor's wifi (not as many as my laptop)

Tried another wifi at an Apple reseller store, didn't encounter an issue.

I wish that we had some indication of whether this was going to be a software fix.  I'm sitting on one that has the issue right now.  I have until Sunday to decide if I want to keep it.  I don't want to keep something that has a defect that can't or won't be fixed by a software update.

Please provide more details.

What is the problem you are experiencing? Slow speeds? drop offs?

Does it happen only with your router, or with other routers? does it happen with or without encryption?

One person successfully sent their ipad into apple, and they were able to fix it. I highly suggest contacting applecare, rather than waiting for a software fix.

Contacting your router manufacturer is also a very, very good idea. A good ISP rep may also be useful.

Have you tried posting in dslreports.com? The people there are very knowledgable.

Oh I forgot to add -- what is your router?

Please link me to a page so I can check it specs. Thank you. I would highly recommend reading this thread, as several settings tweaks have emerged that seem to make a difference.

It's not my intention to be offensive, but I'm getting tired of reading advices of changing router/router config/ contacting ISP.

I think that everybody writing in this thread has basically the same problem: poor wifi performance and death grip.

Many people have confirmed that there are good and bad iPads, so if you happen to have a good one, better for you.

Is it more likely that every router on the planet has problems or that iPads have problems? I think the latter.

In my case I have an expensive router, fully upgraded, and I had to buy a range extender to have reliable wifi in my sitting room. On holidays I had bad problems in hotel rooms, while my iPhone connected easily and in a very stable way.

The video a few post above perfectly reflects my experience.

In my home I have more than 10 wifi devices ( including 5 iOs devices) and the new iPad has by far the worst wifi performance of them all.

So the question is why don't I bring it back to Apple? Because I didn't buy it in an Apple store, and I can't have a refund.

Using AppleCare I might get an iPad with the same issue and perhaps with other problems (I've read here and elsewhere of many iPads with dead pixels - my screen il perfect).

So for now I stay at the window, waiting to understand how the problem develops. And hoping (not very optimistic about that) That a software update may solve/mitigate the problem.

But I strongly believe that Apple is not acting correctly ignoring the problem.

Do  you remember last year when Steve Jobs publicly admitted the iphone death grip problem and offered some solutions/ mitigationd? Of course he somewhat tried to understate the problem, but nonetheless he admitted it.

I'm not a native speaker of English, so excuse my errors.

I completely agree with you.  I took my iPad with poor wifi back to the Apple Store where I bought it and they cheerfully exchanged it for a new one.  It does have better wifi but not as good as I think it should be.  I can barely get a signal in my bedroom which is less than 30 feet from my router.  I've bought a new router and and am going to install that this afternoon and see if that improves things.  My computer picks up the wifi from my next door neighbor and yet my iPad can't even pick it up when I put the neighbors ID in and tell it to search when it's right next to my computer.

Apple did correct the iPhone antenna problem and it's about time they addressed the problem with the iPad.