FaceTime iOS 6 Poor Connection message

Has anyone noticed that the range is worse as well? By that I mean that I used to be able to facetime a good distance away from the wifi modem. I would be able to talk to the person on the other end way outside my home and a little bit up the street. Now, I can barely make it out the front door before the connection starts dropping out. I am hoping Apple are reading these comments and are working on the solution. Maybe the next upgrade...

I'm having major issues using Facetime on my iphone 5 as well. Apple seems reluctant to acknowledge any wifi issues whatsoever and the tech I spoke with today told me that as long as my phone connects to my router, the phone is working fine. What a bunch of crap! I can't go more than 10 seconds on a facetime call without getting the "Reconnecting" message. It's absolutely ridiculous that Apple won't even acknowledge the problem. Just fix it already! The iphone 5's wifi performance is crap - pure and simple.

And you are sure it is your iPhone 5 losing it's wifi connection with yuor router and not possibly an issue on the backend of the service like with a server at Apple? Does Skype work any better for you? Personally I am not so sure it is wifi only, overloading a popular service is what I am thinking.

Good question, my experience has been that when FaceTime is unusable (freezing and Poor connection message) Skype has been unusable too. With Skype you have the advantage that you at least get a picture, but beeing frozen for 90% of the time makes it unusable.

It's unfortunate that Skype is not an option as it would have been a good alternative until Apple fix the Facetime/wifi issues

Ok, back to square one, Facetime is broken again today :-(

Had a Facetime session today and the picture was frozen most of the time and got frequent 'Poor connection' messages and the black screen.

I got my mother to run SpeedtestX and upload speed on her iPad2 is marginal again. Ping time is pretty awful too. I wish there were a Pingplotter app for IOS as it would help track down if there are problems getting to the Apple server, or problems with the Apple server itself. Anyway, here are her results from SpeedtestX..

Ping: 750ms

Down: 6.25 mbps

Up: 0.15 mbps

I am going to contact my mothers ISP to ask if there is any way that they can trace to the Apple server and check its response time.

I am beginning to think that poor wifi connection on the iPad is only part of the problem. It looks like the Apple servers may also be part of the problem.

Yeah, the wifi connection is only between the ipod/iphone/ipad and the router, a ping test to the gateway (router) device would show any wifi issues pretty quick.

If the ping to the router is quick the problem is not wifi, it's from your router and beyond, somewhere along the Internet path, or back at Apple's FaceTime facilities.

The ip address for Apple's Facetime (iChat/Jabber server) apparently used to be 17.149.36.99, that might be of relevance if you are trying to do a traceroute or some other test to Apple, they own the whole they 17.x.x.x Class A name space.

Here's some more stops along the way to that server if you want to pursue the tracing idea.

Tracing route to nk11p01st-courier029-bz.push.apple.com [17.149.36.99]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

5 25 ms 23 ms 23 ms be5.bx01.nycm.ny.aliant.net [207.231.227.90]
6 26 ms 23 ms 23 ms ae52.edge2.NewYork1.Level3.net [4.71.230.101]
7 29 ms 25 ms 24 ms vlan90.csw4.NewYork1.Level3.net [4.69.155.254]
8 25 ms 23 ms 24 ms ae-92-92.ebr2.NewYork1.Level3.net [4.69.148.45]
9 93 ms 91 ms 91 ms 4.69.135.185
10 91 ms 94 ms 99 ms ae-81-81.csw3.SanJose1.Level3.net [4.69.153.10]
11 92 ms 91 ms 91 ms ae-3-80.edge2.SanJose1.Level3.net [4.69.152.143]
12 * * * Request timed out.
13 * * * Request timed out.
14 * * * Request timed out.
15 * * * Request timed out.
16 * * * Request timed out.
17 * * * Request timed out.
18 * * * Request timed out.
19 * * * Request timed out.
20 * * * Request timed out.
21 * * * Request timed out.
22 * * * Request timed out.
23 * * * Request timed out.
24 * * * Request timed out.
25 * * * Request timed out.
26 * * * Request timed out.
27 * * * Request timed out.
28 * * * Request timed out.
29 * * * Request timed out.
30 * * * Request timed out.

Trace complete.

Hi all,

Just wanted to add that this is only a wifi problem from my end - I'm in Singapore and FT over 3G works without a problem. I'm just unfortunate that where I live 3G is a black spot so I'm reliant on wifi - that being said, Tango and Skype are both equally as bad over wifi (Skype is less prone to drops but it does hang). Thus I'm 100% certain this is not a FT server problem but an iOS specific glitch/bug.

ES

"a ping test to the gateway (router) device would show any wifi issues pretty quick"

Good suggestion, however I need to find a simple, easy to use ping or traceroute app for my mother to load on her iPad2. I see that there are some available from US apps site, but I need to try to find out what is available on the UK app store (mother lives in the UK).

The other idea is for her to take her iPad to my brothers (also in the UK ) and see how it performs when connected to his router and to his ISP.

I accept that this still might be only a IOS/Facetime bug but I can't rule out other possibilities at this point. Might as well spend time checking other stuff while we wait for Apple to take notice and actually do something to fix it!

Do you know how I might go about finding the IP address for the Facetime server which my mother connects to from the UK?

Hmm, that's interesting, here in Canada I get my wifi (nome internet) and cellular service from the same company, Bell. If I turn off my wifi I save two or three maybe hops until I am at a main junction point on the Bell network in my province, from my traceroute that looks like

be5.bx01.nycm.ny.aliant.net

that's where my provider (Bell) connects up with a big feed in the US, New York by the look of the name.

If the only difference was the first couple of network hops (how I get to the network point where my Canadian provider joins up with the US provider) then the problem would be with my service provider, Bell. That doesn't seem to make a lot of sense to me as so many others from all over the world on all different carriers are having the same problem as me, they don't use Bell all over the world. It still looks like Apple having the issue on a backend server to me.

I wonder how folks using Macbook Pro running Facetime with an ethernet cable are doing? If they are having troubles too then we can stop looking at how our devices join up to the Internet, wifi, 3g, direct broadband, old dialup modem, the issue will be out on the net and probably down on an Apple resource.

Good question Steve,

However I'm still driven down the router/security route on this one versus iOS 6.x as it was fine before on iOS 5

I'm using a Fibre connx with a D-Link DVG-5402SP router and a Huawei H863 ONT - I've switched between WPA and WPA2 blah blah with no effect - I'm going to focus on this again today (it's tomorrow here now!) and will report if any successful changes - as this is not apparently router/brand specific there must be a common denominator somewhere in the mix.....

ES

The host ip for this Facetime / iChat / Jabber service I read about is the one I mentioned above, 17.149.36.99

For the port number(s), that is documented on some FAQs on Apple's site ...

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1629

For some more background on Facetime, there is also a wiki ...

http://theiphonewiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=FaceTime

hth

"a common denominator" ... beside the Apple Facetime server of course! <grin>

I hope you are right, I would like to see this resolved too!

Agreed! And yes - the common problem here is Apple and their ego/arrogance to ignore/deny such an obvious problem - and yes Apple, we know you're listening!

ES