iPad Air slow WiFi connection

I had same problem. I restored my iPad air and set it up as a new iPad not from my backup. My backup had even original iPad stuff so I was thinking May be that was causing some issues. It solved my problem and I am getting constant speed, even in the basement. Be careful if you decided to restore and set up as a new iPad, make sure to save your pictures and videos etc otherwise you won't be able to retrieve it.

I have a client whose 2 mos. old ipad air cannot connect or is incredibly slow to internet on 5Ghz wireless. No problem with 2.4Ghz SSID on same router. We really want to utilize the 5Ghz band for faster throughput and SSID congestion on the 2.4 Ghz band. Have tried most of the suggestions in this thread to no avail. Here is the interesting part: my ipad air has no problem, my android phone has no issues, Windows 8.1 ultrabook has no issues, other Apple phones have no issues, just this ipad air. All OS and drivers are up to date and are identical to my ipad air. The only difference between the ipads is that mine is set up to use 4G cellular. Given all the problems posted about 5Ghz issues and ipad airs, my best guess is that there is a batch of bad wireless network adapters in a lot of peoples new ipad airs. Mimo, channels, renaming SSIDs, resetting networks, changing routers, etc. we are all just dancing around trying to fix a hardware issue that will probably only resolved by replacing the wireless network card or the entire unit.

Hi, I wanted to confirm your observation. I tested a lot of devices at my place (Iphone 5s, Ipad Air, Ipad 3 & Asus memo pad hd7) and found that both the Iphone 5s and Ipad Air have very slow wifi throughout (0.5Mbps) when the wifi router is set to channel 13. All other devices had a throughput between 10 & 15 Mbps. I switched my wifi router to channel 9 and then the throughput of the Iphone 5s and Ipad Air were on par with the other devices, between 10 & 15 Mbps.

I bought 2 iPad Air2 64Gbyte in September from a reputable UK supplier. Both worked perfectly straight from the box.

5 weeks later in early October BT infinity broadband became available in our road, so we switched, and took advantage of using BT’s Homehub5 modem/router with dualband wifi.

One of the iPads worked just fine, but the other had VERY slow (<1Mbps) connectivity. The other iPad had 32Mbps. When I swapped the BT homehub5 for my old router (Ubiquiti Air), both iPads worked OK. A LONG, LONG time was spent fiddling with router and iPad settings with no success. A borrowed Netgear dual band modem/router replicated the fault experienced with the BT router, convincing me that the fault lay in the iPad throwing a strop if 802.11ac wireless was being broadcast.

I could find no way of configuring the BT homehub to only transmit 2.4GHz to confirm my suspicion that the ‘faulty’ iPad only showed the fault if a 802.11ac was present.

I took the iPad to the iStore in Tunbridge Wells, and it’s wifi speed there was normal – cruciallythe store had no 802.11ac wireless.

So I returned the iPad as faulty, and today I received a replacement under warranty. Its wifi speed is good – same as the other iPad.

So I’d say that SOME iPad Air2 units have a wifi fault that ONLY shows up if 802.11ac wifi is present. Hope this is of help.

Two things...if you recently did an IOS update, reboot.

2nd thing, every time on my iPad air, turn OFF bluetooth. It had a major impact on mine. Run Speed Test with bluetoothe turned ON and OFF, and I believe that you will see it also. OFF--downloads up to 50 Mbps on wifi. With it on from 5 Mbps to 25 Mbps over the same server.

I have a Home Hub 5, and when my girlfriend and I were downloading apps or streaming the downloads would fail, as well the streaming would drop out. The fix was like Masayoshi3 advised above. I named the 5Ghz band on the Home Hub 5 as something different and now the ipad air's are perfect, blistering fast.

Although you have turned the 2.4Ghz band off, have you removed it from the ipad, as in told it to forget the 2.4Ghz network, I had to do this and then turn wifi off/on, I found my ipad would still intermittently connect to the old 2.4Ghz SSID, but once I told it to forget it, it seems to be better.

I was having issues with Wi-Fi on my Ipad Air as well. I thought it was entirely an issue with the new iPad so I deleted (forget network) the SSID and rejoined the network. The problem was still happening even after restarting the iPad so I checked my iPhone 5S and found out that it's no longer connected to my home network. It even asked me for the password when I tried to connect. And the worst is, the same issue is happening with my iPhone - the Wi-Fi is so slow it's stuck at downloading an app. I went ahead to my Mac just to perform an internet speed test. I was surprised that even the Mac has a yellow exclamation point on my Wi-Fi network. I think this has something to do with the iCloud sync - it also syncs your SSIDs and their password with all your Apple devices if iCloud sync is turned on (it seems like if one of those devices encounters issues with the internet, provided that all devices are connecting to the same network, it will also affect the others).So I deleted the Wi-Fi on my Mac, deactivated/reactivated the Wi-Fi and joined the network again. Restarted my iPad Air and my iPhone 5S. Voila! Everything is back to normal again.

This is really a nuisance and I hope Apple will provide an update for this.

I have two iPad Airs, one works absolutely fine and the other had really slow performance over WiFi. I tried the instructions above by naming my 5Ghz Band differently, but it made no difference. I then read megaprime's post and after reading thought that it would make no difference, however I tried it anyway. As soon as I changed my Wifi proxy to Auto, I got the same performance as all my other apple devices. The difference is hugely noticeable. I have a 6Mb internet connection and before I changed the proxy setting I was getting roughly 1Mb using OOKLA speedtest, now I get the full 6Mb!

I don't understand why one iPad Air works fine and the other didn't, but this certainly resolved my issue. Thanks megaprime.

We have experienced slow iPad Airs on our managed HP wireless system; the old iPad 2s worked fine, but the Airs were unusable - although they worked fine on a standalone WAP.

After a lot of tests we concluded it was down to the Airs having MIMO.

The managed WAPs we are using (HP MSM430) have both 2.4 and 5GHZ, but no MIMO support. If the Airs connect to the 5GHz band they don't work, but by forcing them to use the 2.4GHz band they work fine.

We also discovered that the HP MSM460 WAP does support MIMO, and the Airs work fine at 5GHz if connecting to the MSM460 WAP.

After updating to iOS 7.1 I had the slow Wifi problem once again. Setting http-proxy to automatic didn't help this time.

I turned airplane mode on, made an reset of my network settings and than turned the airplane mode off. now everything works fine.

Hi there,

I was also experiencing slow wifi-connection problems with my iPad Air. Normally I get between 13mbit and 21mbit but my iPad was the only device on my network getting stuck at just 0.6mbps (*** right?). After a long while I discovered my iPad could'nt handle my router's channel 13 that well. I switched to channel 12 and I immidiately got the same speed as my other devices. Quiet dissapointed in Apple for delivering such an "state-of-the-art" product, provided with all the latest technology for hundreds of euro's and not even connecting properly to a channel 13 wireless network. BTW, I needed to share this with you guys. ****, I even registered an account on this board especially for this.

Cheers.

I was also having slow speeds on my iPad air 1, renamed my N network in airport utility and bingo getting 60mbs down and 12 upload instead of under 20 download all my other devices did not have the problem kinda weird that that fixed it. With bluetooth on getting same speeds.

Thanks!

I have renamed the 5Ghz network and that helped immediately. Just try to rename the network.