iOS 8 Wi-Fi problems

I spent the better part of two days debugging the problem with my iPhone 4s accessing wifi with the 8.1.1 and 8.1.2. Specifically with the meraki MR16 wireless access point. Strangely enough I had a similar problem with my Windows 7 laptop (Dell Lattitude E6520 with a DW1501 Wireless-N WLAN mini card). The short story to the resolution, at least for me, required resetting of the wifi channels for both the 2.4 and 5 Ghz radios to 11 and 161 respectively. It's been mentioned a few times in this thread that the IOS releases since 8.x have problems with wifi channels in auto mode. That appears to be the case from my experience.

Hi frasimm,

The answer as London Lad pointed out lies in the link posted by Procyon256 on page 97 of this thread. There is a bug in iOS 8, well reported for 3 months now, which makes some of us loose connectivity and/or connection speed. This is not consistent, I am able to get good results at times and for no apparent reason just like you then revert to crawling speeds. As the link states there is an issue with AirDrop / Bonjour / AWDL and there is little we can do about it until Apple chooses to fix the bugs other than "jailbraking" our phones/pads and tweaking iOS, something I am not planning on doing. In the mean time there are various "fixes" which have been reported but as London Lad stated they are only temporary. In my own case I am now able to get good speeds if I turn AirDrop and Bluetooth off but this will not last. If you begin having problems again you can try using a different AP if you have one or disabling AirDrop/Bluetooth but this may or may not work and if it does it will not be for long. Sorry I cannot offer you more. We are now dependent on master Apple to correct. Also as I have mentioned, Apple is working on iOS 8.2 as it will provide connectivity to the new iWatch on sale in early 2015. I hope either 8.1.3 or 8.2 solves Wi-Fi but I am not holding my breath.... 😕

Sorry but it does not work, actually nothing will work until Apple issues a new update. The issue has been well discussed on this thread. I understand why you wouldnot want to read 98 pages but you can just read since iOS 8.1.2 came out from page 92 on and get the details. You can also Google "WiFried: iOS 8 WiFi Issue" for a detailed technical explanation of the issue. As I have posted before one can get temporary relief by changing anything that forces the iOS to get a new lease from the router but it will not last. By doing so you might be able to get ok speeds for a few hours or even days but they will deteriorate again. Well reported and explained on this thread before...

🙂

I searched for Apple KB Article "HT202068" within this thread but didn't see it mentioned (may have done the search incorrectly). Ground already covered?

iOS and OS X: Recommended settings for Wi-Fi routers and access points

Thanks for posting this. My router is configured exactly as recommended by Apple but unfortunately to no avail. I just ran 3 speed tests on my iPad with AirDrop and Bluetooth ON: 1.07, 0.97, and 0.09 (not a typo) Mbps. I then turned Bluetooth and AirDrop OFF, ran 2 tests: 15.04 and 15.10 Mbps.

The Wi-Fi issue has been going on for over 4 months and Apple is either not willing or not able to fix it. This is creating a lot of animosity among previous Apple fans as you can see from the 103 pages of posts here. I hope Apple resolves this issue soon. If not they are going to loose a lot of customers but perhaps they don't care as the Apple Store is always full. Steve Jobs would have demanded a quick solution.

I'm one of the "new router" folks; both spouse and I (iphone 5) had extensive lost connections, restart of wifi just to get a connection. I figured the two year old router had given up the ghost. Realized it was due to update to IOS 8.1.2 (both within a week of each other) after purchasing one of the best rated routers out there. realized every other non-IOS device was working great on wifi. Tried the myriad of suggestions (short of full reset, since too many had already reported no luck with that). Some good news: I had luck/success finally after turning off LTE and Data Roaming in the Cellular Settings (from another, shorter listserve). It seems to be working, even though I've turned LTE back on. Might have been luck (some strange combination that finally kickstarted our wifi connection). Both phones no longer have dropped wifi connection (at Home).

But bad news is that the Siri handsfree Bluetooth issue is NOT resolved for our household. Look up the multitude of questions on this topic. IOS 8 is a cluster. I'm worn out from the "blame the router/car/owner" responses and total arrogance from Apple. Sorry, but Siri made hands free calls on both the 2013 Honda and 2007 Toyota before the update. It ain't the car, it's the operating system update. Thousands of other car owners experiencing Bluetooth issues; some probably also experiencing wifi issue as well.

FYI: ran OOKLA speed test tonight. 14ms Ping, 38.55 download, 5.53 upload (was in same room with router). Haven't lost a connection since the data roaming update; haven't had to turn wifi on/off either (that would sometimes work for 5-10 minutes).

