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iPad Air 2 WiFi Issues

I'm having WiFi connectivity issues on my new iPad Air 2 (WiFi only). I'm having to turn WiFi off and on to reset my connection. Restarting and restoring hasn't fixed the issue.

iPad

Posted on Oct 24, 2014 7:42 PM

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Posted on Jun 30, 2016 12:17 PM

So this blog ha been going for two years and still no fix.

come on Apple step up to this issue. It's a real pain.

595 replies

Oct 27, 2014 7:51 AM in response to JerryWest_44

I have Retuned my iPad Air 2 Today got a full Refund Wifi problems but the main problem was if you played music or tv The glass screen vibrates and when touching screen I got static through My fingers I gave my wife my iPad Air 1 but now I have it back she has gone back to her Ipad 4 I will not buy another iPad Air 2 when I do get iPad it will be iPad Air 1 The new one is two thin and not has sturdy. Cheers Brian

Oct 27, 2014 8:18 AM in response to tom_eastcoast

I'm not a techie by any stretch of the imagination. When I first got my new iPad on Friday it wouldn't recognize my wifi password, kept saying it was incorrect and it wasn't. Was leaving town and didn't have time to mess with it. While out of town I connected to the hotel wifi without any problems. When returning home last night I had the same issue with home router. I just unplugged the router/modem (it's an AT&T gateway) and waited 3 minutes and plugged it back in. Holding my breath I tried the iPad again and it worked. It's been connected ever since. I've let it go to sleep, worked on it for 30 minutes or more, still staying connected. I don't know how I've gotten so lucky when clearly this is a big problem. I preordered mine from Best Buy and picked up Friday morning.

Oct 27, 2014 8:51 AM in response to escrge1843

I tend to partially agree. While apple apps are sandboxed from each other, there could be conflicts that occur in some but not all cases, depending on the mix of applications that you install. For example, applications share access to photos, notification services and location services. Those of us that have Exchange connected could have a conflict between the iPad and some security policy our exchange server is enforcing. It could also be a case where there is a new conflict between certain router/firmware combinations and the new iPad Air; I remember having an issue years ago with an early PS3 not playing nice with the uPNP settings on a router that would freeze the router. None of this excuses Apple, as while I concede that they cannot test every possible permutation and combination out there, they are responsible for making sure their devices work properly with others and fixing issues as they crop up.


For me, these are a couple other "irregular" setups that I have:

  • I have a Linksys 4500 router running in bridge mode to provide wireless to my Verizon FiOS Actiontec v.F router. I saw that other people appear to have issues with this particular router and the iPad Air 2
  • I have not activated cellular service on my iPad, despite it having a cellular radio. This probably is not the root issue, however, since I see reports of people with active cellular service still having issues
  • I have an exchange server connection to my iPad. While this is not "irregular," from past experience this has been a root cause of problems due to the inconsistent way each device handles security requirements that the IT department enforces via exchange (i.e. remote wipe, passcode enforcement, etc)
  • During my initial setup, I had a very hard time getting touch ID to work - I must have gone through the steps for 20 minutes. This held up the rest of the setup process, since I was doing this during the initial setup rather than letting the iPad get fully set up and then implementing touch ID
  • My old iPad 2 was grandfathered into Google's free exchange server for my Gmail. When I restored to this iPad, it tried to reconnect me to Google's exchange server and hung, I needed to remove that account and reconnect to Gmail via the default method.

My next troubleshooting steps are to:

  • Run off different router - I am at the office where we have an Airport Extreme. I see lots of reports of people that have Airport Extremes experiencing the problem, so not very hopeful
  • Keep the smart cover off the device - so far I have not had any issues today after first connecting to wifi and hour ago. The devices wakes and shows the screen with each notification, perhaps the smart cover keeping the iPad asleep is somehow conflicting with Wifi
  • Deactivate Wifi Networking under location settings, per #2 of this post ( ). I may keep this deactivated going forward, all it does it use my known location along with a scan of nearby Wifi Networks so Apple can create a "crowdsourced" database of wifi networks in order to aid location services.
  • Since location settings appear to be something of an issue, I also noticed two app that frequently access locations settings: Google Serach/Now, and TripIt, with the latter applying a geofence

Oct 27, 2014 10:42 AM in response to escrge1843

So i'm in my office today and my iPad Air 2 works without a problem on my office router which is a D-Link DIR-855L. I had it in sleep mode for over an hour while I was having lunch, no issue at all on wake up. Wifi speeds are fine, no issues. My home router is a Linksys EA4500 and as of last night was still giving me issues. I know not everyone has Linksys routers that's having issues, but something still seems really odd about that. I'm going to hook up an older Asus router I have here to my home network, hopefully tonight. Curious if that makes a difference.

Oct 27, 2014 11:10 AM in response to Chris Arnold

Interesting, so far the only change I have made was also come to work, where we are connected via an airport extreme. Its been close to 4 hours now without a single hiccup, wifi on wakeup, everything peachy. I may be connected via 2.4GHz here versus 5GHz at home, not sure how to check, that could be another source of the issue (although I do see people having issues with both 2.4 and 5GHz bands).


Chris Arnold - I also have a EA4500 at home, but it operates in bridge mode, bridging to a Verizon FiOS Actiontec router ver F. I did this because the FiOS router only has up to wireless-g (typical verizon idiocy using routers that run slower than the network connection itself). Since the EA4500 is in bridge mode, then it does not have any internet connections - it just acts as a conduit passing along info to the Actiontec router, which assigns IP addresses, opens ports, etc. Do you have a similar setup? I am guessing the Actiontec could be the issue, something there blocking access; of course this doesn't explain why a quick toggle of wifi re-establishes the connection.


My EA4500 is also running the "SmartWiFi" firmware rather than the older classic version (Ver.2.1.41 (Build 162351)). It was a manual download a few months back and perhaps that also causes issues - is that your version as well? Unlike Apple, Linksys does allow downgrading, so perhaps that is another path.

Oct 27, 2014 11:42 AM in response to Chris Arnold

Whether you are using SmartWifi firmware or classic can be seen by going to your router's logon. If the logon looks like step 12 on the rollback instructions below, you have the classic firmware. If it looks like step 4, then you have the SmartWifi firmware.


Now that I think about it, I am also battling a random disconnect and freezing issue with my Harmony remotes. Periodically, they will stop receiving instructions. Since the lights on the hub remained green and flashed when a command was received, I assumed that router was ok and I had a remote hub issue. After a replacement, I still experience this issue. Perhaps Linksys routers just don't play nice with some device configurations for some reason.

iPad Air 2 WiFi Issues

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