Good luck folks. Apple isn't going to help you.

So, I was having the same issues as lots of other users on my 2 yr old iphone 5, tried the various fixes/resets etc, nothing worked; then I followed the Apple recommended router setting which I found here: iOS and OS X: Recommended settings for Wi-Fi routers and access points - Apple Support and now my wifi connection is up and running on both 2.4 & 5 GHz. All I did was change the security to WPA2 Personal (AES) (from WPA AUTO) and check that the rest of the settings were as they should be, which they were or I couldn't change on my Virgin SuperHub 2. In fact as soon as I got to the security settings and changed them, I tried to connect and it worked for me, I didn't bother with the rest of the settings. Give it a try, I hope it works for you.

Regards. Depeche 242.

No surprise at all... As has been well reported here, when any kind of "reset" is done, either on the router or the phone, one gets a Wi-Fi bounce. Those of us that read the WiFried article by Mario Ciabarra understand this quite well. Here is what Mr. Ciabarra said back in November:

Bouncing WiFi/Re-associating WiFi

Part of the confusion is due to the fact that when the iOS device reconnects to an AP (either turn off/on WiFi on the phone or Forget/reconnect), some of the AWDL characteristics are reset/disabled for a period of time. Thus, the WiFi performance restores to 100% upon a WiFi bounce until discoveryd begins its browse/advertise routines, causing performance degradation and the ping lag issue on the 5S when the kernel disables AWDL again. Until I figured this out, this made it quite difficult when troubleshooting!

You either have not read the Ciabarra article or do not understand the contents and thus continue to mislead people on this site about iOS 8 having no Wi-Fi issues. You are doing a disservice here but then again, you don't care as you have an agenda!

For others reading this post, Depeche242 got a Wi-Fi bounce on his iPhone 5 and just like mine (and my wife's) the issue will return in a matter of time (hours or days). I have a Linksys EA4500 router and it is configured exactly like Apple recommends in the KB article. I also have another Linksys router and an AT&T 2WIRE Gateway and the slow connection is there regardless of the router or settings. I get better speeds if I turn AirDrop/Bluetooth OFF (due to the AWDL problems Ciabarra describes). In addition to 4 iOS devices we also have 2 Dell PCs and a MacBook Pro Retina (using it at the moment). The connection speed is steady and consistent with both Dells, in 4 months of testing we have never had a single slow speed OOKLA test on the Dells, the problem only shows up on iOS devices running iOS 8. My iPhone 5 has been replaced twice (mercifully at Apple's expense) all to no avail. The last replacement came with iOS 7 - I tested the new phone repeatedly with no Apps installed, i.e., in factory condition with only a new OOKLA download and the phone worked perfectly. Then I made the mistake of upgrading to iOS 8.1.2 and the issue showed up in two hours.

My wife and I had no issues whatsoever with iOS 7 (same router and same settings) so YES there is a problem with iOS 8. That is the reason "Kevin" at Apple keeps calling people about it (he called me and others and took data for their engineers to analyze). None of this will satisfy mmurray47, but for the rest of you don't waste your time or money buying new routers or trying different settings, it has been done at infinitum already by many here, all to no avail. I realize that 111 pages of posts are too much to read but but for those of you that are interested in the details I suggest starting on page 92 and you will get the drift, mmurray47 will not.

When ios8 was first released I took the ipad to the Apple store as I was already going and it was swapped out. So new hardware and it was exactly the same.

as gadgetAdam says in fault finding what is the one thing that changed? I cannot see it being a firmware issue on all the different brands/makes/models of routers. To get a perfect stable connection I have to lower the speed of my router to 802.11g. Anything above that and it drops.

maybe Apple did introduce a "feature" in the wifi stack but what ever it did broke it for a lot of devices

I'm getting tired of explaining myself over and over so I'll try showing everyone what I'm seeing since installing IOS 8.2. The speed thing would happen before 8.2 and during 8.x when bluetooth was just on and not connected to anything.

The audio is streaming from the internet, it's not local.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/kisok1spqlisan2/00000.mp4?dl=0

UPDATE, I did the same test with audio stored locally and my WIFI speeds drop to almost zero. Like I said I was getting these WIFI results pre-8.2 but while on IOS8 just having bluetooth on. My Girlfriend's iPad mini running 8.2 is not experiencing any issues so it's not my AP/Router. Before you say it's my hardware there are others that have shut off bluetooth while on IOS8 where it has fixed their WIFI problems and I don't buy the reason that their hardware broke at the same times as mine.

A tablet should be able to get over 250K WIFI speeds and play audio over bluetooth but as you can see mine can't. If I let it play eventually the music would stop as it can't download it fast enough.

Maija59 wrote:

...

Is there someone out there that has fixed the issue with a new router? What error messages did you get and what other devices did you have, if any, and how were they handling the wifi connection?

Read these samplings from this thread posted earlier by MMURRAY47:

Tbirdvet

Jan 16, 2015 5:13 AM

Re: iOS 8 Wi-Fi problems

in response to elcpu

"The other day I bought a new TP-Link AC router and no more dropped WiFi."

americangirl_chelsea (to E-2043) 3 weeks ago (Show more)

"Happy to report that since updating (sic: my phone) that I got my 6 nearly 5 days ago, my wifi has been super. No dropping or being sluggish"

navigaremondo

Feb 13, 2015 8:00 PM

Re: iOS 8 Wi-Fi problems

in response to E-2043

"I finally caved in and bought a new router, a TENDA 300 Mbps, model W309R+. My wifi hasn't dropped since, neither on my Macbook nor my iPad 3."

Lodds

Feb 17, 2015 1:10 AM

Re: iOS 8 Wi-Fi problems

in response to E-2043

"I have posted in the early days of this post - I have recently installed a Meraki AP and I no longer have the issue of disconnecting."

jimmy1264

Feb 16, 2015 1:27 PM

Re: iOS 8 Wi-Fi problems

in response to E-2043

"I changed my Lan IP's to be a 10.X network and everything came up and so far the iPad has been working."

8.3 seems to have provided fixes for all the problems I was having too.

So far:-

No password rejection at log on to a network.

No dropped wi-fi connexions or failed hand offs

No drop-outs when streaming audio by airplay

No massive speed drops

Just spoke with AppleCare Level 2 again. The tech is at a loss regarding the reason why the iPhone drops speeds with Bluetooth ON. As I told him the iPad at the moment works ok with Bluetooth ON or OFF (with big emphasis on at the moment). If it is like the past, in a day or two it could very well be the other way around, i.e., the iPad may drop speeds with Bluetooth ON and the iPhone may work ok with it ON. As has been reported on the web and here previously a Wi-Fi bounce will temporarily restore speeds but they will not last. My solution for now is to leave Bluetooth OFF on both devices and only turn them on when I want to use AirDrop (at crawl speeds). For whatever it is worth I also have a MacBook Pro Retina and Bluetooth works perfectly there all the time. This points to an iOS issue, not the router, as the MBP uses the same router and ISP.

AppleCare Level 2 stated that they will kick this up to Engineering / Development but judging by the past a fix will not be imminent.

I had that issue with IOS8-8.1.3. When my bluetooth was on I'd have dialup speeds. With my bluetooth off it would be fine.

With IOS8.2 it got better but not perfect. I would get dial up speeds ONLY when streaming to my bluetooth speaker(see video below).

With IOS8.2 I reset everything back to defaults(IOS8.2)and it was "better" but there was still a minor slowdown(20% slower) when I would stream to my bluetooth speaker.

I have not tested everything yes with IOS8.3 as I'm traveling for work.

I hate to say this but I would suggest wiping your device and see if that fixes the issue. I know you don't want to do that but when I did it I did get "better" results.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/kisok1spqlisan2/00000.mp4?dl=0

I have been following this thread for months and I thought I would offer the following comments.

With the release of iOS 8.3 Apple has finally acknowledged that there was a problem with Wi-Fi in iOS 8 which was substantial enough for Apple to address. “Fixes” have been included in 8.3 in an attempt to correct many of the issues reported here. While it took 7 months for Apple to address these bugs, it is encouraging that they have finally acknowledged them.

8.3 has been out for two days and it is too early to know if the “fixes” have solved the problems. Seven people have reported on this thread so far regarding their experience with 8.3. In addition there is another site I follow and 2 people have reported there. Of the 9 reports I have seen, 3 state that 8.3 solved their Wi-Fi issues, 4 report that it did not and two reported mixed results, some Wi-Fi issues fixed, others not. Additional time and input is needed. It appears (this is a preliminary statement subject to revision) that connectivity has been improved (or solved) while AirDrop / Bluetooth issues have not.

As has been reported on the web and by others here, with every Wi-Fi bounce, i.e., every time a device is disconnected/reconnected, be it by switching to a different AP or turning Wi-Fi on and off, etc., the bounce resets some of the AWDL characteristics and Wi-Fi performance is restored for a period of time. It would be of value if those reporting good results would report again in a week or two to verify if the good results have continued.